Tourism and nostalgia for the pastoral on the island of Fyn, Denmark

Abstract

According to the tourist literature, Fyn is the garden of Denmark. This paper examines this idea and explicates the relationship between gardens and the classical idea of the pastoral. We argue that this classical idea is central to the roles that meaning-making and personal narrative play in the rural tourist experience on Fyn. We further suggest that it is this prevalent Western interrelation of the pastoral and tourist experience that allows rural tourism to be considered a form of heritage tourism in that rural tourism makes reference to both a more general longing for a pre-industrial era and specific national agrarian contexts.

Keywords:

• tourism
• heritage
• pastoral
• Denmark

Acknowledgements

Thanks are also due to Pia Tripsen for her work translating documents, Ole Jørgensen for his assistance in securing maps, Nicholas Vaughn for cartographic assistance, and Sarah Germann and Alison Lucas for editorial assistance.