Abstract
Strandir is a remote, rural region in northwest Iceland. Steady declines in its traditional economic backbone, sheep farming and coastal fisheries means that the inhabitants are increasingly looking towards tourism as a new source of income. They have not necessarily used conventional economic methods to shape the landscape as an attraction. In 2000 a Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft opened in the only urban center in the region, a town of 400 inhabitants called Hólmavík. The opening re-invokes an old history since the seventeenth century when it became notorious for witch hunting and burning. History tells about people fighting a dreadful situation of scarcity and hunger while trying to activate the powers of nature to change their circumstances. Many today in Strandir did not initially support the museum and worried about activating this horrific part of history in order to create and image for the region. This attitude seems to have changed dramatically since the museum appears to have performed magically, as measured by the growing numbers of tourists. My purpose is to show how the museum brings together different temporal and spatial realities that creates a place of “in-betweenness” that is constantly in the making, continuously “becoming” through the magic that the museum brings about in order to activate the regional landscape as an attraction.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Alpers, S. (1983). The art of describing: Dutch art in the seventeenth century. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Anderson, B. (2009). Affective atmospheres. Emotion, Space and Society, 2, 77–81.
Böhme, G. (1993). Atmosphere as the fundamental concept of a new aesthetic. Thesis Eleven, 36, 113–126.
Casey, E. S. (1996). How to get from space to place in a fairly short stretch of time: Phenomenological prolegomena. In S. Feld & K. Basso (Eds.), Sense of place (pp. 13–52). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Cresswell, T. (2011). Mobilites I: Catching up. Progress in Human Geography, 35(4), 550–558.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987 [1980]) A thousand plateaus (B. Massumi, Trans.). London: Continuum.
Edensor, T. (2010). Walking in rhythms: Place, regulation, style and the flow of experience. Visual Studies, 25(1), 69–79.
Edensor, T. (2011). Entangled agencies, material networks and repair in a building assemblage: The mutable stone of St Ann’s Church, Manchester. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 36(2), 238–252.
Hetherington, K. (1999). From blindness to blindness: Museums, heterogeneity and the subject. In J. Law & J. Hassard (Eds.), Actor network theory and after (Sociological review monographs, pp. 51–73). Oxford: Blackwell.
Hetherington, K., & Lee, N. (2000). Social order and the blank figure. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18, 169–184.
Hin miklu öfl eru raunveruleg. (2003, October 19). Fréttablaðið, pp. 22–23.
Ingold, T. (2006). Re-thinking the animate, re-animating thought. Ethnos, 71(1), 9–20.
Ingold, T., & Hallam, E. (2007). Creativity and cultural improvisation. An introduction. In E. Hallam & T. Ingold (Eds.), Creativity and cultural improvisation (pp. 1–24). Oxford: Berg.
Jackson, M. (1989). Paths toward a clearing: Radical empiricism and ethnographic inquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Jackson, M. (1998). Minima ethnographical: Intersubjectivity and the anthropological project. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jónsson, M. (2008). Galdrar og siðferði í Strandasýslu á síðari hluta 17. Aldar. Hólmavík: Strandagaldur.
Lambek, M. (Ed.). (2002). A reader in the anthropology of religion. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lean, G. L. (2012). Transformative travel: A mobilities perspective. Tourist Studies, 12(2), 151–172.
Lund, K. (2010). Slipping into landscape. In K. Benediktsson & K. A. Lund (Eds.), Conversations with landscape (pp. 97–108). Farnham: Ashgate.
Massey, D. (2006). Landscape as a provocation – Reflections on moving mountains. Journal of Material Culture, 11(2), 33–48.
McLean, S. (2009). Stories and cosmogonies: Imagining creativity beyond “nature” and “culture”. Cultural Anthropology, 24(2), 213–245.
McLean, S. (2011). Black goo: Forceful encounters with matter in Europe’s muddy margins. Cultural Anthropology, 26(4), 589–619.
Rafnsson, M. (2003). Angurapi: Um galdramál á Íslandi. Hólmavík: Strandagaldur.
Rose, M., & Wylie, J. (2006). Guest editorial: Animating landscape. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 24, 475–479.
Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (Eds.). (2004). Tourism mobilities: Places to play, places in play. London: Routledge.
Strandagaldur: Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Wirchcraft. (2012). Available at: www.galdrasyning.is/index.php?lang=en. Accessed 15 Aug 2012.
Strandagaldur: Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, Stave for Necropants. (2012). Available at: www.galdrasyning.is/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=212%3Anabrokarstafur&catid=18&Itemid=60&lang=en. Accessed 15 Aug 2012.
Urry, J. (2000). Sociology beyond societies: Mobilities for the twenty-first century. London: Routledge.
Winthereik, B. R., & Verran, H. (2012). Ethnographic stories of generalisations that intervene. Science Studies, 1, 37–51.
Acknowledgements
The research this chapter is based on is funded by the project Chair in Arctic Tourism. Destination Development in the Arctic (2010–2012), hosted by Finnmark University College, Alta, Norway, and financed by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the University of Iceland Research Fund. I want to thank my colleagues, Gunnar Þór Jóhannesson and Guðrún Þóra Gunnarsdóttir, my co-workers on the project and I am grateful to Gunnar for reading this chapter at earlier stages and providing comments. I am indebted to all the people in Strandir we have provided us with invaluable informations, especially Sigurður Atlason at the Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft. His support has really made magic!
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lund, K.A. (2015). Just Like Magic: Activating Landscape of Witchcraft and Sorcery in Rural Tourism, Iceland. In: Brunn, S. (eds) The Changing World Religion Map. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9376-6_38
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9376-6_38
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-9375-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-9376-6
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)