When there are too many tourists for too little gain

A couple of summers ago, I had the idea of being a tourist in Norway in a slightly unusual way. I decided to walk and run the Gudbrandsdalsleden, the main road during the Middle Ages from Oslo to Trondheim and the Nidaros Cathedral. I come from Trondheim, so it would be like going home, I thought.

The days on foot grew long. At night, I sought shelter in my tent or in one of the many small accommodations along the Pilgrimage Route.

One day, I had planned to spend the night at a working farm with roots back to the 1600s, when it was an estate under the Bishop of Nidaros.

In the farmyard, the hostess and a small lost lamb welcomed me. We exchanged some pleasantries before I, tired but happy with a cold beer in my hand, entered my small abode for the night.

The next day, the hostess invited me to breakfast literally at the farmer’s table. She served local food at a reasonable price. Being the sole guest, the hostess joined me for a cup of coffee. We started talking about what it is like to run a somewhat alternative guesthouse in a Norwegian valley.

She told me she ran what was once the family farm on her own. In the summer, she runs the guesthouse. The main income is from salmon fishers from Denmark and Germany, with some money coming from pilgrimage walkers like me.

But where are the salmon fishers this year, I ask, and she says this year’s river fishing was stopped just before the beginning of the season because of a lack of salmon.

The salmon tourists stayed at home. Sadly, so did the income they would usually bring. The hostess, who is also a local politician, publicly sounded the alarm about a tourism industry under threat, but so far, nobody had taken much notice. 

“I don’t do this to become rich, to put it that way,” she concluded and added that she would spend the next day doing an extra shift at the municipal nursing home.

I leave her (and the charming little woolen creature on four legs) with many thoughts in my mind. Because what she’s doing is probably sustainable for nature and for the local society, but so what? It clearly is not sustainable for her. 

A few days later, I reached my goal after spending 640 kilometres on foot. I was tired but proud. Outside the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, I took the obligatory selfie. I was stood next to a lot of other people.  

Every year, half a million people visit the Cathedral. Is that too many? What experience does that give us? The contrast between being alone in a unique place like the guest farm and being one of very many in front of the Cathedral is in any case enormous.

We are many (too many?) who want to experience a lot. After the pandemic, the number of tourists has increased, also to the Nordics. That means more jobs and money coming in. But this time, we ask: at what price?

Some of the places we take you to:

The Faroe Islands, where, every year, several thousand people want to help fix damage to nature as a result of increased tourism.

Iceland, which welcomes two million tourists annually and where more and more businesses now see the value of sustainability, also because the customers ask for it.

Denmark, where GreenKayak says tourists and locals have removed 134 tonnes of litter from Copenhagen waters and other Nordic and German cities in the past nine years. 

Cecilia Cassinger from Lund University in Sweden believes we need to redefine what it means to be a tourist. As tourists, we need to reflect on what it means to be a good guest and what we should be giving back.

If there is one thing you, dear reader, take with you into the summer and the holidays, it is just that – be a good guest, no matter where you are. 

Happy reading!