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. In some sense, I believe, it’s the kernel of exchange students’ life - they jump into the unknown, change the country, city, university, and then figure out things “on the go”. When I came to Norway to study Arctic Adventure Tourism in the distant glorious 2017, I 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 in a short period of time, and honestly seemed boring 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 therefore also limited in deep knowledge and experience about the area, and thus facing similar difficulties as I am. 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.