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Article Excerpt
HAVE You HEARD the joke about the Swede, the Dane, and the Norwegian? If you are from one of the Scandinavian countries, you may have heard such jokes that rely on stereotypes which distinguish Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians. Although Scandinavians work hard to create distinct images of themselves and may in fact see themselves as distinct from their Scandinavian neighbors, most non-Scandinavians see them as a cultural unity. These perceptions can be seen not only in jokes but in a variety of old and new media: stock characters or incidental portrayals in books and film, newspaper and magazine articles, television shows, fashion, all forms of advertising, and travel accounts by foreign visitors. (1) Some of the most unaffected and interesting perceptions of Scandinavia may be gleaned from Internet travel accounts--perceptions people record from their visits to a foreign country. According to a 2004 report by the Pew Internet &American Life Project, "nearly half of U.S. adults who use the Internet have published their thoughts ... or created Web logs or diaries" (Barnako). Similarly, blogging and online diary services have caused an "unparalleled explosion of public-life writing by private citizens" (McNeill 25). The result is thousands of Internet travel accounts written by travelers to Scandinavia not only from the United States, hut from many other nations. Not only do most of these accounts represent a wide strata of travelers, from many nations and social classes (unlike the majority of travelers of earlier centuries), (2) bur the free and instant access to publication of these accounts via the Internet seems to foster an authenticity in the accounts that retains the style, idiosyncrasies, and biases of the writers while at the same time allowing for the free expression of perceptions without artistic affectation or editorial oversight.
This study investigates such travel accounts about Scandinavia and particularly the perceptions of Scandinavia they express. The term "Scandinavia" will be applied in a broad sense to include the five Nordic countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and Finland. Because this study aims to understand foreign perceptions of Scandinavia generally, accounts by Scandinavians traveling within Scandinavia (e.g., Swedes traveling to Norway) have been excluded. Only those by private individuals (and not professional travel entities) have been included, and these have been limited to foreigners visiting a Scandinavian country for the first time, in order to capture experiences and impressions in their freshest and most fertile context. Most accounts were found on the open Internet via search engine by entering keywords such as "Sweden trip" Searches were done systcmatically for each of the five Nordic countries, mostly in English but also in several other languages. The accounts represent a variety of web sites including online diaries, online travelogues, web communities, bulletin boards, personal homepages, and blogs. (3) An attempt has been made to analyze a representative sample of travelers and of the Scandinavian countries themselves. According to the Swedish Tourist Authority, Sweden and Denmark clearly dominate Scandinavia in terms of number of foreign overnight stays in the Nordic area, followed by Norway, Finland, and Iceland (Tourism in Sweden 6). (4) No attempt has been made, however, to correlate the number of foreign visitors to these countries and the sample of Internet travel accounts. Instead, each of these five countries has been sampled and investigated equally independently. Although the narratives of travelers from certain countries appear with greater frequency than those from others, an attempt has been made to capture a variety of narratives from foreigners of many nations. Germany is the most well-represented country of origin for tourists to all five Nordic countries; and all Nordic countries count visitors from the Netherlands, the United States, and the United Kingdom among the four most well-represented countries of origin. (5) The random sampling of the travel narratives accounts for the predominance of these four nationalities but also admits the representation of many others. Nearly two hundred Web sites, representing travelers from seventeen different countries, mostly from North America and western Europe, serve as the basis for this study. Travel accounts range from 1987 to 2005, bur most travelers made their visits between 1999 and 2005.
My previous treatment of this subject offered a general overview of the nature of Internet travel accotunts about Scandinavia. (6) My attempt here is to provide deeper insight into the importance of Internet travel account as a form and medium for exploring imagology and to illuminate how the touristic mode affects perception of nation and national character. Travelers to Scandinavia approach their writing of Internet travel accounts in similar ways. The openness of the Internet encourages the attitude of considering the travel account as a public repository of information. One way this attitude expresses itself is in the inclusion of exhaustive tactical details and minutia, such as the particular maps referenced for the trip, the kind of film used, inventories of equipment, and daily summaries of the weather. (7) For example, Max from Italy includes details on how much gasoline was required, the exact number of kilometers traveled, a list of recommended restaurants, the cost of highways, and the number of ferries used (Site 145). This tendency toward detail and thoroughness reflects an honest desire to make this public repository an information source for potential Internet readers through photos, informative narratives, interesting anecdotes, and practical advice. Online diaries with comprehensive detail fulfill the traditional functions of "logbook and memoranda, bur when written on the Internet, diarists give these functions a public purpose, presuming that others will want to read these records, and even comment on them" (McNeill 32). The honest intentions of Stefan from Austria can be seen as he addresses his readers directly with practical advice: "don't forget to bring a small repairing set with wires with you" (Site 37b). Similarly, Elisabeth and Teije's travel Web site, referring to Skansen, suggests: "When staying in Stockholm for a few days we can recommend to pay a visit to this park" (Site 36). Graeme from Australia, drawn to Stockholm as the home Of ABBA, urges his fellow ABBA fans: "Fulfil [sic] your ABBA needs if you have to, but don't neglect Sweden itself in the process" (Site 62).
Internet travel accounts tend to be open and democratic. Although travelers of all ages post their travel accounts on the Internet, people in their twenties and thirties constitute the largest percentage. (8) These travelers (and writers) tend to be younger, more open, and less burdened with old biases, though still susceptible to inherited cultural stereotypical ideas. The publishing of travel accounts--like the act of traveling itself--has become a commonplace occurrence for a wide stratum of society. In a world that has become "flat" (in Thomas Friedman's sense) (9) largely due to the connectivity of the World Wide Web, Internet travel accounts may be viewed as democratic. Indeed, McNeill observes that "bypassing the commercial, aesthetic, or political interests that ... decide whose life stories deserve to be told, online diaries can be read as assertions of identity, and arguments for the importance of an individual's life" (McNeill 26). Internet travel accounts often do precisely this in their presentation of a complex apparatus that showcases one's travels and creates one's own "touristic imagery" with self and "family at the center" (MacCannell 147), highlighting a central interest of one's life--travel. And not only do they assert one's identity but also they assert one's perceptions. Because of this, in addition to their openness, honesty, and directness, Internet travel accounts exhibit a personal pride in their attempt to assemble and record personal perceptions.
This directness in style and intent is complemented in the directness of Internet travel account distribution. (10) While travelers throughout the centuries have always composed parts of their accounts while on their journeys, modern technology allows travelers to publish their writings for friends and family--and to the world at large--during their trip via Internet cafe or hand-held device. Peter and Kay Forwood from Australia spend the day in a Norwegian museum, which, as they write on their Web site, "has the great innovation of internet access within the museum which we exploited, updating this site for about five hours of the day" (Site 10b). Similarly, also in Norway, Jonathan from Florida uses a PDA to write and transmit his account (Site 104b). Alzbeth takes advantage of the Internet in Lillehammer to publish photos of herself: "I knew the position of the web-camera there and so I had a pic of the hearse fixed by Alex who was currently online to save the various web-pics you'll see later on. Right after that I went to the internet-cafe round the corner to have a look at 'us'--there it was" (Site 101e). This kind of immediacy in transmission of words and images adds to the sense of honesty as well as freshness in expressing perceptions. This immediacy also causes most travel accounts to be casual in style, less introspective bur more immediate in the conveyance of impressions, brief in actual written commentary, with matter-of-fact accounts telling where the travelers visited, how they got there, and what they did. However, the variety of accounts is great, and many well-written, entertaining, and thought-provoking travelogues can be found among the more pedestrian accounts.
Travel narratives from any time and in any medium will often rely on stereotypes to structure the accounts of one's observations and experiences, particularly when assertions of national character and characteristics are attempted. For instance, Caren Kaplan identifies in Baudrillard's America the "stereotyped schema"--Europe is old while America is new--and notes that he endeavors to redeem "Europe in America's objectification," and to satisfy his "quest for difference" (83-4). My aim is to illuminate what I call the rhetoric of touristic stereotype in Internet travel accounts. At the basis of this discussion lies the assumption that "it is possible to make an analytical distinction ... between the discursive registers of factual reporting and stereotyping" (Leerssen "Rhetoric" 267). In other words, without trying to judge whether the perceptions are empirically valid images of a cultural identity, this study gathers perceptions and articulates what the perceptions are, from where they might derive, what they might mean, and what their function is--not whether the perceptions are true or false. (11) Despite the strong tendency in current scholarship to view travel writing as an assertion of power and desire in the context of colonialism, imperialism, gender, and class, (12) accounts by travelers to Scandinavia exhibit little if any of these tensions. Instead, their employment of stereotype reveals a consciousness of stereotypes and a desire to assess their truth value.
Whether these stereotypes are implicit or qualified in one's account--"based on what I saw, the Swedes area very athletic people"--or more direct, "Stockholm girls are beautiful," everyone has such general perceptions and stereotypes about a location never visited. Kilpelainen's research mentions the rather stereotypical ideas that Germans have about Finland: "The first things that come to their minds ... about Finland are lakes, coldness, snow, sauna, reindeers, ... water and nature" (Kilpelainen 19). Keiron Burchell from the UK records stereotypes about Sweden collected from friends before leaving for Scandinavia: "Blondes, au pairs, blonde an pairs, ABBA, Ikea and Volvos" (Site 89a). In an era of heightened consciousness and sensitivity to the existence of stereotypes, the discourse of national and regional character often requires that the stereotype be addressed in one way or another--either to substantiate or repudiate it. The rhetoric of touristic stereotype is the means by which many Internet accounts directly discuss or merely allude to stereotypes in an attempt to debunk or substantiate them. The act of addressing the stereotype enables the author to enter into an existing discourse, established by fellow holders of the special knowledge and wisdom gained from travel. Such discourse does not constitute the majority of the content in Internet travel accounts hut is an almost obligatory element. The discussion that follows will focus on the impressions travelers have of Scandinavian nature, its cities, its people, and its customs, and how travelers employ the rhetoric of touristic stereotype in their commentary.
A SEARCH FOR THE EXOTIC AND AUTHENTIC IN SCANDINAVIAN NATURE
As I explain in my first article on this topic, nature and the northern landscape serve as one of the primary images of Scandinavia and one of the principal subjects in Internet travel accounts of Scandinavia (Schaad 565-6). (13) Two aspects of the image of Scandinavian nature--the exotic and the extreme--I have discussed before, but I would like to expand on these two concepts as well as introduce a third and related concept--the authentic. The desire for the exotic, the extreme, and the authentic in nature unites the diverse travelers who come to Scandinavia.
Among the many Internet accounts, one finds ABBA fanatics, attendees at the Nobel Prize ceremonies, avid bird-watchers, children of Finnish immigrants, and a naturist from the UK who, in addition to featuring pictures of himself nude on his Web site, touts the advantage of Sweden as a place "where the naturist will always be able to find somewhere to strip off without causing offence" (Site 56). Motivations for travel to Scandinavia are as diverse as the travelers themselves, but most include in their motivation a reference to Scandinavian nature, such as Alzbeth from Austria: "In autumn 2000 I finally made it up to the far North of Europe--Norway was on my list for a long time. The cold wildness of this rough country attracted me since I was a child" (Site 101). This holds true for all three of the main traveler types to Scandinavia that I have identified--the incidental-traveler, the leisure-traveler, and the adventure-traveler (Schaad 564) (14)--but is especially true for the adventure-traveler. Adventure-travelers represent the largest percentage of travelers to Scandinavia, and the most important for understanding one of the primary images of Scandinavia for foreign travelers. More overt in their desire to...
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