Laughing through the unknown: Implementing humor into guiding work by international students in Alta, Norway

Abstract

There can be different views and opinions about what it takes to be a newcomer when travelling for educational or work purposes. Some people can find it fairly uncomfortable when faced with new social norms, languages, rules, and regulations; while others are eager to embrace all challenges and immerse themselves into the new environment. Norway overall, and Alta city particularly, provide international and exchange students with once-in-a lifetime opportunity to experience multiculturalism, Nordic educational system, pristine nature, and last but not least the aspect of work life, even though part-time; and this aspect, still and all being part-time and ultimately non-essential for study purposes, can be of great interest for above mentioned students, as it provides them with such valuable things as a new network in local businesses, real-life work experience (often related to the studies), and additional income, to name some of those. When I came to Norway to study Arctic Adventure Tourism in the distant glorious 2017, I also got a part time job as a guide in one of the local businesses, but my first tours were not staggeringly successful, to put it lightly. Even though the company I have been working for has invested a lot of time and effort in training all new guides and has been very helpful in providing the information about the area, for me, as a newcomer it was quite hard to memorize all the facts about the region, partly due to the fact that it was my first months here, and since I have never lived in the Arctic before, everything was new and exciting, from dazzling radiance of the midnight sun at 3 AM, to mysterious romance of polar nights; and party because even if I memorized all the material, it was quite unnatural, and honestly seemed boring for me to just cite the facts by memory. Thus, I had a feeling that there was something essential that I was lacking in my performance makeup as a guide. As months went by, I came to meet more and more guides who were, same as I, international students and were quite puzzled as to how to approach the guide job. Being, like myself, limited, as non-locals, in deep knowledge and experience about the area, they too were forced to implement other techniques in their work in order to have productive tours, gain work experience, and hold to the job, as more often than not, it was a valuable resource of income to sustain a student’s life, and through the exchange of experience and thoughts, slowly but surely I was coming to the idea that, as it seemed, one of the universal ways to appear as an interesting and knowledgeable guide and storyteller, that has been used by the majority of newcomers, was to implement humor into work, thus improving the quality of tours and the overall emotional state of the guests; and with a qualitative research approach, with the use of interviews of currently employed and former guides, I will show the importance of implementation as well as types and timing of humor in the guiding work.