Sailing the Seas of Tourism: Past, Present and Future Mobilities on the Margins

• Main Author: Jóhannesson, Gunnar Thór
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Springer International Publishing 2023
• Subjects: Garðar; Patreksfjörður; Skápadalur; Arctic; Iceland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41344-5_5; https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-031-41344-5_5

Abstract The objective of the chapter is to trace how places are created through mobilities and tourism performances. The discussion is based on relational ontology, framing tourism as an ordering that enacts realities rather than a neatly defined industry or a sector. Hence, instead of thinking about tourism as a practice that happens within a pre-defined space it is illustrated how tourism encounters produce space. The chapter sets out from two encounters between tourists and a ship grounded at the shoreline at the shoreline of Skápadalur in Patreksfjörður, in the southern part of the Westfjords region in Iceland. The wreckage of a ship called Garðar has become an object of interest for the growing number of tourists visiting the region. The chapter traces some of the mobilities through which Garðar has contributed to the making of place, most recently through its entanglement with tourism mobilities. The story of Garðar exemplifies how places emerge through different kinds of mobilities and encounters in time and space and how tourism mobilities contribute to place making through a wide array of objects and performances.