Since Tacitus the concept of the North has been a viable part of European and Nordic self-understanding. Through its plasticity, images of the North have been utilized for promoting a range of virtues, ideologies and political projects. This project will investigate how images of Norden as a supranational identity have provided, and continue to provide, arenas for negotiating political, military, social, economical, ethical and cultural understandings of community in specific public and nationalised contexts. Museum institutions provide our focal point since they are especially effective vehicles for charting change and continuity; revealing internal co-operation and contestation within Norden and providing a link with other such institutions in northern Europe. Through interconnected investigations we will scrutinise the political and cultural map of Norden. Taking the museum as our methodological lens we will address the spatial transformation; international adaptation; and internal negotiation of Norden’s public culture from 1800-2000.