Exhibition opening: Narvik in France

Narvik Museum invites you to the exhibition opening of “Narvik in France”, an exhibition by this year’s VU artist: Per Heimly!

Visit the new exhibition throughout the museum’s ground floor

There will be an opportunity to talk to VU artist Per Heimly

Serving of coffee and something to eat

About the exhibition project:

When the Winter Festival Week marks its 70th anniversary in 2026, the festival returns to the history that gave it its origins. The Winter Festival Week was established in 1956 as a French Festival, as a celebration of the strong and lasting bond between Narvik and France ? a bond that was forged during the dramatic battles for Narvik in the spring of 1940.

The recapture of Narvik on 28 May 1940 represented the first Allied victory during World War II. In France, Narvik thus acquired a very special symbolic value: the city became concrete proof that resistance is useful, that the occupying power could be repulsed, and that the hope for freedom, solidarity and justice was still alive. This memory has proven to be powerful. Today there are 50 French sites ? streets, squares and squares ? which bears the name “Narvik”, as a direct tribute to the French effort and to what Narvik came to represent during the war.

In the anniversary year, the Winter Festival Week Foundation highlights this history through the project Narvik in France, an extensive art and documentation project developed in collaboration with the Narvik Centre Foundation and Narvik Museum. The project examines how the memories of Narvik have become ingrained in the French landscape, and how these historical connections are still kept alive in communities in the far south of Europe. At the same time, we want to create an artistic dialogue between the past and the present, where history becomes accessible to a broad audience in new ways.

Photographer Per Heimly is engaged as the Winter Festival Week’s VU artist in 2026. With roots in Duorga/Snubba in Evenes and an extensive career in art, documentary and fashion photography, Heimly is known for his ability to unite strong visual expressions with human stories. Through several trips to France, he has, in collaboration with France’s consul in Narvik, Jacques Chauffour, documented the places that bear the name Narvik. The work has also led to strong meetings with French veterans and descendants, including the family of Brigadier General Antoine Bethouart, who led the French forces during the fighting in Narvik. These meetings have clearly shown the deep respect and historical awareness that still binds France to Narvik and to Norway’s war history.

At the same time, the project has helped to actualize this connection in the contemporary world. As a direct result of the project, the municipality of Beauvezer in the south of France decided to name a new public place Passage Narvik in February 2026. With this, Beauvezer became the fiftieth place in France to bear Narvik’s name ? over eighty years after the fighting in 1940. That a French municipality today takes such an initiative, several decades after the end of the war, is a strong expression of Narvik’s enduring symbolic value in France: as the site of the first Allied victory, and as an enduring symbol of resistance, hope and international solidarity.

In a time characterized by increased international unrest, war in Europe and pressure on democratic values, the story of Narvik appears strikingly relevant. The story of the first victory ? about resistance, community and hope? still has great relevance, both historically, politically and humanly.