Tourism in the Arctic North Atlantic

During the last decade, tourism has been on a steep increase in the circumpolar Arctic (Maher, Jóhannesson, Kvidal-Røvik, Müller & Rantala, Reference Maher, Jóhannesson, Kvidal-Røvik, Müller, Rantala, Natcher and Koivurova2022). Tourism growth in the Arctic is however unevenly distributed between and within regions. Destinations, usually urban centres, in the Scandinavian North, Iceland and Yukon have experienced proportionally fastest growth. The reasons for the rapid (or lacking) increase in tourism in the high north are varied but it is tempting to link this trend to a growing political and economic interests in the area related to improved access to the circumpolar North and its resources (Lundmark, Müller & Bohn, Reference Lundmark, Müller, Bohn, Lundmark, Carson and Eimermann2020). Arctic tourism is also tightly connected to a global increase in tourism demand. As such, it is a manifestation of the intensified search and staging of unique experiences as well as an outcome of systematic efforts by local, regional and transnational governing bodies to develop and enhance tourism.

Tourism has been promoted by authorities at different levels as an efficient tool for economic development often in face of ensuing changes in other more traditional sectors, such as fisheries, mining and forestry (Hall et al., Reference Hall, Muller and Saarinen2009; Huijbens, Jóhannesson & Jóhannesson, Reference Huijbens, Jóhannesson and Jóhannesson2014). While research has argued that tourism development is far from a simple ‘plug‘n’play’ process, it has for some places proved successful – albeit often controversial (Huijbens & Jóhannesson, Reference Huijbens and Jóhannesson2019). Arctic destinations have moved closer to larger origin markets due to organisational changes in the tourism offer and in infrastructure investments such as in airports, harbours and hotels and in terms of geographical imaginations, which draw on and play with traditional Northern markers and imagery in a new service economy context (Huijbens, Reference Huijbens, Finger and Rekvig2022; Lundmark et al., Reference Lundmark, Müller, Bohn, Lundmark, Carson and Eimermann2020).

Iceland is among those Arctic destinations that have experienced the most rapid growth in tourism during the last decade. In the period of 2010 to 2018, the number of international tourist arrivals more than quadrupled and reached little over 2.3 million. In 2018, tourism counted for 8,6% of the island’s GDP, which is among the highest in the OECD countries (Ferdamalastofa, 2020). Iceland’s position as a tourist destination has consolidated during this period, and it has also increasingly taken the position of a gateway to other Arctic destinations, especially Greenland (Huijbens, Reference Huijbens2015a; Lund, Loftsdóttir & Leonard, Reference Lund, Loftsdóttir and Leonard2017). There are many different and interlinked reasons for this fast growth. Iceland has for decades enjoyed good flight connections to mainland Europe and North America, benefiting from its location in the middle of the North Atlantic (Jóhannesson, Huijbens & Sharpley, Reference Jóhannesson, Huijbens and Sharpley2010). The meltdown of the Icelandic economy in autumn 2008 prompted the government to attend to tourism as a potential provider of foreign currency. Tourism was firmly cast as a production industry with the focus on “getting as many tourists as possible” (Jóhannesson & Huijbens, Reference Jóhannesson and Huijbens2010, Reference Jóhannesson, Huijbens, Müller, Lundmark and Lemelin2013) and thus primarily as a question of economic development. To that end, public and private actors jointly invested in marketing campaigns (Huijbens, Reference Huijbens, Jóhannesson, Ren and van der Duim2015b). The devaluation of the Icelandic currency also helped in that respect, making what many see as the exotic north more affordable than before.

As mentioned above, the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010 contributed to place Iceland on the map of international tourism. The fast growth of tourism in Iceland catapulted the national economy out of a period of recession in the aftermath of the financial meltdown in 2008 together with other more traditional industries like fisheries, which also blossomed in the period. It also however brought about perils and controversies. Lack of planning, policy on environmental conservation and sustainability as well as underinvestment in research and education were identified as key challenges prior to the tourism boom (Jóhannesson et al., Reference Jóhannesson, Huijbens and Sharpley2010). This resulted in Iceland not being prepared for fast growth in tourism and as increasingly perceived as a destination marked by overtourism (Sæþórsdóttir et al., Reference Sæþórsdóttir, Hall and Wendt2020a; Reference Sæþórsdóttir, Hall and Wendt2020b).

Turning to Greenland, tourism has existed in Greenland as a small side income for a few entrepreneurs since the early 1970s (Ren & Hall, Reference Ren and Hall2021). Within the last decades, tourism has taken a central position within political discussions on how to grow and diversify the Greenlandic economy, currently dominated by income from fisheries (93% of exports, Statistics Greenland, 2021) and not counting the recent ‘COVID years’, tourism numbers have been rising steadily. Similar to many developing economies, tourism in Greenland is seen as a lever for economic development and diversification as well as a tool to detach the nation from the Danish Kingdom. In this process of becoming the first independent Inuit state (Nuttall, Reference Nuttall2008), much political and public discussion revolves around whether Greenland is economically fit to become so, and which new affiliations Greenland could engage in “post-Denmark” (Grydehøj, Reference Grydehøj2016).

In ongoing discussions on economic and societal development in Greenland, some have argued for an increase in North Atlantic regionalisation (Kahlig, Reference Kahlig2019) or closer pan-Arctic, Inuit (ICC) or indigenous affiliation. Others again point to or warn against the role that China, the U.S. and Russia might play in the future, specifically around mining, but also in less controversial areas, such as tourism, through investments in land and operations (for an Icelandic example see Huijbens & Alessio, Reference Huijbens and Alessio2015). As tourism is set to ‘take off’ in Greenland after the COVID-19 pandemic and in the light of the transatlantic airports planned to open in 2024, decision makers and operators seek new pathways to navigate into unknown tourism territories (Table 1).

Table 1.

Total number of overnight stays in Greenland and Iceland 2018–2021

Source: Statistics Iceland (2022); Statistics Greenland (2022).

Tourism politics of comparison

As displayed above, tourism development is not an innocent or purely economic endeavour in an Arctic context. In Greenland, the development of tourism is explicitly linked to independence as the economic tool to make it financially viable (Ren & Abildgaard, Reference Ren, Abildgaard and Hall2021). Tourism is also linked to independence in terms of identity, seen as how the tourism product – the land and its people – is constructed through its branding, staging and consumption (Ren, Gad & Bjørst, Reference Ren, Gad, Bjørst, Cassinger, Lucarelli and Gyimóthy2019).

In Greenlandic political debates and public policy, comparisons are often to be found – explicitly or implicitly – with other Arctic indigenous communities, Nordic welfare states, postcolonial societies, non-sovereign Overseas Territories, and even Danish municipalities. According to Gad (Reference Gad2021), while much research has put Greenland in perspective, it has failed to note the uneasy fit of employed categories, most often generated in other theoretical or empirical contexts and overlooked the inquiry of how the development of Greenlandic society and economy is systematically shaped by knowledge actors and policy instruments by way of comparisons and outside models.

To remedy these gaps, we engage in this article with tourism, seeing how Greenland looks to others for examples of what has been and could be done, and maybe what should not be done or avoided in the process of its development through a politics of comparison. We see tourism as an object or tool forging relations to relevant others and hereby both reflecting and shaping Greenland’s own position as a future independent nation state. This approach follows a longstanding argument in tourism research, namely that tourism is performative (Bærenholdt, Haldrup, Larsen & Urry, Reference Bærenholdt, Haldrup, Larsen and Urry2004). It entails that tourism is done and enacted through embodied practices that are shaped by discourses and habits but are also unruly and creative; tourist places are scripted in certain ways to attract and manage visitors but those visitors are also able to contest and play with the script (see e.g. Edensor, Reference Edensor2001; Larsen & Urry, Reference Larsen and Urry2011). An important side of this argument is that tourism performances do not “take place in already existing locations” (Gregson & Rose, Reference Gregson and Rose2000, p. 441) but rather produce the spaces we recognise as sites and stages of tourism such as the hotel, the airport or the tourist destination to name a few iconic examples.

Along these lines, Franklin (Reference Franklin2004, Reference Franklin, Van der Duim, Ren and Jóhannesson2012) has described tourism as an ordering. Tourism produces spaces that manifest power dynamics while being simultaneously shaped by other space-producing practices. This move blurs the distinction between epistemology and ontology. For example, a particular discourse about tourism promotes certain understanding or knowledge about the value and meaning of tourism and enacts a certain version of tourism reality. Thus, tourism does not happen in pre-defined space, it performs space. This opens up the possibility to think of multiple versions of enacted space (see also Mol, Reference Mol2002).

Doreen Massey argues that multiplicity and space are co-constitutive. According to her: “Perhaps we could imagine space as a simultaneity of stories-so-far” (Reference Massey2005, p. 9). In this view, comparing is thereby an act of ontological politics that has to do with what kind of tourism should or could be created, made accessible and attractive; what kind of stories of and about tourism in a given destination are enacted. Following this, a tourism politics of comparison is one way to enact particular versions of a Greenland (and Iceland) of the future as comparisons open up the scripted object of tourism, to trace its manifestation and (spatial) configurations. In the following, we identify Iceland as a significant tourism Other for Greenland. By tracing how particular comparisons perform tourisms (as multiple), we see how comparisons made to this peer inform the dynamics and logics of tourism development and how tourism is perceived to be of value for Greenlandic society.

Methodology

The empirical material for this article consists of a range of interviews, documents, meeting and field notes produced during visits to Greenland in 2019 as part of a project funded by the North Atlantic Tourism Association. As part of a team of researchers from Iceland, USA and Denmark, we conducted a three-part engagement and research process. First, we identified and corresponded with a range of tourism stakeholders known from previous visits to Greenland and engagement with various tourism stakeholders. Approached stakeholders came from state and local government, small and large tourism operators, NGOs and educational institutions in Greenland and also included experts and stakeholders from Iceland, Denmark, the United States and elsewhere. From a total of 90 stakeholders, a subset of organisations was identified in a next step for interviews during a field visit conducted between the 2 and 6 September 2019.

In our desk research and visit, we focussed on three destinations: Nuuk, Greenland’s capital from which both national and local perspectives were drawn, Ilulissat, the primary destination in North Greenland, the region of the country most visited by foreign tourists in recent years (Visit Greenland, 2020), and Kangerlussuaq, the main international airport and transportation hub of Greenland, also home of many tourism businesses, located about 130 km inland from Sisimiut. The 13 interviews with 18 informants were semi-structured and guided by questions that inquired into capacity constraints related to tourism management and sustainable development and needs for coordination, planning and governance related to tourism. We also discussed expectations about the future of tourism demand and tourism development patterns in Greenland and the stakeholder’s knowledge about and views of Iceland’s tourism experience and responses to growth. Lastly, points of comparison and the desirability of transferring knowledge between Greenland and Iceland were inquired.

After returning to Iceland and Denmark, and for the purpose of this article, interviews were transcribed and read through by the authors individually looking for issues and overarching themes pertaining to comparison, focusing on similarity and contrast between Greenland and Iceland. In our analysis, we were interested, first, in whether and how Greenlandic stakeholders compared or contrasted tourism development in Greenland to that in Iceland and, second, in the tourism issues that stakeholders pointed to and highlighted as key during our conversations (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.

Administrative divisions of Greenland since 2018/01/01, with municipal centres marked with numbers (Anon, 2018).

Analysis I: comparing sameness – working together in tourism

How does Greenland compare itself to Iceland in developing tourism? Judging from many of the conversations with tourism stakeholders and pointing back to our opening story, the answer to this question is: “easily”. In many of the conversations, seemingly natural and seamless comparisons were made between tourism in two North Atlantic nations. In these instances, comparison functioned as a way to imply similarity or even sameness most often centred on common challenges such as peripheral capacity. In the material, the most prominent common peripheral challenges were seasonality and bottlenecks, both in terms of infrastructure and human resources.

In conversations around seasonality, stakeholders talked about similar difficulties to attract investments in accommodation due to a short season and shared experiences with extending a season that is compromised by rough weather or on developing products in order to extend tourist stay. While Icelandic tourism has been characterised by a strong seasonality pattern that is still very apparent in the countryside (Rantala et al., Reference Rantala, de la Barre, Granås, Jóhannesson, Müller, Saarinen and Niskala2019; Þórhallsdóttir & Ólafsson, Reference Þórhallsdóttir and Ólafsson2017), the average stay of tourists is however longer in Iceland than in Greenland (2019: 6,7 nights in Iceland (Ferðamálastofa, 2022)). The lack of ‘things to do’ in Greenland was often mentioned as a reason for this difference.

Human resources, especially the limited domestic labour market and upskilling, were also identified as common basic challenges: “[I]n Greenland we have one person, and if that person decides that he does not want to work with tourism anymore or even moving away getting a new job; there are no resources left. So, it is extremely vulnerable” (Tourism entrepreneur). This situation is not uncommon in peripheral destinations and could also apply to many places in the Arctic (Rantala et al., Reference Rantala, de la Barre, Granås, Jóhannesson, Müller, Saarinen and Niskala2019). This included Iceland, where the bulk of tourism companies are small or micro-sized. As also stated in the interviews, the tourism sector is not competitive when it comes to attracting local people for work and often has to rely on migrant workers, especially in the periphery, which has also been the case in Iceland (Wendt, Jóhannesson & Skaptadóttir, Reference Wendt, Jóhannesson, Skaptadóttir, Walmsley, Åberg, Blinnikka and Jóhannesson2020).

While Greenlandic stakeholders identified Greenland and Iceland as having comparable peripheral challenges, Iceland was also drawn into proximity with Greenland on a more advantageous level in relation to marketing and accessibility. In this context, both were framed as part of a new, attractive North Atlantic region for present and future tourists. For some of our interviewees, Iceland represented an example of what could happen in Greenland. The rapid growth of tourism in Iceland confirms that there is a demand for Northern and even Arctic experiences among international tourists, where Greenland could become like Iceland if the necessary infrastructure for securing access to Greenland could be set in place. The closeness to Iceland was highlighted as important to improve accessibility and as a gateway to Greenland and thus of high relevance for enabling future growth.

Common for many of these examples is how Iceland was perceived as not only “same” (of the same peripheral challenge, of a global interest in the Arctic) but also as “ahead” of Greenland. The relationship was not only similar but also in some instances asynchronous, due to a perceived more advanced tourism situation in Iceland. In line with the project, the relationship was identified as one, where Greenland could learn from Iceland as argued by this operator in Ilulissat: “There was no tourism when I started up (…). I built the hotel. And we also went to Iceland at that time. To see tourism (…) to learn something in Iceland. And we went there many times to see how (Iceland developed tourism).” Also in local government, Iceland is perceived as relevant to learn from: “We have been working some bits with tourism. So it is very exciting to learn from their Icelandic case. I think there are a lot of lessons to be taught.” (Municipal Head of Growth and Sustainability).

In preparing for an uncertain future, Iceland becomes a comparable partner to learn from: “We are shaking our hands these days and (…) we were a bit anxious about the future to be honest. But we look very much to you, to Iceland, your guys’ management, and we also know people in Iceland. So we hope that we can learn from the good examples and the experiences that you made” (Regional destination manager).

The above quotes manifest a will to get closer to the Icelandic experience and to exchange, or at least translate, knowledge between the countries by way of comparison. Through the comparison of sameness, Greenland and Iceland are brought closer together within and into a new North Atlantic region, where things can be learnt from one another (but mostly from Iceland to Greenland) based on common challenges and advantages. Iceland is thus framed as collaborator for creating and acting on knowhow and experience. In this relationship, tourism is configured as stable, uncontested and valued due to its growth potential, seen as driven by demand and as limited by common properties of the sector in the form of accessibility, infrastructure and available services.

Analysis II: comparing difference – negotiating the value of tourism

As maps, statistics and observations on the ground will quickly tell, Greenland and Greenlandic tourism are also very different from Iceland and its tourism industry. This was also highlighted by many stakeholders, who used comparison as a way to contrast Greenland and its tourism situation to that of Iceland and to how things are perceived to be developed and managed there. One of the prominent themes drawn forward in the conversations was Greenland’s insular structure as well as its massive size that creates different kinds of challenges for tourism development than in Iceland. This means, as argued by some, that every settlement and every town need to be self-sufficient as underlined by a tourism operator:

The vast distances between towns and settlements mean that service is expensive as everything, from spare parts to food supplies must be transported by ship or by airplane. Another effect of the felt remoteness was described by an experienced tourism operator: “It is hard to find people who want to live here. Because it is a special place. If you look out, it is boring town. But it is the most fantastic nature around.” Here, Iceland is used as a contrast to extrapolate what was acknowledged as critical challenges particularly relevant to Greenland related to accessibility and to the limitations for expansion and the lack of synergies in tourism operations that it entails.

Another difference that came up in many of the interviews concerned tourism growth with reference to the rapid and uncontrolled rise in tourism number in Iceland in pre-pandemic years. Many raised cautions against what was addressed as an Icelandic way of focusing on growth-oriented mass tourism development. In these conversations, themes revolved around how to avoid Iceland’s negative experiences with tourism, as seen in this quote by a destination manager around his concerns for the future after the opening of the airport:

In many interviews, a strong wish for more sustainable and small-scale tourism was indicated and contrasted to mass tourism, also underlining that Greenland should not copy Iceland as a tourist destination. There were concerns with how the building of new international airports was linked to and demanded a growth-oriented tourism development strategy. Instead, some argued, Greenland should find its own path and niche on the global tourism stage. Some extended that line of thought by proposing Greenland as a more sustainable choice than Iceland. In that line of comparison, Iceland and Greenland were framed in contrast, as opposite and, one might argue, competitors battling for global positioning as a more sustainable or responsible destination in the Arctic.

In this comparison, Greenland stands out as the alternative, sustainable (and less travelled) choice on the North Atlantic or adventure tourism scene. In this movement, Greenland explicitly turns away from Iceland looking for other tourism Others:

By contrasting Greenland to Iceland, or even introducing other tourism Others, a distance is created between the two countries and the situation and dynamics of tourism there. Iceland is used as an example to avoid when it comes to managing tourism growth in Greenland, while Iceland also manifests a potential future situation in Greenland, depending on values and rationalities of tourism development and management and planning practices as tourism growth is, according to many, foreseeable. By framing Greenland as the sustainable choice, the destination is also highlighted as a player equal to (or even ahead of), and in competition to Iceland on a global tourism stage.

In this contrasting mode, comparison serves as a tool for global positioning, offering stakeholders an occasion to specifically delimit Greenlandic challenges as well as a way to better carve out their own international destination branch. Like the above analysis however, tourism in Analysis II is still perceived as an economic tool driven by demand and fuelled by suppliers. The comparisons made about tourism are epistemological: connected to efforts to know and make tourism comparable through facts and figures across distances. This logic is, however, challenged in the last analysis, opening up a new politics of comparison.

Analysis III: comparing what? Negotiating the ontology of tourism

As shown, discussions about Greenlandic tourism and its development led in different ways to see Iceland as an example of either similarity or contrast, as proximate or distant. But another comparative modus was also at play in many of the deliberations in which tourism actors shared concerns about tourism, or perhaps rather tourisms in plural as well as their potential realities. This concerned not the comparison of Greenland and Iceland, or the way the development of tourism was afforded or had taken place there, but rather the ontology politics of tourism (Jóhannesson, Reference Jóhannesson, Jóhannesson, Ren and van der Duim2015; Mol, Reference Mol1999) in which the ‘real’ and the political interlink in the performing of tourism.

As argued by Law and Urry (Reference Law and Urry2004), ontological politics ultimately refer to the question of “which realities might we try to enact?” (p. 396) for instance by enacting (or cutting) connections with and between objects and broader entities. As argued by Allen (Reference Allen2011), such entities “can be used to establish connections between disparate issues, settings and actors” that enact topological space. Topology refers to how power relations “compose the spaces of which they are a part” (p. 284) and offers ways to grasp spatialities of constant movement, fluctuations and instabilities (Harvey, Reference Harvey2012). The connectivities may happen seamlessly but may also manifest themselves as controversies as the process of linking “disparate issues” entails deliberating on what counts as relevant, important or valuable and thus to decide which realities should be enacted (Law & Urry, Reference Law and Urry2004). An example which serves to illustrate this is the issue of tourism data, which was brought up by many stakeholders, typically as something lacking or entirely missing. Tourism data were presented as a key resource for tourism governance and decision making as it enables linking tourism operations and economic, social and natural ramifications. Many of our interviewees lamented this default in tourism data and that statistics were lacking in Greenland and the fact that it was not on par with those in Iceland.

Since 2015, Icelandic authorities have worked towards strengthening the support system of the tourism sector and creating the preconditions for data-driven policymaking and management. The so-called “Tourism Task Force” was established in 2015 as a temporary intra-governmental coordinating unit headed by the Minister of Tourism, Industry and Innovation but with memberships from three other ministries as well as the Icelandic Tourism Association and the Association of Icelandic Municipalities. One of the biggest tasks initiated by the task force was the establishment of a management tool titled the National Tourism Carrying Capacity Assessment (Jafnvægisás) intended to respond to the question of how many visitors Iceland could accommodate. In basic terms, the tool is based on sustainability indicators on which thresholds are defined as well as assessments for alternative growth scenarios and estimates of cost and time for required infrastructure improvement. In this context, data can be viewed as a question of performance: the ability and power – or the lack thereof – of performing tourism in some particular versions. Tourism data serves, for instance, as instrumental for proving the economic worth of tourism and securing its sustainability.

Talking about the good number of visitors to Greenland, a representative of the national airline said: “So you always need to calibrate (…) and that is also why it cannot be an objective. It needs to be subjective. You cannot just say ‘this is the number’ as the Icelandic politicians were asking for. You cannot say ‘We can take so many people’. Because you could have a measure for maybe ‘how many people can you take now under this and this and this and this circumstance’, but tomorrow you may be able to accept more because you have done stuff (…).”

This call for calibration and subjective assessment implicitly challenges not only the work of the Tourism Carrying Capacity Assessment but also its premises: that it is possible to find the right number of tourists to successfully accommodate for a destination. This questions what kind of – or even whether and how – data and measurements are valuable for taking decisions about tourism development.

The quote also points to – and questions – the performative power of data. A tool like the Tourism Carrying Capacity Assessment may be framed more by what data are available to feed into the assessment, rather than what data is useful, or relevant for that matter. This raises questions of what kind of tourism reality the assessment is enacting, which kind of realities are chosen over others. Lastly, the quote underlines that the availability of data – or a derived datafication or quantification of tourism as “numbers” – does not solve the value-based question of how to build responsible tourism and what responsible or sustainable tourism might look like.

Another issue lingering in discussions on tourism development in Greenland is how the planned development of two international airports will affect tourism for Greenlandic tourism. In official presentations by Air Greenland or investors, the airports are often addressed as a “game changer” in Greenlandic tourism. In an interview, a tourism entrepreneur described however his concerns that some stakeholders in Greenland had too high expectations regarding tourism growth after building the international airports. In his words:

The quote underlines how certain aspects of tourism development are contested; in this case, the construction of airports and specifically whether more infrastructure serves as a “game changer” in tourism. It also goes to show how the power or ability to enact tourism – for instance being as closely connected or derived from infrastructural development, is not evenly distributed. Here, we see a rift between the understanding of the tourism operator and the mayor and more broadly the politicians taking decisions about infrastructure development.

In the interviews, Iceland plays a major role as the ‘deliberative other’ through various modes of comparisons. However, in the third analysis, we move beyond proximity and distance in Euclidian space, similarity and difference between separate destinations, bringing forth contradictory trajectories of tourism development and contrasting views on the values and meaning of tourism development and how knowledge resources can be used to enact those values. Stakeholders no longer deliberate around the question of “who Greenland compares itself to and how” but rather “what kinds of ‘tourisms’ are compared(able?) and valued(able?)”? Should tourism be framed as an economic or political tool? Should tourism policy be growth-oriented or value-based in the future development of tourism in Greenland?

In such deliberations, there are no stable points of observation from which to describe or interpret Greenland tourism development in comparison to an Icelandic ditto. In seeing comparison as a question of ontological politics, the comparison between the two nations and their tourism activities does not take place in a static, or bilateral, environment where pre-defined spaces are compared, or reflected but also works to compose and shape these spaces. This allows for openings rather than closure, to move on with uncertainty and to grasp multiple controversies and think through alternative (becoming) spaces of tourism development. Tourism becomes a catalyst for ontological trouble, destabilising tourism actors, tools and objects. In these openings, tourism produces, questions and takes part in a negotiation of the various development trajectories and enactments as comparison connects to things beyond ‘tourism proper’, beyond its political or economic aims and goals.