Tourism in the Subarctic and the Baltic Sea regions of Europe

Abstract

It is argued that the cultural dimensions of the Arctic and Subarctic have much to offer contemporary tourism, both as sources of new contents in tours and as an important field in tourism research and management training. In Norway, the Euroarctic is marketed to tourists focusing on nature and wildlife. A limited set of branding elements is used: northern lights, ice hotels, dogsledding, “safaris” for watching: whales, rare birds, and for catching king crabs. Wildlife, like the weather, is unreliable, and disappointed tourists are bad for business, so cultural contents have in practice proved necessary to bring into guide narratives as “backup entertainment” on no-shows of the natural attraction. Much more of the ethnological and historic heritage of the Euroarctic has potential interest to regional tourism development. This article compares tourism in the Euroarctic with that of the southeast Baltic Sea region, to find examples of what this could be and makes some recommendations based on that.

Keywords

• Norway
• Russia
• subarctic tourism
• cultural heritage
• collective memory
• borderland
• Curonian Spit
• Klaipeda