Producing Arcticness, Selling the Arctic Dream : Authenticity and Tourism Imaginaries in Arvidsjaur, Swedish Lapland

Sammanfattning

Arctic tourism has experienced significant growth in recent years, and destinations in northern Europe are increasingly marketed through images of snowcovered landscapes, wilderness, northern lights, and extraordinary experiences. At the same time, tourism businesses operate within a highly competitive market where they must balance globally recognizable Arctic representations with attempts to create authentic, unique, and emotionally meaningful tourism experiences. This thesis examines how tourism businesses in Arvidsjaur, a sparsely populated municipality in northern Sweden, construct and communicate Arctic imaginaries and authenticity narratives through their online marketing and communication strategies. This research draws on concepts of Arctification, tourism imaginaries, authenticity, and de-Arctification to investigate how Arcticness is represented and negotiated in tourism marketing. A qualitative case study approach was used, combining thematic and discourse analyses of publicly available tourism websites from businesses in Arvidsjaur. In addition, a descriptive quantitative overview of the local tourism sector was conducted to identify patterns regarding tourism products, seasonality, business characteristics, and target markets. The findings show that tourism businesses rely heavily on recurring, stereotypical Arctic imaginaries and standardized winter experiences. Some businesses attempt to differentiate themselves, for example, through emotional storytelling, personalization, sustainability narratives, and year-round tourism offers. Authenticity is primarily communicated through local embeddedness and meaningful experiences rather than through historical or cultural accuracy. The findings further reveal tensions among standardization and uniqueness, commercialization and authenticity, and sustainability and mobility-intensive tourism practices. Overall, the results of this thesis show how tourism businesses actively reproduce and negotiate Arcticness through marketing practices, shaping how the Arctic is imagined, experienced, and consumed.