Gunnar Thór Jóhannesson, PhD

Name, academic degree:

Gunnar Thór Jóhannesson, PhD

Academic title:

Assistant Professor

Affiliation:

University of Iceland

E-mail:

gtj@hi.is

Link to CV:

http://starfsfolk.hi.is/en/simaskra/22352

Research Interests/Activities in the Winter project:

Northern Lights tourism is relatively recent phenomenon in Iceland. The first trips with international tourists were organized in the late 1990s. During the last decade the Northern Lights have increasingly featured as a product in tourism not the least in the past two years with emphasis on promotion of winter tourism. At current the Northern Lights are established feature in the portfolio of winter tourism supply in Iceland. However, the Lights cannot be disciplined, neither by tourist promoters nor the scientific community.

Our idea of a project is much in line with some of the key questions listed under WP4. Of special interest for us are: How is Northern Light tourism staged and narrated and how do the providers negotiate natural conditions and constraints? How are scientific knowledge, myths and legends managed in the production of this tourism?

We suggest that the Northern Lights can be seen as an assemblage of heterogeneous mobile substances that are mediated through improvisation and choreographies that entangle human and non-human actors. These include for example energetic charged particles, Earth’s magnetic field, tourists, tour providers, weather, transportation systems and images and discourses of mystery and the exotic. In this project we would like to follow some of the ways in which these are negotiated through creative encounters and performances with a special focus on the enactment and shaping of boundaries, such as between nature and culture and expert and lay knowledge.

The Icelandic team will conduct a case study in northern Iceland (around Akureyri and Mývatn) as well as taking part in a comparative study with partners from Finland and Norway.