Public’s top 10 to be stored in the Arctic World Archive

The Arctic World Archive will become home to 10 more world cultural treasures.

To celebrate the European Year of Cultural Heritage, we asked the public to nominate and vote for items that deserve to be digitally preserved forever.

The Top 10 Items

• Music for the Jilted Generation, The Prodigy (provided by the The Prodigy)
• Rembrandt’s The Night Watch (provided by the Rijksmuseum)
• Gutenberg Bible (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main)
• Higgs Boson scientific breakthrough (provided by CERN)
• Photos celebrating the life of Henrik Ibsen (provided by the Norwegian National Museum)
• Ljudbänken, a Swedish sound project (provided by Audiorama and Stockholm Art)
• Photos capturing the history of Svalbard (provided by Svalbard Museum)
• Architectural design of the Guggenheim Bilbao (provided by the Guggenheim Bilbao)
• Artworks celebrating Sami culture (provided by the Norwegian National Museum)
• Photos capturing famous religious sites (winners from Future of Religious Heritage photo competition)

These items will be joining existing treasures including manuscripts from the Vatican Library, Edvard Munch’s The Scream, records from the national archives of Brazil and Mexico, and contemporary art.

We also invited one lucky contributor to the competition to come with us and deposit the collection on behalf of the public.

Our winner is Elizabeth Coelho, a Spanish Librarian, who nominated an item of Svalbard heritage. Congratulations Elizabeth!

Managing Director of Piql, Rune Bjerkestrand, the company behind the Arctic World Archive, said that the public engagement on this project has been invaluable.

‘The Archive is a place for world memory, and we want the public to help decide what needs to be there,’ he said.

‘The eclectic collection that made the top 10 is evident that so many items have value and provide a great picture of the diversity valued by our era.’

‘Digitally preserving these items for the future is a great help in preserving our cultural heritage and we look forward to engaging the public on similar projects in the future,’ he said.

The Archive, based on the remote island of Svalbard, Norway, is a safe repository for world memory. Set in the stability of a demilitarised zone, surrounded by permafrost and guarded by polar bears, this Archive and the data stored inside will last for centuries to come.