The Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage ( or Direktoratet for kulturminneforvaltning) is a government agency

Etat

Etat is a Norwegian state-, county- or municipal agency. An Etat is a subdivision of the administration, which has been given responsibility for a special area. An agency does not have a board of directors, but it does have a director, appointed by the subordinate organization. Normally decisions...

 responsible for the management of cultural heritage

Cultural heritage

Cultural heritage is the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations...

 in Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

. Subordinate the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment

Norwegian Ministry of the Environment

The Royal Norwegian Ministry of the Environment is a Norwegian ministry established in 1972. The ministry is responsible for environmental issues in Norway. It is led by the Minister of the Environment, Erik Solheim...

, it manages the Cultural Heritage Act of June 9, 1978.

Organization

The county municipalities

County municipality (Norway)

A county municipality is a Norwegian public elected body that is responsible for certain public administrative and service tasks within a county. Each county consists of county municipality, with the exception of Oslo, which is both a municipality and a county municipality...

 are responsible for the cultural heritage management in their county. As well, for Sámi

SAMI

SAMI is a Microsoft accessibility initiative released in 1998. The structured markup language is designed to simplify creating captions for media playback on a PC, i.e. not for broadcast purposes....

 heritage, it is the responsibility of the Sami Parliament

Sami Parliament of Norway

The Sami Parliament of Norway is the representative body for people of Sami heritage in Norway. It acts as an institution of cultural autonomy for the indigenous Sami people....

 and on Svalbard

Svalbard

Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic, constituting the northernmost part of Norway. It is located north of mainland Europe, midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The group of islands range from 74° to 81° north latitude , and from 10° to 35° east longitude. Spitsbergen is the...

 it is the Governor of Svalbard

Governor of Svalbard

The Governor of Svalbard represents the Norwegian government in exercising its sovereignty over the Svalbard archipelago .The position reports to the Norwegian Ministry of Justice, but it maintains all Norwegian interests in the area, including environmental protection, law enforcement,...

 that is responsible. For excavations there are five chartered archeological museums.

History

The work with cultural heritage started in the early 1900s, and the first laws governing heritage findings came in 1905, with the first law protecting heritage buildings appearing in 1920. The post as National Antiquarian was established in 1912. When the Ministry of the Environment was created in 1972 the responsibility was transferred there, and the current law for cultural heritage is dated June 9, 1978, replacing the two older laws. The post was made a directorate

Directorate

A directorate is an agency usually headed by a director, often a subdivision of a major government department.* Immigration and Nationality Directorate* Dairat al-Mukhabarat al-Ammah * Veterinary Medicines Directorate...

 on July 1, 1988.

List of National Antiquarians

• 1912–1913 Herman Major Schirmer
  Herman Major Schirmer
  Herman Major Schirmer was a Norwegian architect and historian of art. Born in Kristiania , he taught at the Royal Drawing School for 39 years...
  
  
• 1913–1946 Harry Fett
  Harry Fett
  Harry Fett was a Norwegian art historian and factory owner. He headed the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage from 1913 to 1946.-Personal life:...
  
  
• 1946–1958 Arne Nygård-Nilssen
  Arne Nygård-Nilssen
  Arne Nygård-Nilssen was a Norwegian art historian, publicist and magazine editor. -Biography:Nygård-Nilssen grew up in Bergen, Norway where his father was a school teacher. He attended the University of Oslo . At the University he came under the influence of Anders Bugge , a prominent professor...
  
  
• 1958–1977 Roar Hauglid
  Roar Hauglid
  Roar Hauglid was a Norwegian art historian and publicist. He wrote several books on Norwegian stave churches. He replaced Arne Nygård-Nilssen as head of the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage, serving from 1958 to 1977. He was decorated Knight, First Class of the Order of St. Olav, and...
  
  
• 1978–1991 Stephan Tschudi-Madsen
  Stephan Tschudi-Madsen
  Stephan Tschudi-Madsen was a Norwegian art historian and pioneer in the rediscovering of Art Nouveau in the 1950s...
  
  
• 1991–1997 Øivind Lunde (leave of absence since 1995)
• 1997–2009 Nils Marstein
  Nils Marstein
  Nils Marstein is a Norwegian civil servant.He took his architect's education at the Norwegian Institute of Technology from 1969 to 1974, and was hired in the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage in 1979. In 1991 he was promoted to head of the technical department...
  
   (acting since 1995)
• 2009–2009 Sjur Helseth (acting)
• 2009–present Jørn Holme
  Jørn Holme
  Jørn Holme is a Norwegian judge and civil servant.He grew up at Nordberg, and originally wanted to become a priest. He was active in the Norwegian Christian Student Association while studying. He graduated with the cand.jur. degree from the University of Oslo in 1986...