Study title

Tourism in Northern Norway has experienced significant growth in the last 10-15 years, especially in the winter. This growth has been a result of the increased focus on development and marketing of nature-based winter activities, and that international markets have discovered the region as a winter destination. Central to this development has been Northern Lights experiences, Hurtigruten, and the television documentary Joanna Lumley in the Land of the Northern Lights. However, there was little formal knowledge of winter tourism that could explain development processes and meetings between tourists, the industry and the Arctic winter. This project qualitatively and quantitatively explored winter tourism developments in the Arctic from four thematic angles: 1) Winter Tourism Activities: Soft and Hard Adventures (WP1) 2) Finnmarksløpet and the Iditarod of Alaska: Event Tourism (WP2) 3) Hurtigruten: Potentials and Barriers in Mass Tourism Developments (WP3) 4) Aurora Borealis: Tourism Performances and Symbolic Meanings (WP4) For further information about "New Turns in Arctic Winter Tourism: Adventuring, Romanticising and Exoticising, and Demasculinising Nature? 2017", please contact the principal investigator.