Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 2015

Vol. 15, Nos. 1–2, 1–7, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15022250.2015.1020124

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

Rural Tourism: Insights from the North

Atlantic

Context – Accelerating Demographic Movements and Their Impact on Rural

Areas
One main and accelerating demographic movement the world over is from low-density
rural communities to high-density urban and suburban concentrations, from outlying
archipelagos to central island towns and cities, from smaller islands to larger
islands, and from islands to mainlands. Policy-makers laud the benefits of clusters
and mega-cities and question the wisdom and sustainability of scattered communities
(Courchene, 2005; Porter, 1990). Peripheral locations – particularly remote rural and
island communities – are among the hardest hit by these contemporary mobilities,
risking outright depopulation. Their communities lobby frantically for some sustained
attention by distant policy-makers, and for investment in employment, educational ser-
vices, health care, or transportation infrastructure to stem the tide of outward
migration. Meanwhile, residents tend to vote with their feet: to the “unemployed,
underpaid, or under-appreciated”, going away just makes “a lot of sense” (The Econ-
omist, 2005). Meanwhile, and in stark contrast to this scenario, other similarly periph-
eral locations find themselves attractive to visitors, secondary residents, and mainland
retirees, resulting in large spikes in their seasonal (typically summer) populations,
strained infrastructure, property price increases, and increasingly gentrified commu-
nities (Boissevain & Selwyn, 2004; Clark, Johnson, Lundholm, & Malmberg, 2007;
Müller, 2007). This sounds like a catch-22 case of “damned if you do, and damned
if you don’t”.
This is the dilemma that rural tourism finds itself in, as part of a broader scheme for
rural development and regeneration. Rural tourism presents an exciting opportunity for
showcasing local culture, history and landscape, flora and fauna, and food and drink;
offering relaxing or reinvigorating escapes to travellers who are mostly sedentary
city dwellers; creating some diversified local employment in a variety of related ser-
vices, ranging from accommodation to culinary services, guides and drivers; and pro-
moting a more humane, small-scale friendly tourism industry. Here, in principle at
least, a global industry aligns and supports local practice (Butler, Hall, & Jenkins,
1997; Carson, Carson, & Lundmark, 2014; McAreavey & McDonagh, 2011).
# 2015 Taylor & Francis
2 Editorial

We are pleased to provide readers of SJHT with a rich compendium of carefully

selected and edited papers that critically review various facets of rural tourism drawn
from the broad North Atlantic. We use this opportunity to congratulate the Scandina-
vian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism on its 15th anniversary. Nothing would be
more appropriate than doing so by contributing to the knowledge dissemination
about rural tourism in the North and hopefully stimulating more researchers to
explore this rich academic field in even more detail.

Conceptualising the North Atlantic

In recent decades, the North Atlantic has become a significant reference point for com-
munity activists, policy-makers, and scholars from the region interested in exploring
and supporting initiatives in favour of socio-economic sustainability. The region, in
spite of a rich diversity of cultures and political systems, shares a history of Viking
exploration, unfolding in a cold climate where food can be scarce and where livelihoods
depended on both fishing and farming for survival. Mining and other extractive indus-
tries have brought guest workers and foreign investment, challenging traditional social
and economic structures. Low population densities threatened community viability in
the service economy; and remoteness from centres of power often means that rural
settlements must function in a policy vacuum. Into this mix, rural tourism brings in a
different kind of visitor and a different kind of entrepreneur. How does this rural
version of tourism differ from the mainstream format? Will it lead to a more sustainable
rural economy? What are the impacts of this economic development on gender
relations, environmental conservation, hospitality services, traditional food and drink,
and landscape management? And what can we expect to happen in the medium
term, based on the current climate change scenarios?
These are some of the burning questions to which various authors are attempting
answers in this collection. These are authors who initially presented their papers at
the 9th biennial North Atlantic Forum (NAF) meeting, held at Hólar University
College, Hólar, North Iceland, in the municipality of Skagafjörður, in mid-June
2013, and under the general theme of Rural Tourism: Challenges in Changing
Times. Here, in the enduring shadow of the single imposing steeple of Hólar Cathedral
– the sun does not set in North Iceland at that time – some 80 presenters from the broad
North Atlantic – from Prince Edward Island, Cape Breton Island, and Newfoundland in
Canada, across to Greenland, Iceland, Faroes and Shetland, and then to Ireland, Scot-
land, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Åland – met and deliberated the challenges of
rural tourism, with particular reference to peripheral regions. The academic and admin-
istrative staff at the Department of Rural Tourism, at Hólar University College, acted as
our gracious hosts.
The NAF is a meeting of scholars, graduate students, policy-makers, community
leaders, municipal representatives, and other policy-makers who, since 1998, have
met once every two years to facilitate research, exchange information, and promote
shared initiatives on various policy fronts that have included health service delivery,
green energy, municipal reform, and seasonal cold water tourism (NAIP, 2010). The
NAF is a direct outcome of the North Atlantic Islands Programme (NAIP) that was pio-
neered by the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI), Canada, in 1994, then in
 Editorial 3

collaboration with NordREFO (now NordRegio, the Nordic Centre for Spatial Devel-
opment), based in Stockholm. The 10th NAF will follow in Summerside, Prince
Edward Island, Canada, in mid-September 2015.

Content Review
In this special issue, tourism in rural areas is discussed from multiple perspectives. The
papers address major themes in tourism studies: mobility, climate change, destination
development, and tourist experience.
Nature and landscapes play important roles in tourism in the North. Three of the
articles deal explicitly with these issues. The article Whizzing through the High
North: Motorists’ psychological experience of the countryside (Dahl & Dalbakk,
2015) takes the readers on board vehicles driving long distances on highways and
passing through varied natural landscapes. Their main research question is to what
extent the landscapes passed by are perceived by the tourist as interesting and
evoking a feeling of curiosity; that is, he or she prefers experiences with eudaimonic
qualities. This implies travelling with an openness to explore and seek out experiences
that are novel and complex. Of special interest is the concept of attention restorative-
ness, that is, a recovery from fatigue caused by extended attention demands, which
they expect to predict interest and curiosity. Restorativeness is postulated to be greatest
when we experience four key qualities in our relation to the environment: a sense of
being removed from everyday demands, a feeling of being in a place that we can
step in and out of, a natural feeling of fascination, and a good match between what
the environment demands of us and our own capabilities.
Supplementing the aforementioned is the article Landscapes lost? Tourist under-
standings of changing Norwegian rural landscapes (Vinge & Flø, 2015). This dis-
cusses the process of spontaneous reforestation and how interviewed tourists
understand and value this change. Many Nordic rural landscapes face a situation
called spontaneous reforestation: as mowing and grazing have almost come to an
end, scrub and trees thrive. To investigate how tourists understand and make sense
of the landscapes they visit, manipulated photo technique of the past and probable
future development of the landscapes were brought into the interview to aid the respon-
dents’ reflections. Landscape elements that the tourists perceived as threatened were
preferred over those experienced as plentiful. Understanding of their everyday land-
scapes is used by the tourists to make sense of the landscapes they visit.
The next article is titled Implications of climate change for rural tourism in the
Nordic Region (Nicholls & Amelung, 2015). By using the Tourism Climatic Index
as an analytical tool, this paper highlights a range of potential scenarios for
outdoor tourism activity in the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s. The paper’s results
suggest that substantially longer periods of desirable climatic conditions may be in
store for the foreseeable 21st century, particularly in the southern and eastern parts
of the Nordic region. The authors also review the adaptive capacity of tourism
actors in rural communities (tourists, service providers and government) in light of
these forecasts.
The reader who find this interesting is recommended to continue with Nordic slow
adventure: Explorations in time and nature (Varley & Semple, 2015), which is a
4 Editorial

theoretical discussion of some implications of the concept of friluftsliv, literally

meaning outdoor life, for research and development of sustained tourist experiences
in nature. They discuss current forms of adventure tourism against the backdrop of
accelerating, technology-driven “hypermodern” life and some of the cash-rich, time-
poor market segments who pay for such convenient adventure tourism experiences.
Moreover, the importance of the temporal, natural, corporeal, and philosophical dimen-
sions of being, journeying, and living outdoors is addressed. The Scandinavian concept
of friluftsliv, gently co-existing with nature, is seen in relationship to central ideas deriv-
ing from slow food movements.
There are two articles in this special issue that contribute to the highly specialised
field of horse-based tourism, while also belonging to two different main traditions of
tourism research: service and nature conservation. In Riding high: Quality and custo-
mer satisfaction in equestrian tourism, Sigurðardóttir and Helgadóttir (2015) report
on a survey of equestrian tourists from a traditional viewpoint of customer satisfaction
or experienced service quality. This paper continues the work on quality in adventure
tourism by applying tried and tested measures of service quality (Parasuraman,
Zeithaml, & Berry, 1985) to the specific case of visitor satisfaction in equestrian
tourism. Here, service quality meets human animal relations, adding another dimension
to the concept of experience in equestrian tourism. Meanwhile, in the article Equestrian
tourism in national parks and protected areas in Iceland: An analysis of the environ-
mental and social impacts, Schmudde (2015) contributes to a debate that has generated
much interest: the issue of nature conservation and multiple stakeholder use of desig-
nated conservation areas, such as nature parks. Horses have in some studies been ident-
ified as part of the problem of trampling, invasive flora and fauna, and as actors in
stakeholder conflicts on trails and recreation areas (Newsome, Smith, & Moore,
2008). Schmudde interviewed stakeholders on perceived impacts of equestrian
tourism in Iceland; her findings indicate that horses are perceived as less of an environ-
mental threat than previous research on the issue suggests.
This is followed by Engeset and Heggem (2015), who engage with the destination
development literature from the entrepreneur’s point of view. Their paper, Strategies
in Norwegian farm tourism: Product development, challenges, and solutions, reports
on a qualitative study among tourism entrepreneurs, foregrounding the strengths and
positive contribution of lifestyle considerations in the sustainable development of
rural tourism businesses. Next, in Performing gender and rurality in Swedish farm
tourism, Heldt Cassel and Petterson (2015) explore with their interviewees the shifting
gendered identities of farm work and service work in the farm tourism setting.
Two papers from across the Atlantic Ocean suggest that the rural tourism issues
raised are not unique to the Nordic countries. In Exploring heterogeneous tourism
development paths: Cascade effect or co-evolution in Niagara?, Brouder and Fullerton
(2015) interview marginal tourism stakeholders involved in a world tourist destination
at the Canada –US border and report on the diversity of trajectories of development that
are possible in a rural region. Then, and based on more interviews, Lemelin, Koster,
Bradford, Strickert, and Molinsky (2015) provide evidence of sceptical resident stake-
holder views on conservation and tourism development from another peripheral desti-
nation in their paper People, protected areas and tourism: Place attachment in
Rossport, Ontario, Canada. These mixed views and concerns are echoed in Svels
 Editorial 5

(2015) and her paper World Heritage, tourism and community involvement: A com-
parative study of the High Coast (Sweden) and Kvarken archipelago (Finland), a
text based on an attitude survey and focus group interviews with residents in
UNESCO World Heritage Site communities located in a transnational region.
Finally, the last two papers in our collection differently explore the role of aesthetics
in rural destination development: the visual in Nordbø and Prestholdt (2015) Norwe-
gian landscapes: An assessment of the aesthetical visual dimensions of some rural des-
tinations in Norway, where Visitor Employed Photography involving both residents
and guests is used to access the experienced visual quality of the built environment
rural tourism. Baldacchino (2015) rounds up the collection by appealing to our sense
of taste and “traditional cuisine” by critically discussing the role of the local food move-
ment in the staging and construction of island tourism destinations from the broad
North Atlantic in his Feeding the rural tourism strategy? Food and notions of place
and identity. There is, in more ways than one, much food for thought in this collection.
We acknowledge that the material in this collection sends out different signals about
the promise of rural tourism in these challenging times: from euphoria associated with
an economic strategy that can turn around a sputtering economy, to a sense of fatalism
and disillusionment that any benefits from tourism may trickle away to powerful vested
interests (and not trickle down, to local communities). The truth is more nuanced and
complex, judging also from the rich variety of stakeholders engaged in different (and
possibly multiple) ways and to different extents in the tourism business, and having
their own, equally diverse, understandings of nature and representations of rurality.
We earnestly hope that you will find at least some of these papers as exciting and
insightful as we have.

GODFREY BALDACCHINO
Sociology, University of Malta, Msida Campus, Msida MSD 2080, Malta
Island Studies Teaching Fellow, University of Prince Edward Island, Canada
Visiting Professor of Island Tourism, Università di Corsica Pascal Paoli, France

GUÐRÚN HELGADÓTTIR
Department of Rural Tourism, Hólar University College,
Hólar, IS551 Sauðárkrókur, Iceland
Tourism Management, Department of Economics and Information,
Telemark University College, Bø i Telemark, Norway

REIDAR J. MYKLETUN
Norwegian School of Hotel Management, University of Stavanger, 4036 Stavanger,
Norway

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6 Editorial

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