As I write this it is almost twelve months to the day that along with my then eight-year-old son, William, I landed at Ivalo Airport for what I was assured would be three days of Christmas ‘magic’ at the Arctic resort of Saariselkä. Now, to be honest, I was actually expecting to find the experience somewhat disconcerting. Having only recently spent a fortnight as a Visiting Professor at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, studying the very kind of Christmas activities that I was soon to be partaking in, I wasn’t entirely sure I would be able to throw off the critical approach I try to bring to my work and simply enjoy some family time.

Nor were my concerns helped by the fact that William, like most 8 year olds in the UK, had started to find the whole idea of a supernatural gift giver increasingly implausible, if not downright ‘childish’. Perhaps, I thought, as we taxied towards the terminal surrounded by over-excited children and some rather tired and grumpy adults, this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Had I just used my son to justify yet another ethnographic excursion – call it participant observation if you will – in order to share the perspective of the Christmas tourist and perhaps gather some material for my next research publication?

As soon as we left the aircraft and set foot on snowy tarmac I realised, however, that my concerns were, by and large, baseless. For despite the young English men and women dressed up as elves and jumping from one luggage trolley to another, and the somewhat forlorn single reindeer, tethered to his sleigh and stood guard over by a ‘traditionally’ garbed Sami herder, there was a sense of anticipation in the air that was not only palpable, but in fact rather infectious.

For while mindful of what sociologist John Urry, in his now classic 1990 text, described as the tourist gaze – that is the social and largely instrumental construction of the tourist landscape – neither of us could hide the sheer joy at what was, for William in particular, a genuine encounter with alterity. Don’t misunderstand me, my son was now clearly welcoming the increasingly rumbustious antics of the elves with real amusement, and was honestly excited at the chance of meeting the ‘real’ Santa Claus. Nevertheless, it was the fact that he was clearly somewhere very different, somewhere in which the magic was not simply wound up in characters and Christmas stories, but was embedded in the landscape itself, that was the real source of his excitement: it was the fact that he was in the Arctic.

While the UK is far from warm during the winter months, it is rare these days that we experience heavy snowfalls or feel the bite of sub-zero temperatures during the day. Nor do we often see wild animals on the scale of the reindeer that blocked our path, or owls the size of those found in Lapland swooping past. Men dressed as Santa Claus yes, young people dressed as elves also, but for a young child to drink a hot juice in an igloo, or be pulled across a frozen lake by a pack of huskies in the darkness of early morning, these are things that dreams, and memories, are made of.

Again, I must stress that this should in no way be taken to diminish the fun we both drew from the Christmas experience. The emotional and physical labour – if such a distinction is tenable – of those entertaining and serving us while, in my mind clearly demanding, was executed with almost unfaltering care and enthusiasm. Equally, the aesthetic quality of the landscape was inexorably entwined with the idea of a purity that also somehow reflects the meaning of Christmas. But despite even the corporate snowsuits, our fellow tourists (Sartre should really have written ‘hell is other tourists’) and the knowledge that this was a safe rendition of the Arctic, the whole experience retained more than enough that was both alien and enchantingly familiar to melt the heart of even the most sceptical of observers.

What my fellow travellers around me took from those few short days is hard to tell, however. Certainly, there were times that I marvelled at the contradictions they appeared to so easily negotiate. As a sociologist, perhaps one of my most striking memories was the image of a young woman struggling up the aisle of the return flight with a giant plush reindeer toy in front of her, and several reindeer pelts thrown over her shoulder swearing at anybody who would listen. Yet my hope is that what many of them took with them was, along with a sprinkling of Christmas magic, respect for the drama and beauty of the Arctic landscape and those who inhabit it.

I accept of course, that for many, at best this might sound little more than a cliché and, at worst, the words of somebody who spent just a weekend in a largely controlled and somewhat rarefied playground. Perhaps this might be true. Yet while I arrived with the vision of an academic, I left with the even sharper vision of a child. One who still wants nothing more than to return, not to see Santa, nor to particularly experience the Christmas magic, but simply to return to the Arctic. To feel the cold, touch the snow, see the stars and hear the silence. Sure, it was Christmas that brought us there, but it was the place that made it ‘magical’. My hope is that my son will now carry this feeling when it comes to thinking about how best we can help preserve this land not only for him, but perhaps his children and grandchildren to come. Now that really would be a magical Christmas story!

Professor Philip Hancock
Essex Business School
University of Essex
UK