Destinizing Finnmark: Place making through dogsledding

Understanding the place-making practices of backpackers

“…Conversely, practices of immobility can transform a place into a tourist destination by the presence of people sunbathing, lounging or pausing to take photographs. This study pays particular attention to practices as it is via embodied practices that tourists involve themselves in place and through which the organic, spontaneous forms of place-making that are of interest to this study are believed to occur (Bærenholdt et al, 2004; Granås, 2018; Lew, 2017; Obrador, 2003).…”

Knowing through interspecies relationality in tourism? Animal agency in human-sled dog encounters

“…For example, Finnish Lapland is a popular tourism destination especially in wintertime and the number of (semi-)domesticated animals working within the tourism industry is great (García-Rosell & Äijälä, 2018) and the brand value of animals for tourism industry is significant. One of the most popular animal species is the dog, as dog sledding has become one of the most important activities in the ongoing rapid growth of tourism in Arctic Europe (Granås, 2018).…”

“…The social space for dogs is both inside and outside of human society and human understanding of dogs' consciousness and self-fulfillment is very limited (Koski & Bäcklund, 2017). Given their status associated with polar and adventure histories, sled dogs in particular occupy a liminal position, as in human perceptions, they often reside on the boundary between the domestic and the wild (Granås, 2018;Onion, 2009). Dog sledding is one of the fairly new practices that dogs have occupied, as particularly in Scandinavia people have a rather short history in terms of using dogs as draft animals (Knudsen, 2019) -let alone using them in touristic dog sledding in Arctic Europe.…”

“…Understanding the value of animals only in economic -namely human -terms may have serious consequences when it comes to animals as living beings (see Fennell, 2012) and, consequently, regarding our understanding of tourism practices (Granås, 2018;see Knight, 2010). With regard to animal agency, sentience towards the interactional practices contributes to suggesting what matters, or what might matter, to animals as subjective selves (Buller, 2015).…”

Living with mosquitoes

“…To illustrate, in the CABI Leisure Tourism database, a search for the keywords 'animals' and 'tourism' produces a total of 6470 results. To date, most of these studies have concentrated on exploring large animals, such as whales, tigers, elephants, penguins, or polar bears (Duffy, 2014;Khanom & Buckley, 2015;Rodger et al, 2009;Zieglera et al 2018;Yudina & Grimwood, 2016), animals that produce tourist experiences, like mules or sledge dogs (Cousquer & Allison, 2012;Granås, 2018;Haanpää, Salmela, Garcia-Rosell & Äijälä, 2019;Lindberg & Dorthe, 2016), or pets accompanying tourists in their travels (Carr, 2017). The growing centralisation of animals in tourism studies is valuable, no doubt, as it unsettles the predominant practice of theorising tourism encounters merely as a human phenomenon (Gren & Huijbens, 2012, p. 156).…”