The growth and popularity of polar cruise tourism in the Arctic region have raised expectations about the opportunities in this part of the world. However, the existing academic literature has never ventured further than to recall these expectations and opportunities, which means that there is hardly any insight into what is actually happening in Russian Arctic cruise tourism. This paper aims to provide a practice-based perspective with a special focus on performed and integrated practices in the production of cruise tourism along the Russian Barents Sea coast. Semi-structured interviews with key actors involved in the production of cruise tourism serve as the main source of information along with observations made during fieldwork in the Arkhangelsk region. Cruise tourism practices are facing a number of challenges in their reproduction and lack both consistency and regularity. The practice-based perspective helps to reveal how groups of actors collectively produce activities and itineraries for cruise tourists despite the structural constraints. Moreover, the paper shows how local private entrepreneurs are actively trying to configure and connect the constituting cruise tourism practices.

This article assesses the construction of cultural geographies of the European far North through an exploration of how Arctic motifs and imaginaries are used in the Christmas tourism industry in Finnish Lapland, and particularly in the city of Rovaniemi, which advertises itself as the ‘Official Hometown of Santa Claus’. Specifically, we draw parallels between Christmas tourism and Arctic mining by examining the similarities and interconnections between them. This highlights how these industries are related to the Arctic landscape they operate in and how both are ultimately embedded in similar cultural perceptions of and engagements with Lapland dating back centuries. A long-term perspective on Arctic geographical imaginaries enables a critical assessment of how the tourism and mining industries are both steeped in the exoticization and mythologising of the Arctic on the one hand and in a tradition of material and symbolic exploitation of northern resources on the other. This approach helps researchers to highlight a problematic character of the current development of Christmas tourism in Lapland.

The interest in heritage as a tool for destination development has recently been substantial in Sweden, especially when it comes to receiving World Heritage (WH) status. The possibility of using the WH brand in developing tourism products and marketing destinations has great potential for many heritage destinations. The aim of this paper is to discuss innovation processes within heritage tourism. The focus is on the role of WH status as a factor influencing innovative practices at different Swedish WH sites. This study uses qualitative methods, such as interviews and analysis of written material from five selected Swedish WH sites, with in-depth analysis of the Great Copper Mountain in Falun. To what extent does WH status change the preconditions for tourism development at WH destinations? What is the role of institutional frameworks in this process? This paper will show how WH may facilitate tourism innovation mainly through developing new products and marketing strategies, but also by institutional innovations concerning new forms of collaboration and networks.

In literature on tourism in northern or ‘Arctic’ areas and on regions and places in northern areas, terms such as ‘indigenous’ and ‘non-indigenous’ are often used to distinguish people and places from each other. The aim of this paper is to deconstruct the ‘indigenous’/‘non-indigenous’ categories as well as the geographical categories to which they are linked, using examples from tourism in northern Fennoscandia and northwest Russia, selected as areas with circumstances that vary greatly both locally and regionally. Specific focus is on the construction of labels and restrictions of use, particularly regarding handicrafts/souvenirs as a specific object of indigeneity to separate it from other objects. The study reviews the processes in tourism for constructing, labelling, and valuing – and thereby also exerting power upon – specific conceptions, and thereby also on the contesting of such processes amongst broader, but often unacknowledged, local groups.

Expedition style cruise tourism represents a significant proportion of shipping activity across the Arctic. This article compares and contrasts governance structures that manage the cruise sector from case studies located in the Canadian (Nunavut) and the Russian Arctic (Murmansk and Arkhangelsk regions). Analysis of sources, including interviews with key stakeholders, strategic tourism plans, and an inventory of institutional governance reveals that in both these locations there is no central authority to govern the growth of the industry, no specific cruise or yacht management plans, and no site guidelines for highly visited shore locations (other than in protected areas). The article concludes that under current conditions there are significant barriers to supporting development of the expedition cruise sector in both these Arctic regions.