Archives from Organizations/ Businesses / Newspapers
Organizational Life
In addition to the personal oral histories it has been important to document the organizational activity involving immigrants. To achieve that overview we cooperated with, among others, the international division in Oppland County Administration. In February 2009 we sent a letter to all immigrant organizations (at that time 13 were registered) and introduced our project and asked whether the organization had materials of interest to the Oppland Archive. We encouraged them to contact us. Nothing came of this effort. Here as elsewhere in the project personal contact was the key.
In the pilot project the Archive had received archival material from the Bosnian organization “Lilje”. We had as a goal to follow up that contact with a shared gathering, but minimal activity within the organization made it unrealistic. On the other hand, we have had close contact with the Norwegian –African organization in Oppland. Among other things we’ve made a digital record to document the organization’s participation in the May 1st parade in the town of Gjøvik. In addition we have archived all the documents describing the organization’s activities. Because letters by post are less common now than before, the solution to receiving information from organizations has been to gain a place on the “copy to“ field when they send out information via e-posts. Other organizations we have contact with are the Burma association of Gjøvik and its district and the Serbian organization “Kosovo and Metohija”.
In addition, both the County Administration and Gjøvik municipality appointed an international advisory council. We have interviewed some of the members.
Interesting Business Histories
The new residents in Oppland are contributing to new business activity. With this we have received interesting archival material. An exciting collection came from Pakistani Yawar Bokhari who moved to Lillehammer in 1980. He got the idea to produce Norwegian style rag- rugs in his homeland and the process began. Today a factory in Sultanabad employs over 400 people. Bokhari wished to do more for the local community and started a school for the employees’ children. This now enables 650 children to attend school and gives jobs to 25 teachers. He has now given pictures, rag- rugs, school materials, company documents - the entire company archive – to the Oppland Archive at Maihaugen.
Central Car Care is another business many residents of Lillehammer have developed a good relationship to in the last years. This business is owned by a Kurdish man from Iraq named Nasih Raof Ahmed; he washes cars for the whole town. He has an interesting archive, in part because it documents a particular political case - the ten-year legal struggle by refugees designated as MUF (temporary refugees without family reunification rights) to be able to continue to reside in Norway. In addition we have interviews and archival materials from immigrants who have taken over corner stores and camping sites started by others. Some are running their own over- night accommodations, tailor concerns, cleaning companies, building projects, private watchmen and security companies, farms, goldsmith concerns, and a company with shoes designed and produced by the owner, and so forth.
For the project we also have made contacts to get the archival materials of Polski Incorporated, a firm that hired out Polish laborers to Norwegian construction companies before it went bankrupt in 2009.
Personal Dictionary
In addition to the oral interviews, organizational and business archives, we have received large and small treasures of material.
Muslija’s dictionary is an example of such a treasure. Seventy-one year old Muslija Bojicic knew what to do when he came to Norway without knowing a single Norsk word. He sat down with a type- writer and translated word for word from his own language. That became a dictionary of more than 300 pages – well cared for in the Oppland Archive.
Other things we have collected are photographs, student assignments, letters, blogs, videos, and various objects including a runner crocheted in a traditional pattern from Bosnia.
Newspaper Clippings and Reports
During the whole project we have gathered relevant news clippings from the largest regional papers in Oppland. We have also regularly researched the smaller local papers’ Internet pages and found related news that way. These clippings are archived by municipality.
There are also books, reports, and student theses covering themes that relate to the project. Some of these we have ordered for the Oppland Archives. We should particularly mention the final report from Placement Incorporated after they co-operated with municipalities in recruiting people to the area.