TY - JOUR ID - 1024834ar T1 - The Polar Cultural Heritage as a Tourism Attraction: A Case Study of the Airship Mooring Mast at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard A1 - Roura, Ricardo JO - Téoros VL - 28 IS - 1 SP - 29 EP - 38 SN - 0712-8657 Y1 - 2009 Y2 - 03/28/2024 9:24 a.m. PB - Université du Québec à Montréal LA - EN AB - This paper explores the use of narratives in the transformation of historic sites in the polar regions into attractions and consumable tourism products. The analysis is based on a case study of visitation to the airship mooring mast built at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, for the 1926 “Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile Transpolar Flight” of the airship Norge. The questions addressed in this paper are: How does cultural heritage in the polar regions operate as a tourist attraction? What is the role of tourism narratives in creating a tourism attraction? Direct observations constituted the main research method. Based on Dean MacCannell (1976) and Neil Leiper (1990), a tourism attraction is a system comprising a tourist or human element; a nucleus or central element; and a marker or informative element. Tourism narratives enable the different elements of the tourism attraction system to “click” together into a coherent whole. Through narratives, the mast becomes a place of significance and a symbolic marker of the North Pole and polar exploration. The application of this approach to other sites in Antarctica and Svalbard is discussed. DO - https://doi.org/10.7202/1024834ar UR - https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1024834ar L1 - https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/teoros/2009-v28-n1-teoros01378/1024834ar.pdf DP - Érudit: www.erudit.org DB - Érudit ER -