The expedition led by the French mathematician Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis visited the Tornio Valley in 1736–1737. Measurements carried out by the multidisciplinary international expedition in challenging Arctic conditions demonstrated that the Earth is slightly flattened at the poles, just as Isaac Newton had modelled based on his theory of gravity.
The results of Maupertuis’ expedition are a milestone in the history of science. The expedition attracted considerable attention at the time and also left its mark on the history of the Tornio Valley and on European perceptions of the North. Against this background, the panel discussed how history lives, and could live, in the present day, and what kinds of connections past events, such as scientific expeditions, have with tourism today. The panelists were Titta Kallio-Seppä (Museum of Tornio Valley), Juha-Pekka Koskinen (Visit TornioHaparanda Association), Ulla Mikkanen (National Land Survey of Finland and World Heritage coordination), and Iida Pyykkö (University of Oulu, EU CROCUS project).
Based on the panel and public discussion, culture, local identity and historical events were seen as valuable resources for tourism. For example, in the Tornio Valley, shared cross-border culture, language and history are among the region’s strengths. Alongside this sense of ‘borderlessness’, the region’s history of scientific exploration has created opportunities for tourism development.
Living traditions, historical events and stories rooted in specific places have also been highlighted in many other remote regions. Often, however, their full potential remains untapped. In the panel and public discussion, making use of local cultural features in tourism was considered to require more financial resources as well as stronger human expertise. Closer cross-border cooperation, marketing and commercialization were also called for.
These challenges have been identified in the ongoing EU-funded CROCUS research project, which is part of the FRONT research programme. According to the results, local residents, entrepreneurs and tourists visiting the Tornio Valley found the region’s cultural sites interesting, but called for further investment in their maintenance — in other words, in their quality and productization. This was seen as a way to generate further demand for local identity and cultural history.
The panelists at the Maupertuis Symposium proposed new, broader and more concrete ways of combining cultural tourism themes with existing tourism strengths. For example, lively shopping tourism brings visitors to the region, but only a small proportion of them currently use accommodation and restaurant services in the Tornio Valley. According to the panelists, this could create opportunities for further productization of food traditions, for instance. Another example raised was the furnishing of cultural-historical themed rooms in hotels to spark interest in local attractions. One example of this is the Maupertuis Cabinet in Pello, which serves tourists and local residents in a restaurant located near a site that sheds light on the history of the Struve Geodetic Arc measurements.
The writer of this blog post is Jarkko Saarinen, Leader of the FRONT research programme and Professor of Human Geography at the University of Oulu.
The Exploring resilience blog discusses the current themes of research, teaching and development of resilience, i.e., crisis resistance and deepens knowledge about the management of global change, and possible solutions to the wicked problems of sustainability. The authors are researchers and experts in the field, and members of the cooperation networks of the University of Oulu’s FRONT PROFI7 research programme.