Introduction

An empty space is a disorderly space, a space that is vital and acts upon the perceiving person as maybe uncomfortable, full of something that cannot be easily comprehended in terms of what it should be or what it should do. It seems to be full of nothing, hence, full of something that may be difficult to comprehend, a chaotic wilderness lacking the definition of being something and therefore, often, left at the margins.

Melrakkaslétta, in the north-east of Iceland, is a place of empty space. In people’s minds, it is far away, peripheral, even, in the minds of some, a troublesome place. It is not the wilderness that is marketed and sold as a destination or what Behrisch (2021) has called colonised wilderness. Rather, it is wilderness because it is chaotic and something that the contemporary capitalist eye of the tourism production system (Britton 1991) has not yet grasped and ordered into a scene, or what Vannini and Vannini (2022) have named wildness to emphasise the unruly characteristic. Hence, it is a vital place, which, when entered, brings forth a sense for more-than-human, unruly atmospheres. In this chapter, my focus is to investigate how this unruliness shapes the potential of the place, how its nothingness, emptiness and chaotic wilderness can assist those who visit or pass through to get in touch with the moving materials that shape it. By doing that I intend to investigate how journeying through chaotic wilderness can invite the traveller to participate directly in the sha** of wilderness and to sensually experience the lyrical stillness that embraces and creates atmospheres of vitality, richness and potential.

This chapter follows the movement of myself as the researcher, mostly on foot, into the nothingness of Melrakkaslétta. Photographic images are used to capture the lyrical composition of the narratives and moving materials that bring Melrakkaslétta into being as a place of vital and chaotic wilderness. The steps of the researcher reveal the topological dynamics of the place which bring about more-than-human encounters. These stir up the chaotic aspect of nothingness in such a way that the researcher needs to take on the role of an explorer. I want to stress that this is not the distant and authoritative explorer akin to those of the Victorian era (Craciun 2011) or the independent traveller that Cohen (1996) defined and named as someone who travelled off the beaten track. It is an explorer that wants to feel textures and detect details in order to get a sense for surroundings. But wilderness as chaotic and vital is not necessarily to be easily comprehended. Its multidimensional natures are constantly shifting in space and time, such that its shapes and characteristics continuously take on new forms and attributes.

In this chapter, I shall examine several selected and personal encounters with features and figures in Melrakkaslétta. What these encounters have in common, although different in nature, is that they brought the flow of my movement with nothingness, external and internal, to a momentary standstill which forced me to rethink the order of things in an explorative manner. I thus select a few different moments of stillness that stirred up chaos and called for contemplation. Nothingness became too full of excessively mobile somethings. The features selected are:

  • Beach

  • Arctic terns

  • Moss and lichens

  • Modern ruin—an abandoned farm

By doing this, I want to argue for new ways to rethink the potentiality of a place as a destination in tourism. Melrakkaslétta is far from representing “Icelandic landscapes” as pure and unspoiled, decorated with geological features such as glaciers and geysers. However, in recent years tourism promoters in Iceland have increasingly been emphasising Iceland as an Arctic location, although, simultaneously, socially and economically a part of the Western world (Lund et al. 2017, 2018). Iceland as an Arctic destination is often represented by emphasising the Northern lights and the midnight sun, both of which feature in extreme in Melrakkaslétta. In addition, Melrakkaslétta is covered with tundra and birdlife that certainly are Arctic in their nature besides being surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean that stretches into the Arctic Ocean on the horizon. Thus, it can be claimed that its landscapes are in many ways Arctic. Still, little attempt has been made by tourism promoters in Iceland to endorse the area as such and I want to argue that it is precisely its marginal position, as a troublesome wilderness of nothingness that prevents such action (Barðadóttir et al. 2023). As a result, Melrakkaslétta, in relation to contemporary tourism, exists as a precious untouched wilderness, free from being colonised and framed as a scene or destination.

This provides an opportunity for exploration that allows for alternative ways of journeying. Whilst the typical ordered destination allows the visitor to perform the place in question as a stage (Edensor 2000, 2001) or a scene (Larsen 2005) to be visually absorbed and experienced, the explorative aspect of the sensing body has been left out in the tourism studies literature (Edensor 2018). What is missing is the bodily touch and the earthly encounters, or how the tourist as an explorer moves with the surroundings and is simultaneously moved by them (Lund and Jóhannesson 2016). This brings forth the more-than-human flow of nature as wilderness that may also be in flux depending on the nature of the encounters (Lund and Willson 2010).

Thus, by approaching the nothingness or chaotic wilderness of Melrakkaslétta as an exploring researcher my aim is to examine how one can be in touch with the surroundings. This means allowing for the narratives its landscapes entail to emerge when moving with them and sensing their various flows and fluxes. A beach brings forth how heterogeneous materials such as driftwood, seaweed, rocks and sea animals were and are moved about by natural forces for good or bad which reflects on the chaotic and constant rejuvenation that a place undergoes. The arctic tern, or sterna paradisaea, in Icelandic Kría, brings forth a sense of constant renewal through seasonal changes and the presence of life through its extreme mobile abilities to nest and rest. Moss and lichens bring one into direct touch with vibrant earth that grows and nurtures, whilst modern ruins of a derelict farm give an insight into more-than-human co-habitation of flows and fluxes. All these features represent mobile forces that constantly shape the place. The question asked is how to allow tourists to take part in, and be a part of, these diverse, wild, and poetically moving flows and fluxes of somethings in nothingness.

Packed Lunch in Nothingness

There are eight of us in the group including me. We are undertaking four days of organised walking around the area of Raufarhöfn, a village of just under 200 inhabitants at the north-east corner of Melrakkaslétta. We have paused for a short lunch after the morning walk before heading on again towards the northernmost tip of Iceland, Rif. Each of us has found a reasonably comfortable ‘seat’ to rest on, preferably moss-covered tussocks, turning our back to the gently blowing breeze. This means that the group is not sitting in a social hub but is irregularly scattered around by the demand of the surroundings. The seating arrangement affects the atmosphere, and we are sitting in silence. Some might be reflecting on the walk we did in the morning or enjoying the peace and quiet. Although pausing, we are still in the process of moving with the landscape. As illustrated by Merleau-Ponty, motion never comes to a halt as the movement of the “lived body” is not only about “transference in space” but rather it is a “project towards movement” or a “potential movement” (2002, 272). The lived body continues to move although the physical movement is brought to a rest, nevertheless, altered rhythms allow for reflective adjustment to the surroundings (Lund 2005). In the words of Seremetakis (1996, 14), “it is a moment of poetry. It can be a moment of vision”.

I am staring ahead of me as I drink my coffee and wondering about what Melrakkaslétta really is, maybe as a researcher doing a project focusing on the area as destination, maybe as a descendant of one of the families that lived in Raufarhöfn in the past or maybe as someone who has memories from summer stays as a child on my uncle’s farm in the vicinity. I am placing myself with the landscape. The land is flat and from a distance it appears as a featureless, endless stretch of light green and yellow moss until it meets the North Atlantic Ocean somewhere on the horizon. Suddenly, I find myself saying, out loud, “there is absolutely nothing here”. My walking companions respond by looking at me silently, but I am aware that I have with my impulsiveness disturbed their thoughts. After a short hesitation, the person beside me responds and asks: “And is that bad?”

My thoughts are interrupted; I have not considered if nothingness is good or bad or if that kind of dualism even applies. In other words, I am not exactly sure what I was implying by referring to nothingness. Regarding my position as a tourism researcher, I was possibly indicating that the landscapes of Melrakkaslétta do not feature anything considered to be visually stimulating with a touch of the sublime as it appears in marketing material displaying Icelandic nature. Travelling in Melrakkaslétta does not offer encounters with features like picturesque mountainous stretches, waterfalls, glaciers or colourful thermal areas (Vannini and Vannini 2022). However, with her response my companion indicated that it is exactly nothingness—wilderness—that attracts.

As Oslund has pointed out, Iceland’s geographical location, at the northern edge of Europe, has provided its promotion as “Europe’s last wilderness” (Oslund 2005, 96) although the fact is that according to definitions the concept does not apply except to some areas over 500 metres in altitude in the central highlands (Ólafsdóttir and Runnström 2011). The official definition of wilderness is nature in its purest form, as untouched by humans (Lund 2013) which “reinforces the idea that nature exists in places that are separate from culture” (Rutherford 2011, 103). However, as Vannini and Vannini (2022) reveal, the wilderness concept is strongly portrayed in marketing materials promoting Iceland, and tourists are not preoccupied with legal definitions. Wilderness areas are to be found where you expect to and want to find such surroundings. As a result, Vannini and Vannini make a distinction between wilderness and wildness referring to the ‘wild’ as “an ephemeral and vitalist force, […] not just found in wilderness areas” (2022, 67; see also Lorimer 2015). This is akin to Behrisch’s attempt to turn to the wild as “an unruly concept, resisting containment, naming and enclosure” (2021, 491). It appears that the wilderness concept has lost touch with its intended content or its wildness as the prefix wild hints towards a disorderly space, a troublesome space, hence, an empty space full of something; more-than-human, even poetic. Thus, I set out to explore the wild in the wilderness of Melrakkaslétta by sensing its vitalities, or its somethings in nothingness.

Beach

Baffled by my thoughts about nothingness I set out on a journey as my ‘lived body’ returns to the area where we were walking earlier in the morning. The route had taken us along the Hraunhafnartangi peninsula, the second northernmost tip of Iceland. There are two landmarks on the way, both of which are manmade, highly visible and stable features in the landscape that serve as landmarks for those who travel across the peninsula. These are a concrete lighthouse built in 1951 and a cairn, believed to be the burial mound of Þorgeir Hávarðsson, a Viking age warrior. We walked by the sea over a heavily bouldered coastal pathway full of driftwood, seaweed and other materials that the ocean delivers. Along the route a rope or the remains of a fishing net, tattered in places, had been stretched out as to mark the pathway (Fig. 3.1).

Fig. 3.1
A photograph of the pathway that has tattered rope and net. A tree trunk is present across the path.

(Photo by Katrín Anna Lund)

Snapshot of the pathway

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This caught our eye and required contemplation. The uneven boulders that have through time been piled up by the forces of the ocean restrained our speed of movement and demanded a bodily attentiveness. The steps forward sometimes needed to be taken with care, which provided time for exploring the ground on which we walked. A certain choreography through which bodies and earthly materials interacted created rhythms of an explorative mode in which wonders and mysteries of materials we came across were envisaged. A weathered scapula of an unknown whale species brought forth narratives about how stranded whales nurtured whole settlements in the past when life support could be scarce. Why whales strand on beaches is unresolved. Natural conditions such as weather can be the cause, but that is far from always the case. Illness or injuries might also be the reason, or conditions underwater that whales might not be able to deal with. Unanswered questions and mysteries made me aware of how small we are at the earthly level, or when situated in what Ingold (2008) refers to as “the open world” that is continuously under formation through the comings and goings that shape it. In fact, it is this openness we inhabit in our daily lives but it becomes obscured through the human-centred needs to order and compartmentalise, to divide between culture and nature instead of allowing it is the wild to swirl and affect. Beaches are indeed places of untouched wilderness where one cannot ignore the comings and goings that shape the flows and fluxes of worldmaking. Sand, piled-up boulders, seaweed, dead birds, whalebones, shells, ropes, fishing nets and driftwood provide a sense of chaos that for some can be troublesome. It is not ‘pure’ nature but wild and unruly (Fig. 3.2).

Fig. 3.2
A photograph of driftwood and rocks piled up across the shore.

(Photo by Katrín Anna Lund)

Driftwood

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In her writing about driftwood, Pétursdóttir (2020) critically discusses how we tend to look at what drifts as things out of place and label it as waste and pollutants. As an archaeologist she embraces those same things as heritage, maybe unruly, but nevertheless as items that are full of narratives. She suggests that instead of looking at each piece like a mere object out of place; we should treat them as wayfarers that have in the course of their travels accumulated narratives that go way beyond our human existence. These give us an opportunity to drift with them and think along their paths as we encounter them. The weathered scapula, mentioned above, brought forth stories about more-than-human entanglements that twined together timeless speculations about life and death in the open world. I say timeless because although their stories may loosely hint at certain temporalities, they do not have defined points in history. Rather, they are stories in which past, present and future fuse, confuse and awe. Pieces of driftwood may contain narratives from having been a bud in Siberia before somehow slip** away from the sawmill and taking long journeys of being tossed around by wind and currents in the Atlantic Ocean to the shore of Melrakkaslétta to become amalgamated with the tundra vegetation on the shores of Iceland’s northern coast. And the journey continues not as a line, rather it meanders and swirls around in and through different spatio-temporal dimensions (Fig. 3.3).

Fig. 3.3
A photograph of a few driftwoods on the ground. It is partially covered by moss.

(Photo by Katrín Anna Lund)

Driftwood in tundra

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It is when encountering these heterogeneous bundles of earthly narratives that I become densely aware of the mobile powers that continuously shape places. Sometimes they are slow, sometimes fast but no matter the speed, forcefulness or gentleness, they are seamlessly ongoing as they entangle. My own journey goes along amongst, and with, these movements and I am momentarily a fragmental part of these swirls of enormous entanglements. At the same time, when looking around it seems like every |object, stones and boulders, every piece of driftwood, whale bones, ropes and nets have firmly grounded themselves and are not moving anywhere, and a sense of poetic stillness hems us in.

Arctic Terns

The explorative rhythms continued as we turned off the path and set off in the direction of the lighthouse over the tundra. Although the earth felt softer, we walked on an uneven peatland and had to be careful as we were crossing nesting grounds not to step on young arctic terns (Sterna paradisaea). They were hidden in between the tussocks, difficult to see as the ground is covered with low growing moss, lichens, heather and grass. Above us intensive shrieks from the adult terns told us that the wild was opening up into new dimensions as different types of rhythmic mobilities added to the entanglements. As Whitehouse points out, birds’ “sound-making is also place-making” (2015, 58) and the terns not only let us know that we were out of place but also that they considered us as a threat to their territory (Fig. 3.4).

Fig. 3.4
A photograph of Arctic terns flying over a plain covered with flowering plants.

(Photo by Þórný Barðadóttir)

Arctic terns at Hraunhafnartangi

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Occasionally, some decide to make an attack and plunge down in an attempt to peck a walker’s skull who, in our case, is prepared with a walking stick for defence. The tern aims at the highest point and thus goes for the stick rather than the skull. They are protecting their youngsters and simultaneously the livelihood of other birds that nest in the vicinity (Fig. 3.5).

Fig. 3.5
A photograph of an arctic tern flying above a person at the shore. The person wears a backpack and points a stick at the arctic tern.

(Photo by Katrín Anna Lund)

An arctic tern contemplating a peck

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Thus, as Whitehouse points out, the terns’ place-making “is an act of territorialising space, of making relations with other birds and continually reweaving the context of their lives” (2015, 58). The terns’ forceful territorialisation protects other species, such as the eider ducks who benefit from nesting close to the terns. This simultaneously assists human residents, many of whom harvest the ducks’ nests for their down. This is an example of what Lorimer (2015, 41) names an ecological charisma; a point of view that takes “an ethological perspective on human-nonhuman-environment interaction” and recognises more-than-human everyday co-habitation. The arctic tern is also known for nesting in the vicinity of human habitation as that provides protection against predators such as foxes that are the most brutal invaders of their nesting grounds. Foxes tend to keep away from humans as they have been persecuted by humans protecting their husbandry, including the eider duck.

As we walked over the tundra the terns made us intensively aware that we were crossing their terrain. We were not welcome and had to adjust to that, holding up our sticks and showing respect and sympathy towards their attacks. “Charisma is contested” as Lorimer (2015, 40) points out and people have different opinions about the arctic tern. Some people love them whilst others find them aggressive and their shrieks discomforting. They can scare people whilst, simultaneously, calling forth a sense of respect as humans can associate with them; they are protecting their offspring just as we can imagine we as humans might do. Lorimer (2015) refers to these types of associations as corporeal or aesthetic charisma, when humans directly relate to or even share characteristics with non-humans (see also Milton 2002).

Corporeal charisma brings forth affective memories of former encounters with terns and I find myself on a beach in north-east Scotland about 20 years ago. I was out on an early evening walk with a friend in springtime. Suddenly, we came across a huge flock of arctic terns that were sitting on the beach. As we came closer we saw that they actually covered a big area and there was no way that we could continue except by walking through where they were sitting and so we did. We moved very slowly, trying not to disturb them. The feeling was absurd. They did not move and just sat there in silence. It was like they did not even sense us, at least they did not care. I guessed they were resting on their long journey from South Africa on their way to Iceland, much like myself having a pack-lunch. Thus, although pausing they were on the move, momentarily changing the rhythms of journeying and adjusting to new landscapes. The arctic tern is a great migrator. It travels between hemispheres twice a year, arriving to its northern breeding grounds in the Arctic springtime, heading off from there as autumn starts to draw in. For me arctic terns are active, loud, fit and ferocious. They do not just move with seasonality, they make seasonality (Whitehouse 2017); indeed, their movements, to, from and in places, make places. When I experienced a flock of terns sitting quietly on the ground like I did in Scotland, gave a strange feeling as for me they were somehow not in an appropriate place and not at all behaving as they should. But I could only make guesses about the terns’ perception of the situation. The fact is, as Lorimer points out, that contested charisma belongs to “more-than-human phenomena” (2015, 40). Arctic terns, just like other creatures, perceive their environment and those they encounter in their own ways and evaluate the situation on their own terms and respond as they feel like, ferociously or quietly.

Moss and Lichen

When we arrived at the lighthouse most of us had got used to the terns and I had the feeling that some of them at least had got used to us, as it felt like the numbers of attacks had decreased but maybe that was just my imagination. After a visit into the lighthouse, we headed towards the burial mound, the other landmark at Hraunhafnartangi (Fig. 3.6).

Fig. 3.6
A wide shot of a few people walking to a burial mound in front of them. A flock of birds fly above them.

(Photo by Þórný Barðadóttir)

Walking to the burial mound

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We had adjusted to the loud shrieks and occasional attacks, being as they were an inevitable part of the place that at this time of the year is dominated by the terns. Nevertheless, we were aware that the terns were screaming and imagined that they were begging us to be careful as the juveniles were scattered around and could be hard to see, hidden by the low tundra growth that now got our attention. The arctic tundra vegetation is mostly combined of grasses, low shrubs, mosses and lichens. First, we started admiring the buds of the plant that inhabitants of Iceland chose in a nationwide competition in 2004 to be the national flower of Iceland, a flower intended to become a symbol of unity: holtasóley (mountain avens; Dryas octopetala). As Hartigan (2019, 1) points out we, as humans, sometimes “have a difficult time noticing plants at all, and a species-as-décor sensibility leads most of us to see them only as background wallflowers”, decorative or symbolic (Fig. 3.7).

Fig. 3.7
A photograph of a holtasoley flower placed on a rock.

(Photo by Katrín Anna Lund)

Holtasóley

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Deeper examination of what they can tell us reveals, however, that plants are challenging. Unlike the narratives that the driftwood on the beach or the shrieking arctic tern tell that allow one to travel with them into different and distant worlds plant stories are mostly hidden underground. Growth is elusive but simultaneously attracts (Hathaway 2018; Satsuka 2018). Looking at the ground, the tundra vegetation allows for a sensual and imaginative exploration into a world of entangled multispecies habitation. Indeed, vegetation is not only a combination of multiple plants; lichen, for example, is not a plant but an algae and fungus in coexistence. One of those lichen, Cetraria islandica, has been called Iceland moss in English, but in Icelandic it is called fjallagras, mountain grass. It is interesting to contemplate why lichen has been named as grass whilst being at the same time perceived as moss. Fjallagras has for centuries been valued in Iceland for its nurturing characteristics and was, and still is, collected as a dietary supplement. This brings forth questions of how, and by whom, species are defined and valued and for what purposes.

Fjallagras was a prominent species on the ground over which we were walking and in places it was lying like a thin cover over multispecies earthly habitation sha** a vegetational entanglement of irregular meshwork (Ingold 2007). On closer exploration, it turned out to be a chaotic amalgam of various sorts of mosses, crowberry shrubs, wild thyme, dwarf willow and grass (Fig. 3.8).

Fig. 3.8
A closeup photograph of Iceland moss.

(Photo by Katrín Anna Lund)

Iceland moss

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A slightly different angle, and using a close-up lens, gives a completely different perspective and reveals at least three types of lichen and one type of moss. My amateur eye wanted to capture what caught my attention as a mysterious and colourful ‘flower’ and I was curious to know its name so after the trip I sent the image to an ecologist colleague (Fig. 3.9). She responded by saying “Sorry, no flower in this photo” but verified the elusiveness of the earth by listing up the variety of species that the image contains. “Up to the left, a type of moss called gamburmosi or grámosi in Icelandic (Racomitrium lanuginosum), up to the right a lichen called móakrækla in Icelandic (Sphaerophorus globosus), at the centre skarlatbikar in Icelandic (Cladonia borealis) and at the bottom one can glimpse the lichen hreindýrakróka (Cladonia arbuscula)”.

Fig. 3.9
A photograph of the moss and lichen in its natural habitat.

(Photo by Katrín Anna Lund)

Moss and lichen

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Thus ‘my flower’ is not even a plant, it is a lichen and, as pointed out above, lichen is a coexistence of algae and fungus which makes one think about how “organisms come into being in relationship to each other” (Hathaway 2018, 41). As Satsuka (2018) points out, growth is a sensual relational gathering “always in a fluid and unstable condition” (p. 82) and as Tsing (2015) demonstrates vegetation is a multispecies composition in which humans are involved “[…] each organism changes everyone’s world. Bacteria made our oxygen atmosphere, and plants help maintain it. Plants live on land because fungi made soil by digesting rocks” (p. 22). Therefore, when the colours of skarlatbikar or Cladonia borealis attracted my attention, it was not really a ‘flower’ as an object that caught my eye but rather I was drawn to complex entanglements of lively co-habitation.

Modern Ruin—An Abandoned Farm

Now, we head back to the moment when we are having our packed lunch. I have been wandering around in chaotic nothingness, a wilderness full of something, encountering entangled relations that have sent me on journeys into different spatio/temporal dimensions. It is time to alter the rhythms and head on and now to the northernmost point in Iceland, Rif. The guide gives the direction (Fig. 3.10).

Fig. 3.10
A photograph of a few people walking near the shore.

(Photo by Þórný Barðadóttir)

Walking towards Rif

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We walk in a row, mostly in silence. The exploration continues. The entanglements have altered as the mobility of materials, drift and growth, combine and enmesh differently depending on how earthly substances such as water, air and land meet and shape up. Different colours appear such as the orange drift of seaweed on a beach that feels softer in terms of its slightly gentler textures compared to the boulders we were walking on earlier (Fig. 3.11). The growth is grassier, and we are away from nesting grounds so we only spot an occasional tern flying out to sea for nourishment. The route feels less intense, there are no loud birds, and this allows me to pay attention to the salty smell of the sea in combination with the smell of decomposing seaweed and slowly rotting driftwood. The lack of actual landmarks now makes me really feel that I am walking at the edge of the open world, in nothingness that is, nevertheless, full of ever-moving somethings. I am still in wilderness but now textures have altered due to changed material compositions and thus provide slightly different feelings than on the walk we did earlier.

Fig. 3.11
A photograph of a bright-colored seaweed drifted along the rocky shore.

(Photo by Katrín Anna Lund)

Orange drift of seaweed on the beach

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Suddenly, the openness is disturbed by the appearance of an abandoned farm that seems to come into view out of nowhere (Fig. 3.12). This structure, in a place that otherwise feels unstructured, creates “an aura of something out of place” (Lund and Jóhannesson 2014, 451) and provides an element of wildness, a feature of alterity entering into the more-than-human entanglements we have already been moving with. Maybe it is the fact that someone at some point in time made an attempt to order and stabilise these empty grounds that in itself provides the element of wild. Like Behrisch (2021, 493), “I feel addressed by the wild, arrested to stop and look, to take photographs”. As Edensor (2005) and Pálsson (2013) have pointed out modern ruins evoke a sublime experience in a contemporary context, they are elusive at the same time as they attract. They are an addition to the ongoing narratives and as such accentuated.

Fig. 3.12
A photograph of ruins of a farm at the shore. Large rocks are scattered around the farm.

(Photo by Katrín Anna Lund)

The modern ruin of the farm, Rif

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We head towards the structure that, by sticking out visually, has become a landmark where the journey to the northernmost place in Iceland comes to a halt before heading back. However, the ruin is not simply a turning point, rather it exaggerates the need for exploration.

The guide tells us that the farm used to be wealthy, with a large farmland extending far inland, but it was abandoned in 1947 when the residents decided to give in due to the often unpredictable and fierce earthly forces combining wind and water. As we come closer to the ruin the more-than-human entanglements as materials that can be associated with human habitation start appearing in various forms, enmeshing with the other more-than-human materials. The ruin shapes its own territory. Its concrete materiality provides a “sense of stability and order” (Lund and Jóhannesson 2014, 451) that is at odds with the unruly wilderness that we have been travelling with. Simultaneously, I can strongly sense its vulnerability as it is subject to the erratic, sometimes volatile, forces of the ever-moving surroundings. Ruins are elusive because, as emphasised by DeSilvey and Edensor (2013, 466), they “refer to both object [a ruin] and process [to ruin]”. They have been left not only to decay but to take on the role as narrators of a dramatic turning point, even broken dreams, stories that are brought forth through the ruin. It is through that process that the place comes together, through a multiplicity of narratives told by lichen-covered concrete walls, pieces of wood and corrugated iron that the wind has scattered around, driftwood that will not be utilised for human needs (Figs. 3.13 and 3.14).

Fig. 3.13
A photograph of driftwood and moss-covered rocks at the shore.

(Photo by Katrín Anna Lund)

Pieces of wood and corrugated iron on the shore by Rif

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Fig. 3.14
A photograph of a lichen-covered concrete wall. It is a ruined building.

(Photo by Katrín Anna Lund)

Lichen-covered concrete wall at Rif

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The place provides a sense of stillness that is full of life, hence poetic, when one attempts to comprehend it. It has been left behind but the memories linger and the ghosts of the past lurk around as present absences (Meier et al. 2013) through the more-than-human materialities that have continued to shape the habitation. Furthermore, the arctic terns that had been relatively absent as we walked to the places now remind us that we are now back in their territory when we move about for our exploration.

Conclusions

The aim of this chapter was to rethink the potential of a place as a tourism destination by contemplating ways in which tourists might take part in its sha** and becoming. To do so I headed into landscapes of nothingness for an exploration only to find myself emerge with chaotic, wild wilderness, full of something. Journeying through chaotic wilderness can invite the traveller to participate directly in the sha** of wilderness and to sensually experience the poetic stillness that embraces and creates atmospheres of vitality, richness and potential. Thus, the focus was to investigate how unruliness shapes the potential of place, or how the nothingness, emptiness and chaotic wilderness can assist those who visit to get in touch with the moving materials that shape it. To do so I took on the role of an explorer to feel textures and detect details, getting a sense for the surroundings as they are encountered on mutual terms. Encounters allowed me to travel into different spatio/temporal dimensions, a beach, arctic terns, moss and lichens and an abandoned farm, all of which bring the whole surroundings together in a more-than-human manner and bring forth their intense mobile natures into which the explorer emerges.

In contrast to my approach to Melrakkaslétta as a place of nothingness, tourism destinations are usually introduced as places of definite somethings, as stages and/or scenes on which tourism performs. Tourism destinations, as Sverrisdóttir (2011; see also Lárusdóttir 2015) points out, are highly organised spaces that affect the tourism performance. This is a contradiction, she states, as everyday life is usually carried out in highly organised spaces, and therefore, it should be recognised that one of the reasons for travelling is to get away from such order. Sverrisdóttir suggests that we rethink the tourist as someone who travels by intuition “rather than organized around recognizable visual attractions” (2011, 83). Hence, I want to state that introducing the explorative aspect of tourism, or the tourist that wants to delve into the surroundings and allow themselves to extend the journey into different topological dimensions, to be moved by as well as move with the destination, will allow us to re-value the potentialities and poetics of places as destinations.