NS34 Session 22

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Title: Heritage Ecologies: Creative Entrepreneurship for Regenerative Rural Futures

Organisers: Katrín Anna Lund and Anna Hildur Hildibrandsdóttir

Affiliation: University of Iceland and Research Centre for Creative Industries, Bifröst University

Description

It has become a well-worn argument that the traditional separation between nature and culture in Western worldview is becoming increasingly untenable in the era of the Anthropocene and an escalating environmental emergency. At the same time, it is evident that cultural heritage development has been encouraged all over the world as a means to strengthen and revitalise rural areas without questioning the dichotomy. By bringing up the concept of heritage ecology and regeneration we aim to open up for critical approach to culture that moves beyond the traditional dichotomy between culture and nature and open up space for discussing activities and practices that embrace more-than-human relations and realities. In this context we want to think about the possibility of cultural tourism and creative entrepreneurship with a focus on earthly heritage as a creative process in destination development.

We invite papers that explore these types of possibilities from scholars as well as practitioners. We invite papers that introduce projects, practices and products that follow human actors, lone managers and other creative actors, such as localised organisations or municipalities and lifestyle entrepreneurs, driven by passions to bring out narratives that meander in the surroundings and allow visitors to get into closer contact with destination’s ambience. This the panel aims at providing examples of alternative possibilities of dealing with rural development which most often has been dealt with from the point of view of purely economic terms. Although, we by no means attempt to dismiss the importance of economically driven efforts to support rural areas the aim is rather to point out that they often miss out on values that lie within the proximate relations that people have with their surroundings. By attending to such practices, the aim is to shift the discussion from supporting merely sustainable models toward recognising regenerative approaches grounded in the knowledge and experience of those most closely connected to their environments.

Abstracts

Title: Rethinking Rural Tourism: Heritage, Values, and Paths to Regenerative Change
Authors: Anna Hildur Hildibrandsdóttir, Bifröst University, and Katrín Anna Lund

As rural regions increasingly turn to tourism and cultural heritage as development strategies, critical questions arise regarding which values are prioritised, whose values are centred, and what kinds of futures are being produced. This paper contributes to these debates by introducing heritage ecology as a framework for rethinking tourism, creativity, and entrepreneurship beyond growth‑oriented models.

Drawing on interdisciplinary research from rural Iceland and the Horizon Europe IN SITU research programme, the paper explores how heritage emerges through more‑than‑human relations involving landscapes, mobility and cultural infrastructures, memories, and situated creative practices. Empirical examples include post‑disaster heritage sites, community‑driven storytelling and placemaking initiatives, and small‑scale cultural entrepreneurship grounded in storytelling and cultural heritage. Across these cases, heritage is not merely preserved or consumed but continuously made and remade through relational practices that negotiate vulnerability, responsibility, and value at the margins.

We argue that attending to heritage ecologies enables a shift from “sustainable” tourism framings towards regenerative approaches that foreground care, relationality, and local agency, while remaining attentive to tensions, constraints, and the fragility of place‑based initiatives. By situating tourism within broader ecological and cultural assemblages, the paper positions it as a potential, though contested, agent for good in a changing world, capable of supporting rural wellbeing and future‑making without defaulting to extractive or purely economic narratives.

Title: Who Makes Dalir the Yule Lads' Land?: Poetry, Landscape and Community Permission in Heritage-Based Tourism
Authors: Anna Hildur Hildibrandsdóttir, Bifröst University, and Einar Svansson

Tourism often builds on stories already in motion - stories that circulate across texts, landscapes, and communities before they are taken up as organised place‑based activity. This paper explores how folklore characters shaped through poetry are re‑activated in contemporary rural placemaking and entrepreneurship. Focusing on Dalabyggð (Dalir) in West Iceland, the study traces how Icelandic figures associated with wandering and marginality were re‑imagined through Jóhannes úr Kötlum’s poetry in 1932 and later taken up in contemporary community‑led initiatives that seek to position Dalir as the home of the Yule Lads.

Rather than assuming an inherent right to claim Dalir as the Yule Lads’ homeland, the paper examines how such a claim is assembled and sustained through interactions between poetry, landscape, family practice, and community participation. The analysis draws on qualitative material developed through long‑term engagement with the Erpsstaðir case, including ethnographic observation, interviews, and site‑based documentation, complemented by intergenerational, family‑embedded knowledge of the poet’s work and its local reception. Some empirical material was generated during the Horizon Europe–supported IN SITU project on place‑based cultural innovation, now concluded.

Empirically, the paper examines how the family‑led dairy farm Erpsstaðir has evolved into a coordinating node for storytelling, food production, crafts, and collaborative hosting, through which visitor encounters are organised. Attention is given to how participation is invited, how responsibilities are distributed, and how legitimacy emerges through ongoing engagement rather than formal ownership. Using an actor‑network sensibility and a typology of social entrepreneurs, the paper shows how narrative heritage becomes a dynamic resource for community‑led placemaking and entrepreneurial organisation, contributing to current discussions on regenerative approaches to tourism grounded in local stories, practices, and relations.