Seija Tuulentie

Use of decision analysis interviews to support the sustainable use of the forests in Finnish Upper Lapland

Controversy between alternative uses of forests in Finnish Upper Lapland has been going on for decades, and in recent years it has been escalated to a serious conflict. The core of the conflict is the adverse impacts of forestry on old forests which are important grazing areas for reindeer and which are regarded as intact nature and wilderness areas. This paper describes the experiences of applying multi-criteria decision analysis interview approach on this conflict. The approach provides tools for structuring the problem and preferences of the stakeholders as well as for analyzing the effects of different alternatives in a common framework. We focus on the practical experiences gained from the application of this approach in this context. Multi-criteria decision analysis was found to be a useful approach to evaluate the economic, ecological and cultural aspects of this intense conflict. The obtained experiences also support the view that the approach works best when tightly integrated into the planning process.

Settled Tourists: Second Homes as a Part of Tourist Life Stories

In a society of mobile life‐styles, tourism has been fundamentally connected to the idea of being on the move without any firm attachment to any one place. However, it seems that being a tourist may often involve seeking a close relationship with one specific place or region, and wanting to “go steady” with that place or region. Thus, visitors may over time transcend their typical positions and make a place or a region their regular haunt or even “home”. The question posed in the paper is how do people become so attached to their tourist destinations that they eventually want to buy a second home or even move to such a location? The article also discusses the changes in second‐home traditions from simple summer cottages to fully‐equipped second homes and time‐shares situated in regions with which the owners have no social connections, but which have beautiful landscapes and other amenity values. Based on life‐story narratives of Finnish second‐home owners, who mainly got their first contact with the region as tourists, the results show that tourist experiences can be cumulative in a persons life course and place attachment and the sense of home develop in the course of many visits to same place.

The Dialectic of Identities in the Field of Tourism. The Discourses of the Indigenous Sámi in Defining their own and the Tourists' Identities

The modernity of indigenous people has often been denied, and this is especially true in the field of tourism where indigeneity works as a part of tourism marketing. From the more critical angle tourism has been seen as a cause of decline in preexisting local indigenous identities. However, these perspectives neglect the fact that the indigenous people themselves know nowadays what it is to be a tourist and how to act in the field of tourism. This article deals with the case of indigenous Sámi people and shows that instead of being passive victims the Sámi are active participants in constructing their own identities as well as the identities of the tourists visiting their home regions. The article analyses the discourses of the Sámi focus groups interviewed in Finland, Sweden and Norway.

Tourism strategies and climate change: rhetoric at both strategic and grassroots levels about growth and sustainable development in Finland

This paper explores how global issues such as climate change are taken into account in tourism strategy texts and contrasts these findings with how the issue is seen at the grassroots level by local businesses. We analyse how both levels approach adaptation to climate change. Using Boltanski and Thévenots six common “worlds” of justification model for debates on public issues, we analyse the rhetoric of national, regional, and local tourism strategies in Finland and then explore how the rhetoric is employed by interviewing 42 local tourism actors. The strategy analysis shows that strategic documents do not simply describe situations but are active in creating and shaping future development, and how different kinds of “orders of worth” are used, to establish acceptable “universal truths” to shape through consensus how tourism actors think about the sectors future. Results show that at a strategic level, climate change issues are dealt with in an abstract manner, concentrating on the viewpoints of markets and industry, while ecological justification is lacking, and lacks urgency. Operational instructions are not provided for the entrepreneurs. The actors’ interviews show that structural changes in the sector are demanded but both tourism growth and natures survival are taken for granted.

Northern Lights Tourism in Iceland, Norway and Finland

This report is the result of fieldwork in Iceland, Northern Norway and Finnish Lapland, undertaken by tourism researchers from the three countries in 2014. One aim of the study was to establish comparative knowledge on Northern Lights tours. The research is part of the ‘Winter tourism’ [1] project at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. During the last decade Northern Lights tourism has boomed in the case study areas. Important destinations for Aurora tourism are: Reykjavik and Akureyri in Iceland, Tromso and Alta in Norway, and Rovaniemi and the region around Muonio in Finland. A common feature of this type of tourism is the increased interest from international tourists, mainly from Europe, Northern America and Asia. Moreover, these tourists travel to both large scale and small scale destinations. In common are also the development of mass tourism in the bigger cities, in regards of the number of tour providers and number of tourists, and a more moderate development in the smaller cities. In spite of commonalities several factors also separate the tours and destinations. The Norwegian Northern Lights tours, for instance, tend to be more expensive and they often last longer. In Finland most of the tours are in combination with other outdoor activities and mass tourism is the most noticeable in Reykjavik. Thus, there the tours are the cheapest. Furthermore, in Iceland and Alta mostly local guides are employed, whereas in Finnish Lapland and Tromso many workers are from other Europeans countries. The researchers participated in 17 tours in total. Consequently this report gives only a glimpse of various ways of guiding and how skills, knowledge, equipment, weather and so on affect Aurora Borealis performances in a toured setting. This report continues with a presentation of the Northern Lights tourism development and offers in each country. In the description of each country we also point to guiding practices that enhance and diminish the experiences with the tours. In the last section we discuss the Northern Lights tourism in the three countries, and reflect upon the importance of the guide, safety and infrastructure and some other aspects of the tours.

Borders and Second Home Tourism: Norwegian and Russian Second Home Owners in Finnish Border Areas

Abstract Trans-border tourism and second home ownership are growing phenomena around the world. Existing literature discusses the border as an attraction, barrier or opportunity for different types of interactions that cross it including tourism, while the relationship between borders and second home tourism has not received much academic attention. This study explores the role of borders in trans-border second home tourism. We ask: what are the motives for having a second-home in a neighboring country, and how does the border shape second home-related daily life? The study is conducted in Finland, which has recently become an attractive destination for foreign second home owners. The data was collected through interviews with Russian and Norwegian second home owners in areas bordering these countries. The results show that despite major differences in border regimes with Russia and Norway, the state border did not appear as a visible barrier to second home owners, but led to the formation of invisible barriers in both cases. Different types of physical borders formed similar imprints on the lives of second home owners. The foreign second home owners faced cultural and language barriers but at the same time had opportunities for recreation that did not exist in their own country.

Will “Free Entry into the Forest” Remain?

In Europe, the public right of access is most widely applied in the Nordic countries. So-called everyman’s rights give everyone the basic right to roam freely in the countryside, no matter who owns or occupies the land. What makes everyman’s rights problematic is that they do not cover activities which damage the environment or disturb others, but the understanding of damage and especially disturbance is situational and depends on subjective valuation. There has been a lot of debate around everyman’s rights over the past decade. Also, several surveys have been made for administrative purposes. By analyzing argumentation in recent discussion in the Internet, we evaluate in the article what are the most urgent issues at stake in Sweden and Finland. Our results show that the discussed themes vary from private ownership and national identity to commercialization and lifestyle. Especially berry pickers from Asian countries and the commercialization of recreational nature use have generated as well extreme nationalistic arguments as worried expressions of the ownership rights. A more moderate stance is to suggest negotiations between parties and to give more information in public. New devices to conceptualize the use of nature in a different way are slowly emerging but are not yet adapted to public common sense discussion.

Trust Matters – Social Capital in Herding Cooperation in Finland

Abstract Reindeer herding is a nature-based livelihood of the indigenous Sámi people in northern parts of Europe and Russia. During the last decades, reindeer herding has become a more significant issue in the context of the market economy: the livelihood has transformed toward entrepreneurship, and the subsidies demand growth in the scale of herding. According to the national administration, the market values are highlighted. However, for herders, market economies are only one part of their livelihood. Another important part is their experience of reindeer herding as a way of life; for many reindeer herders trust in their livelihood and the social relations associated with their way of life are of equal or greater importance than economic aspects. In this paper, the role of social trust in the changing process of reindeer herding is discussed. Inherited tacit and cultural knowledge, as a part of social capital, strengthen reindeer herders’ experience of trust.

The softening of adventure tourism

ABSTRACT As a consequence of diversification with regard to tourists and their perceptions on adventure tourism, there has been a supposed softening of Arctic adventure tourism. To determine if any such changes were occurring, a study of adventure tourism services from Finnish Lapland was undertaken. This study incorporated methodological triangulation and used two different data sets drawn from an on-site survey of tourists (n = 308) and thematic interviews with tourism actors (n = 5). With respect to Lapland, the study determined that a softening of adventure tourism and diversification in tourists’ groups was occurring. Specifically, the study found that tourists possessed inadequate competencies and knowledge regarding Arctic destinations; entrepreneurs demonstrated increased preparedness to pull out mid-activity and that there was a need for multi-skilled, service-oriented actors within destinations. Subsequently, more research is needed on the soft dimensions of tourism in the Arctic, in order to address, for example, what kind of competencies are needed from different actors.

Participation of second home owners and permanent residents in local decision making: the case of a rural village in Finland

In Finland, there are almost 500,000 second homes and in some areas the number of second home owners exceeds that of permanent residents. Currently, second home owners are also spending more time in their second homes. If second home owners are not permanent residents, administration may exclude them from local institutions, and treat second home owners as only partial members of the community. It has been stated that municipal decision making and the role of the municipality as an actor in the local community should be broadened in order to strengthen democracy and the participation of its residents as a core of municipal self-administration. Hence, participating in communal decision making is mainly possible only for permanent residents. The issue is whether it is possible to change this situation via the municipalities’ own reforms and state regulations. New municipal administration experiments have recently emerged in Finland. Here we study how the new local administrative model, the Communal District Committee, has affected local participation and local governance in a rural areas by exploring second home owners’ opportunities to participate in local decision making and development processes. The data consists of documents, focus group discussions and a questionnaire. We used qualitative and quantitative methods in the data analysis. We found, on one hand, that permanent residents of villages recognise second home owners’ hesitation to participate in local issues requiring planning and decision making. On the other hand, local-level communal decision making does not promote the participation of second home residents. On the basis of the findings of the study, we suggest that the municipal authorities should recognise the existence and importance of second home owners in the area, acknowledge them better in municipal plans and strategies, and offer them more resources and means to participate.