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Nation-Branding: A Critical Evaluation: Assessing the Image Building of Iceland
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Edward H. Huijbens, “Nation-Branding: A Critical Evaluation. Assessing the Image of Building of Iceland,” in Iceland and Images of the North, ed. Sumarliði R. Ísleifsson with the collaboration of Daniel Chartier, Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, “Droit au Pôle” series, and Reykjavík: ReykjavíkurAkademían, 2011. Nation-Branding: A Critical Evaluation. Assessing the Image Building of Iceland1 Edward H. Huijbens Icelandic Tourism Research Center Abstract – Icelanders have long been image conscious. But only recently with Icelandic companies expanding abroad has a concerted effort towards image building been set in motion. With the budding expansion, the Icelandic Trade Council invested in an analysis of “the image of Iceland,” which was conducted by the Office of the Prime Minister and is now being perpetuated as “communicative defence strategies” by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This article provides an analysis of image building and claims that its underpinnings lie in the idea of “nation-branding,” with Iceland receiving a place on the Nation Brand Index (NBI) devised by Simon Anholt. This article seeks to critically evaluate the Icelandic image building effort with reference to geographic literature on place-making, placing, and notions of belonging, ideas integral to an image of anywhere. Keywords – Iceland, image, nation-branding, place brand, geography, space, place, ethics, post-structuralism, politics, foreign affairs Introduction We also have to take care that Iceland does not become a brand; Iceland is naturally like…life.2 Above the artist Ólafur Elíasson expresses his thoughts about Iceland when asked about his relationship to the country in terms of his art in the news programme Kastljós on Icelandic national television (RÚV), 23 June 2008. He emphasizes that a country and its people are not 1 I would gratefully like to acknowledge input from my colleagues Doreen Massey, Anne-Mette Hjalager, and those participating in the INOR meeting in Hólar, 28–30 May 2009. The Icelandic Research Council I thank for their support in this research. 2 “Við verðum líka að passa að Ísland verði ekki svona brand, Ísland er náttúrulega eins og…líf” (my translation). ICELAND AND IMAGES OF THE NORTH [ 554 ] brands or “raw material” for image building, but alive and thus unpredictable. This article is set in the context of recent efforts of image building in Iceland.3 More specifically, it is about the marketing of Iceland as a tourist destination and the ways in which branding is an integral part of such efforts. These marketing efforts are critically evaluated and I will demonstrate how they draw on recently promoted ideas of nation-branding. Thus the image building is critiqued through stating that branding can never surmount the inherent tension within the socio-cultural reality of the destination being promoted, in this particular case Iceland. The main focus of the critique is placed on this last point, Iceland itself as space and a place. As a number of my colleagues demonstrate in other articles in this book, there is undoubtedly something about Iceland. Islands in general do have a special allure, as John R. Gillis observes: “In Western cultures, islands have always been viewed as places of sojourn […] from the beginning they were seen as remote liminal places,” usually associated with pilgrimage or spiritual travel.4 Further, Gillis claims that nowadays, islands often capitalize on their apparent remoteness in time and space to become popular destinations— islands slake the modern thirst for that authenticity which seems in short supply on the mainland.5 Iceland is slightly set apart from the majority of islands in the world as it is inhabited, yet bordering the Arctic and thus remote in the sense of its Nordicity. Thus its island allure, composed of an amalgamation of its physical, cultural, and climatic features, is compounded through less tangible characteristics of “island-ness,” such as a sense of distance, isolation, separateness, tradition, “otherness,” and the North.6 This amalgamation creating its allure has been well documented by scholars7 as being a combination of uninhabited wilderness, volcanic activity, frontier land at the edge of the world, and a genuine physical challenge to those wanting to 3 Gunn 1988. 4 Gillis 2007: 278. 5 Gillis 2007: 280. 6 Jóhannesson, Huijbens, & Sharpley 2010. 7 Ísleifsson 1996; Oslund 2000; Pálsson & Dürrenberger 1992. [3.15.147.53] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 14:42 GMT) NATION-BRANDING: A CRITICAL EVALUATION [ 555 ] travel in it. Through the centuries Iceland has thus been a well...