Electricity prices skyrocket and affect not only cultural activities but also cultural heritage, according to Jan Nordwall, secretary general of Sweden's Home Development Association.
The big problem, he believes, lies in the fact that many of the country's associations are now considering cooling down, turning off the heat and emptying the house's water pipes, their homesteads in order to reduce the electricity cost.
Homeland associations manage and collect local history around Sweden, which becomes part of the cultural heritage, often in older buildings.
According to Nordwall, the moisture that a cold storage system risks letting in puts archival material, photographs and costumes at risk.
- The archives are irreplaceable, says Jan Nordwall.
- If it is lost, you lose the knowledge of local history, which is important for understanding the identity of a place, and it feels terribly boring.
It also affects future generations when valuable knowledge disappears.
Requesting support
Sweden's Hembygdsförbund is also calling for measures from the government to be able to preserve the cultural heritage.
Nordwall suggests that the government could introduce a new form of subsidy to mitigate the effect of the increased prices or a cost ceiling for non-profit associations.
- I don't have any exact proposals, but I mostly want to highlight the problem and I think it is extremely important that you take it up.
Then we fully understand that the whole society is affected in different ways, but this risks having very long-term effects, what is destroyed is destroyed, says Jan Nordwall.
Kulturnyheterna has contacted Culture Minister Jeanette Gustafsdotter (S), who declined to comment