Harnessing the Power of the Arctic: Connecting tourists to nature through dog sledging activities.

Abstract

This qualitative study explores the complex pockets of co-created interaction and throwntogetherness that produce meanings and value through an ethnographic sensory investigation of dog sledging tourism in Finnmark. I draw on a multirelational and multisensorial perspective on dog sledging, which means a holistic and socially constructed way of understanding Human-Animal Bonding (HAB) (DeMello, 2012). HAB enabled me to move beyond ethology when studying how culture, learning, emotions, communication, and cognition shaped interactions between tourist-mushers and dogs in arctic landscapes.

The analysis unpacks the richness of the tourist-mushers interactions with sledge dogs by showing how physical senses and the arctic landscape bring about emotions and behavioural changes. The three main themes revolved around how the tourist-musher, through dog sledging, disconnected from everyday life and were reconnected with arctic landscapes. Theme one bonding, co-creation and interaction, consisting of the sub-themes bonding, co-creation and interactions, revealed pockets of meaning and value. Theme two, rhythm, through the sub- themes of time and flow, exposed the interconnectedness of reflection. Theme three, discovery mechanisms, with the sub-themes of physical senses, emotion, and learning, identified emotions of trust and empathy as learning tools that led to memory-making and mindfulness.

I conclude that dog sledging tourism is a unique symbolic practice where nothing comes closer to experiencing nature's power. My study's symmetrical agency of humans and non-humans revealed new embodied ways of knowing. This knowledge strengthened and supported an embodied tourist experience approach (Everingham et al., 2021). Through my sensory ethnography of human and non-human encounters travelling together in nature, I address a research gap going beyond the advancement of Finnmarks’ regional tourism in Norway to a global understanding of what Arctic is.

Keywords Dog sledging, Embodiment, Ethnography, Arctic landscape, Human-animal bonding, Relational materialism