Vega management hub

Established by the Ministry of the Environment in 2010 when Vega Municipality was given management responsibility for the protected areas in the municipality. The management hub consists of Vega Protected Area Board , the Vegaøyan Foundation and the Norwegian Nature Conservation Authority. The three bodies will coordinate their work with, among other things, management and information.

Advisory committees

The Foundation has an advisory board that provides input to the Foundation's work. The advisory committee consists of 21 local and regional teams, associations and bodies. The advisory committees of the Foundation and the Vega conservation area board hold joint meetings. The following teams and associations participate in the Foundation's advisory committee:

Vega School, Vega Pasture Association, Vega Farmers' and Smallholders' Association, Vega Farmers' Association, Vegaøyans Venner, Landowner Representatives from Muddvær , Flovær , Skjærvær , Eidemsliene and Søla , Hysvær landowners' association, Nordland Eider Association , Utvare Lånan , Vega Coastal Association, Vega Fishermen's Association, Aktiv Vega, Nordland Nature Conservation Association, landowners' association Ylvingen and Helgeland Museum, BirdLife Sør-Helgeland, Aktiv Vega, Vega World Heritage Center, landowners' association Skogsholmen , Skogholt University

Administrative contact committee

Vega Protected Area Board has an administrative contact committee with the Foundation's general manager and with the agricultural manager, environmental protection/planning manager from Vega municipality. All parties inform about the issues they are working on in the meetings.

Norway's World Heritage

Nationally, the Vegaøyan World Heritage Foundation is part of Norway's World Heritage Network, a member organization for the Norwegian World Heritage Sites. The network will address common issues for the Norwegian World Heritage Sites and meet in connection with the annual World Heritage Forum, a conference that highlights current issues related to World Heritage. The Norwegian network also meets at the annual World Heritage Meeting in the Nordic countries.

www.norgesverdensarv.no

Nordic network

The Nordic World Heritage Sites meet annually for a conference to discuss common challenges and opportunities. In 2016, the sites organized themselves into a Nordic association - the Nordic World Heritage Association (NWHA) at the Nordic meeting in Iceland.

https://www.nordicworldheritage.org

Collaborative projects

The Vegaøyan World Heritage Foundation has several collaborative projects with various partners:

SOUND OF SILENCE – BODØ 2024

The Vegaøyan World Heritage Foundation participated with the project “Sound of Silence” in Bodø as European City of Culture 2–7 April 2024 and on Vega and in Lånan July 2nd – 3rd.

Sound of Silence aimed to put the situation of seabirds on the national and international agenda. At the seabird conferences, politicians, managers, researchers and people on the coast with practical knowledge gathered to learn from each other, gain a common understanding of the situation of seabird populations and what can be done to save the world's seabirds. The conferences were full houses in both places and created great engagement.

Art and culture were important instruments used through the VAGRANT project and "The Seabird Archive on the Way Home" - also to develop an artistic community between the places around a common issue. Children and young people were prioritized target groups and conducted their own workshops and events.

READ MORE.

FUGLAN VEIT

Sound of Silence has been a sub-project in the research and dissemination project "Fuglan veit" (2020 - 2024) at UiT - The Arctic University of Norway. In collaboration with local partners in Vega, Porsanger and Vardø, FUGLAN VEIT aims to create new knowledge and awareness of seabirds as part of coastal culture.

In the 1970s, researchers from Tromsø Museum traveled around the country to document the coastal population's knowledge and practices regarding seabirds (Bratrein 1975-78). Hundreds of interviews, sound recordings, notes and photos were taken: in the egg and down yards; of various egg gathering practices and of seabird hunting. In collaboration with local partners, FUGLAN VEIT will use this almost 50-year-old archive in local exhibitions and storytelling workshops in Vega, Vardø and Porsanger. The archive material is seen as a tool for remembering and highlighting rich and hand-carried knowledge about seabirds. It will provide opportunities to reflect on continuity and change. How can the coastal population's care and management contribute to better management of endangered seabirds in a time of major climate and environmental challenges.

Read more: uit.no/project/fuglan

CVI - CLIMATE VULNERABILITY

Vegaøyan World Heritage Site is the first cultural landscape area in Norway to have a climate vulnerability assessment (CVI) carried out. The method was developed at James Cook University in Australia, which also had the assistance of a researcher affiliated with the UN Climate Panel. The Norwegian initiator of having the climate vulnerability assessment carried out was the Directorate for Cultural Heritage and with the Norwegian Environment Agency, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and the Vegaøyan World Heritage Foundation as partners.   

Read more: The report

SUSTAINABLE TOURISM

Developing sustainable tourism is crucial to securing the values in a vulnerable area like Vegaøyan: The Foundation collaborated with Vega Næringsselskap on developing the local tourism strategy and the Sustainable Tourism pilot project that ran from 2010 to 2012. Vega Municipality has subsequently taken over this work and had the area recertified as a sustainable destination in 2018. The tourism strategy was developed based on a vulnerability analysis that the Foundation had carried out for the World Heritage area. In retrospect, Vega Protected Area Board created an approved visitor management plan. The project's goals include controlled traffic to selected visitor destinations, traffic based on nature's principles, and at the same time local value creation and development. The work on the visitor management plan has been carried out in close dialogue with the landowners.

Vega municipality has been a pilot for Nordland County in the Responsible Marketing project.

COOPERATION ON BUILDING PROTECTION

Nordland County Council, Helgeland Museum, Vega Municipality and the Vegaøyan World Heritage Foundation are working together to establish a building conservation center on Vega in connection with Vega's old vicarage. As of 2023, Helgeland Museum has two employees working on the establishment of the center and other building conservation work. The old barn will contain a workshop for courses and a materials bank. The museum's employees have offices at the World Heritage Center.

Since 2006, the Directorate for Cultural Heritage annually allocated funds for building conservation measures in the Vegaøyan World Heritage Area and in the buffer zone with Vega and Ylvingen. In recent years, the allocations to the Vegaøyan World Heritage have been in excess of NOK 5 million and have gone to a number of different projects that ensure that important parts of the building heritage in the World Heritage Area today stand out as examples of best practice in building conservation.

COLLABORATION ON DOCUMENTATION

The Vegaøyan World Heritage Foundation, Vega Municipality, Vega Protected Area Board and the Vega World Heritage Center have collaborated since 2019 on collecting documentation about the world heritage values, protection regulations for the protected areas, combined with information about Vega as a travel destination.

The foundation has also collaborated with landscape photographer Oskar Pushmann, NIBIO, on re-photographing the world heritage area, which is presented in the exhibition “Retrospect and Present Moment”. In 2020, Puschmann was in Vegaøyan and re-photographed motifs taken by, among others, Anders Beer Wilse and Helge A. Wold. Anders Beer Wilse (1865 – 1949) became known as the great Norwegian photographer who traveled around the country and photographed in the first half of the 20th century. Then he also stopped by Flovær and Lånan Other motifs in the exhibition are taken from Lånan by Helge A. Wold. In 1985 he won the award for best documentary novel with the book "Utvær" from Lånan and the island world outside Vega. The latest images were taken by scientists from the Directorate for Cultural Heritage , NIBIO in the 1990s and the Norwegian Environment Agency after 2000.

EIDER ARCHITECTURE

One of the most important collaborative projects has been with the birdtenders from 2006. The goal has been to restore as many of the old ehus/ebanes as possible (eider houses for one or more eiders - see picture) and to build new ones. Nordland Eider Association has also been a partner in this project through training new eider keepers.
In total, there has been an increase in the number of nests from 2220 to approximately 3100 in the period 2006 – 2023. Nordland Eider Association and partners have held courses for around 70 new eider keepers during the same period.

NORTH ATLANTIC COOPERATION

The Foundation, NIBIO Tjøtta (formerly Bioforsk Nord Tjøtta) and local birdtenders had a Nordic collaborative project on eiders between 2009 and 2012 with representatives from Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The project focused on eiders as a sustainable resource in coastal fringe areas in the North Atlantic countries. NIBIO Tjøtta was the project owner and with the Foundation as a partner. The project was financed via NORA – North Atlantic Cooperation, from the Home Rule Government in Greenland, Nordland County Municipality, the County Governor's Department of Agriculture, Bioforsk Nord and the Vegaøyan World Heritage Foundation. In September 2010, a Nordic eider conference was held on Vega with around 50 participants and with introductions from all the participating countries.

In August 2012, Vega was visited by 20 eider farmers from Iceland and eider keepers from the Vega Islands visited Iceland in August 2014. The aim is to continue the collaboration for mutual benefit, including research on eiderdown and its insulating properties.

COLLABORATION WITH NERINGA NATIONAL PARK AND NERINGA MUNICIPALITY

In 2009/2010, the Vegaøyan World Heritage Foundation was invited to take part in a project on the management of world heritage areas initiated by Neringa National Park and Neringa Municipality. The aim of the project was, among other things, to exchange experiences between the institutions working with World Heritage in the two places. A group of representatives from Vega School, Helgeland Museum, Vega Municipality and the Vegaøyan World Heritage Foundation was invited to Lithuania in April 2010 and in June the same year a group from Neringa came to Vega. The project resulted in a report that summarized the experiences from the meetings and suggested areas where the two World Heritage Sites could work together. There have also been joint discussions on the development of a communication strategy, including a website structure.  

COOPERATION WITH THE MALOPOLSKA REGION IN POLAND

Good management of World Heritage Sites was also the theme of the collaborative project "Management of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Poland and Norway".

the Directorate for Cultural Heritage was a Norwegian partner and was contacted by the International Cultural Centre (ICC) in Krakow in the winter of 2008/2009 about the project. ICC wanted to include the Norwegian World Heritage Sites Bryggen in Bergen, Urnes Stave Church, Bergstaden Røros and Vegaøyan in the project, where the Polish partners wanted to look more closely at how the Norwegian World Heritage Sites are managed. The project has ended, but the Polish partners are actively working to develop new projects for which they are seeking partners. This is an important way to finance World Heritage work in the EEA countries. At the same time, it provides positive experiences through discussion and by seeing how challenges are solved elsewhere. Read more on the project's website http://heritage.org.pl/Unesco.