Moving Places: Multiple Temporalities of a Peripheral Tourism Destination

Abstract

In this paper we take departure from an ontological understanding of the new mobilities paradigm for exploring the emergence of a peripheral tourism destination. The Strandir region is a sparsely populated and remote area in North-Western Iceland, where tourism has become an increasingly important factor in enhancing regional image and local economies. Still, like all places, Strandir has always been entangled in different kinds of mobilities that enact diverse temporalities and spaces. This paper traces the movement of Strandir in relation to centre and periphery with a focus on how the road connecting the region to the rest of the country affects its present position. By journeying on the main road running through the region we explore how it both serves to cement Strandir as a place on the periphery and plays part in the continuing creation of the place by affording connections to other routes and pathways, most recently tourism mobilities. In order to illustrate further the continuous movement of Strandir, we make a stop at Djúpavík, where a disused herring factory has become a central tourist attraction. Its accomplishment as a relational ordering is traced as well as how it crumbled when some of its parts did not act according to a plan. However, the factory is not a passive space; it is full of life, and just as the road it has creative capacities that keep Strandir moving and tangled in multiple temporalities.

Key Words:

• mobilities
• place
• periphery
• routes
• temporalities
• Iceland
• Strandir

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the University of Iceland Research Fund and the Chair in Arctic Tourism. Destination Development in the Arctic (2010–2012), hosted by Finnmark University College, Alta, Norway, and financed by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We thank all those who took part in the research as well as Guðrún Þóra Gunnarsdóttir and Gísli Rafn Guðmundsson, who assisted us with the data collection. We thank Friðþór Sófus Sigurmundsson for his assistance with map making.

Notes

1. This subtitle refers to the title of Kathleen Stewart's book Space at the side of the road (1996).