Changing culture on the edge of the more than human: Tourism, museums and places

Abstract

Tourism is one of the main manifestations of contemporary mobility. Never have more tourists visited the country than in recent years. In this article, we intend to critically explore the relationship of culture, nature and tourism. It is a common approach in travel research that a clear demarcation between culture and nature is maintained in the spirit of conventional academic thought. Nature, on the one hand, and culture and society, on the other, are framed as separate spheres that can mutually affect each other. In our view, this perspective does not capture the mobility and creativity inherent in the interweaving of nature and culture as active agents. We will build on relational materialism to highlight how tourism and its affects emerge in a dynamic relationship between the human and the more-than-human. The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft in Hólmavík, Strandir, is central to the study. We describe the Museum as a contact zone and seek to trace how the past and present as well as the spheres of nature and culture are entwined in its display and bring forth the mobility of Strandir in time and space.