20 years of research on Arctic and Indigenous cultures in Nordic tourism: a review and future research agenda

ABSTRACT

Through a critical reading of previous research, this article explores local and indigenous cultures in the context of Nordic Arctic tourism and how its consequences have been researched in Nordic tourism research. We show that experiences with, practices of and controversies over the representation and presence (or absence) of local and indigenous culture in tourism take on very many different meanings and shapes across the Nordic Arctic. This, we argue, calls for situated and sensitive ways of doing research. With a focus on Sámi, Nenets in Russia and Greenlandic Inuit, we discuss the current state of indigenous and Arctic culture in Nordic Tourism before looking closer into how Nordic tourism scholarship has addressed the relations between indigenous culture and tourism in the Arctic. We conclude by proposing three trajectories for tourism research and tourism development, which further supplement and diversify ongoing research.

KEYWORDS:

• Arctic tourism
• Indigenous tourism
• tourism epistemology
• tourism research
• Arctic culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge the following for enabling research behind different parts of this article: RFFNORD project Nr. 299177 for financing the project “čatnat – forskning med og for innovasjon i samisk reiseliv og kreative næringer”. EU-NPA for financing the project “ARCTISEN. Culturally Sensitive Tourism in the Arctic”. Norwegian Research Council, ID-682030 “Sami Entrepreneurs and Research Collaboration”.