Chapter 1: Open local communities: diversity and place-based values on the Nordic Atlantic coast

This report is part of a growing global interest in understanding the ongoing transformation of coastal communities and how these changes are managed locally, in order to contribute to the development of an ecologically and socially sustainable future (Armitage et al., 2017). For centuries, Nordic Atlantic coastal communities have been engaged in international value chains selling marine products in distant markets. Over a long period of time, these communities have also been a migration destination, with people moving there for work, leisure/tourism, love/marriage and seeking refuge, among other reasons; some people choose to stay, while others move on to other locations. Our first report (Hovgaard & Bærenholdt, 2022), from which we develop this introduction, found that a resilient local community builds on the economic diversity created by a mix of different global and local value chains. Economic diversification is thus key to building a robust economy that can withstand the ‘unexpected and uncertain’. However, we also found resilience to be contingent on flexibility in the environmental and social organisation of local communities. Thus, resilience involves access to a variety of natural resources, as well as the redistribution of value between social groups.

We also observed changes in the social composition and structure of coastal communities. The resilience of these communities is impacted by an ageing demographic, gender imbalances and relocation, even in economically successful areas. Importantly, these changes are driven by increased mobility, which affects how residents value the place and feel a sense of belonging. Consequently, there is increasing variation in place values. Thus, there seems to be diversity in place values, which parallels our initial findings of value-chain diversity. However, the fact that the people belonging to a local community value a particular place plays a significant role in bridging diversity locally. Therefore, a key objective of this second report is to further investigate how local communities develop through diversity.

From the preceding discussion, we can say that local communities are made up of people connected to a particular place in a range of ways and who share diverse place values. The vital force of diversity appears to not only come from economic value chains of the various key economic sectors (fisheries, aquaculture, tourism, etc.), but also from the diversity of place values important to people with different kinds of attachment to place. People associated with a particular place come from different backgrounds and have different types of engagement. Some may only live some of the time in the local community, as they work in other places. Other people may work locally but come from other places, while others may commute in and out of the community daily. The research literature including, among other studies, Skaptadóttir and Garðarsdóttir (2020), shows how much the migrant population in Icelandic coastal communities has grown since 1990. Migrants often choose to settle in coastal communities, working in industries such as fishing, tourism, services, and similar sectors.

Our first report also showed that second homes play a significant role in the socio-economic structure of these communities. Coastal communities are recognised as attractive places for second homers, who are a mixed category of people with diverse relations to more than one place. This diversity thus also implies different kinds of place values, which will be further explored in a later section on second homes.

What we can deduce from the above is that coastal communities are becoming increasingly diverse and open communities. We thus want to investigate the following overall research question: How does the resilience of local coastal communities in the Nordic Atlantic relate to their increased diversity and openness?

To address this research question, we conducted case studies in local communities in four countries: Norway, Iceland, the Faroes and Greenland, as we also did in the first report (Hovgaard & Bærenholdt, 2022). However, while these case studies relate to issues discussed in this introduction, they were primarily conducted to gain further insight into the contextual issues observed in the first report. Each chapter outlines a more precise argument for the focus of the content.

To convey our understanding of place and place value, we will point to three general and important observations from our case studies:

The first observation concerns the importance of diversity for every local community. Local communities primarily share a particular place, but people increasingly use, value and deal with this place in very different ways. This allows for the kinds of flexibility and diverse activities central to the resilience of Nordic Atlantic communities.

Second, the places people live in and value, or only visit for shorter period(s) of time, are always in some way connected to other places. For instance, the concrete, but very different, infrastructural situation of each local community needs to be taken into consideration to understand this connectedness.

Third, municipalities have different roles and competences in Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes, and Norway, and, conceptually, municipalities can be approached in (at least) three different ways: as organisations, territories, and places (Bærenholdt, 2007, p. 175-179). For our investigation the point of interest is the relation between places and municipalities (as organisations for territorial responsibilities), which differs markedly among the case-study locations. For instance, our Greenlandic local communities belong to a geographically very large municipality covering several places. As we saw in our first report, people in Nanortalik and Narsaq are more bound to their local communities compared to the other cases. Also, the Icelandic local communities belong to the same municipality, amalgamating the two places of Siglufjörður and Ólafsfjörður into one municipality, causing certain tensions between places, as will be explained in more detail in Chapter 3. In contrast to the Icelandic and Greenlandic cases, the Faroese local communities of Vágur and Tvøroyri each have their own municipalities, with five additional smaller municipalities on the same island of Suðuroy. Finally, and with slightly more complexity, the Norwegian island communities of Lurøy and Vega are in fact formed and defined as municipalities, but Lurøy consists of several local communities and islands. The tension between place and municipality can be problematic, as seen in our case studies of Greenland and Iceland. However, the important questions to address are as follows: Which kind of relation between places and municipalities can best facilitate a strategic management of the ‘open local community’? Is a multi-place municipality better at mobilising the diverse forces of the ‘open community’? Or is it easier and more straightforward to bridge diversity when focusing on only one place? Furthermore, which of the situations is better for developing a resilient local community (such as, for example, the attempt to ‘tunnel’ places in the Icelandic case)? Finally, does a long-term tradition for a multi-place municipality (like Lurøy) in fact already produce a new, more stretched-out ‘porous’ place and ‘open community’, with shared place values over geographical distance?

Before returning to the discussion of ‘open communities’, resilience and place values, in the next sections we will first highlight some significant changes in the population dynamics of the local communities, and we will especially focus on the growing importance of both second homers and international migrants.

In our first report, we generally saw age (pyramid) distribution figures develop towards ‘slimmer’ distributions from 2000 to 2020 as an indicator of ageing (Bogadóttir et al., 2022; Eythórsson & Thorgrimsdóttir, 2022; Larsen et al., 2022; Lebel et al., 2022). These numbers show that, like many other parts of the world, Nordic Atlantic societies are ageing, and this is especially the case in smaller peripheral communities. It is especially so where the younger generation moves away for education and other life experiences. Depopulation and ageing are often seen as directly associated phenomena, but in fact their relationship is more complex than that a linear one would suggest. Although there may not be enough jobs or educational opportunities for the younger age groups locally, the senior population is also a resource, enabling more people live in often beautiful and calm distant places.

As observed in our first report (Bærenholdt & Hovgaard, 2022), there are interesting differences among our case-study communities. Declining population is especially seen in the Icelandic and Greenlandic local communities, but not in the same decade. Ólafsfjörður and especially Siglufjörður showed a lesser decline in population in the second decade of the 21^st century compared to the first decade, which undoubtedly reflects the effect of the Héðinsfjarðargöng tunnel construction and other public investments. Meanwhile, the relative position of Ólafsfjörður to Siglufjörður has weakened, and this is especially the case for the population decrease from 2020 to 2023. Ólafsfjörður’s population loss is on the same scale as that of Nanortalik. In addition, the two Greenlandic local communities in particular experienced decreasing population in the 2010s. This contrasts with the stability of the population in the two Faroese case-study communities which should be understood in the context that Tvøroyri and Vágur are the two ‘town municipalities’ on Suðuroy, where several smaller settlements and municipalities on the island are experiencing population decline (Bogadóttir et al., 2022, p. 79). This is a specific configuration of towns and settlements, which differs from the Greenlandic, Icelandic and Norwegian cases, where the statistical units include smaller settlements and farms scattered within the district/​municipality.

Figure 1.1 shows how the population changed in three periods between 2000 and 2023 in the eight local communities studied.

Figure 1.1: Relative population changes 2000-2023, all ages.

Source: Statistics Greenland, Statistics Iceland, Statistics Faroe Islands & Statistics Norway

The wider geographical, infrastructural and societal context clearly plays a definitive role. As highlighted in the first report (Hovgaard & Bærenholdt, 2022), the resilience of local communities depends greatly upon what we have called ‘diversification from above’. Public investments such as those in a tunnel and a larger school in Siglufjörður and Ólafsfjörður (Fjallabyggd) play a significant role, but even with infrastructural improvements, geography matters: the neighbouring but less remote town of Dalvík (on the way to Akureyri) is not experiencing population decline. Lurøy and Vega are also facing a decline in population, but Lurøy (with many labour migrants), like Siglufjörður, had only a small decrease in the 2010s.

The overall impression of population loss is thus nuanced when we look at the numbers in more detail. This is also the case when the relative population change is divided into three age groups, as shown in Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2: Relative population changes in three age cohorts

Source: Statistics Greenland, Statistics Iceland, Statistics Faroe Islands & Statistics Norway

Major relative changes are evident in the age groups of up to 16 years and 65 years and older, but this is of course also because the 17–64 year group is larger. Much of the change comes from the already settled population growing older (leaving the up to 16 years group and joining the 65 years and older group), especially since there are not so many births and older people are tending to live longer. There is a decrease in young people over time, and it is also evident how things have changed over time in Ólafsfjörður and especially Siglufjörður. The relative changes in the 65 years and older group are high, but also diverse, reflecting the size of different generations within each community as they age. Ageing occurs in all places, but the temporal rhythm differs. One factor is that in some places/periods and not in others, senior people move to other places when they retire. Some places are more attractive than others to seniors relocating.

The ageing of the population is a strong component, but only one among many. Also, although demographic statistics are highly reliable data, they only measure where people are registered to live and provide only limited information about their patterns of mobility. For example, more people live in their second homes than we might expect, not least among senior people. This openness to people moving to these communities is accompanied by a dynamic development over time in their population composition. Significant changes may occur from one decade to another, with marked differences between generations and where an individual’s permanent address comes to play an insignificant role in their attachment to place.

A common observation in our fieldwork is that all our case-study localities have a significant number of ‘empty houses’, as some locals put it. The common feature is that these are properties mainly owned by someone from ‘outside’ of the local community. It is also evident that these residences are used to varying degrees and for different purposes. In some places, houses are empty and falling into decay. However, more often these houses are a positive asset for their owners, actively used as their second homes. The coastal communities studied in this project are therefore part of an international trend, where an increasingly large part of the coastal housing stock is owned by people other than the permanent locals. The fact that many coastal and rural communities have a housing structure characterised by second homes is a trend that can be traced back several decades, resulting from industrialisation and urbanisation in the post-war period. The Nordic region is also considered the place in the world where second homes are most common, with half of the population having access to a second home (Hall et al., 2009, p. 72). In recent years, many second homes not only have an identity connection but form part of market relations in an ever-growing tourism market.

Research into second homes has been ongoing for a long time, dating back to the early stages of emigration from the countryside. With increased mobility and the growth of tourism, the phenomenon has regained research interest, with Coppock (1977), Hall and Müller (2004) and Hall and Müller (2018) contributing essential reference works. Based on the literature and our own observations, we can see four important types of second homes in our case-study communities.

First, there are the vacated or inherited homes that the owners choose to keep for various reasons. This may be because the houses have poor value in the real estate market, or because the owners have a conscious desire to maintain their local connection. The Nordic region is referred to as the place where people most typically maintain their local attachment and as a region where an individual’s place of residence is not necessarily the same as the place they feel most attached to (Marjavaara, 2008, p. 45).

The second type of second home is based on ownership, where the owners consciously purchase a property because of the amenity value of a particular house or local area. In this scenario, the owner typically does not have a prior identity connection to the local community. Coastal communities are typically among the communities that have a particularly high attraction value (Persson, 2015; Marjavaara, 2008).

The third type of second home is the purchase of existing or newly built houses, with the explicit aim of commercial exploitation of their amenity value. This type of second home is typically located in areas perceived to be attractive in terms of nature, experiences and services, as well as being integrated into the tourism industry. Ownership is decoupled from those who stay in the home.

The fourth type is a combination of the desire for local affiliation and market relations. Many people see the possibility of having a second home of their own, inherited or purchased, but also as a source of income. Technological platforms such as Facebook and Airbnb have made this combination far more possible.

This variation in housing patterns, which we will study in more detail in different ways in several chapters of this report, shows that today’s coastal communities have a great diversity in their human connection. It is also clear that market relations seem to play a far greater role today than just one or two decades ago. In other words, the amenity value of coastal communities and the reasons for attachment vary widely, mirroring the diversity of value chains pointed out in our previous report. In addition, this diversity is closely related to the development of value chains, especially in tourism. Amenity values are associated with private property, but may also relate to common goods, such as common nature areas; these shared place values can also have an impact on the value of private properties. On the one hand, if there is a stronger form of engagement around a community and its environment, this will possibly have a positive influence on market values. On the other hand, the management of common goods through public access to lands may influence land price negatively.

As the title of Coppock’s (1977) landmark book suggests, a classic theme in the literature is whether the increased proportion of second homes should be seen as a blessing or a curse. The early literature clearly leaned towards the more negative interpretation, while the more recent literature has shifted more towards the fact that second homers can make a positive contribution to local development, which again is associated with the shift in societal mobility and changes in the perception of the ‘local’ or ‘rural’. Of course, this also depends on the types of second homes, as discussed above. If too many second homes are only purchased for commercial purposes, such as renting out to tourists, this may result in many tourists coming and going, these second homes do not contribute much to the building of ‘place-community’ and ‘place value’.

Examples of poor planning, loss of local control, marginalisation and gentrification are also found in abundance. However, there are also plenty of examples where permanent and non-permanent locals meet, leading to local revitalisation and positive development. This shows the importance of contextual studies of the processes that result from the development of second homes. Furthermore, in the light of our understanding of open local communities, the growth of second homes and thus of non-permanent premises will not be reversed in the immediate future. Therefore, this underscores the importance of strategic leadership, where we should not only explore the recognition of open local communities by local leadership but also dig deeper into the issue of how non-permanent locals, i.e. second homers, are involved in local development. This of course also applies to temporary workers, immigrant workers and other non-permanent locals.

The field of rural studies has seen increased attention to the implications of different kinds of mobilities for local communities. These mobilities include migration, everyday mobility and virtual mobility (Milbourne & Kitchen, 2014). In general, people are moving more frequently and for longer durations. In some areas, international labour migration may compensate for the decline in the local population. For example, this is the case in several fishing and aquaculture communities in Norway, where the proportion of the foreign-born (migrant) population has reached more than 10% (Aure et al., 2018; Rye, 2018).

Research conducted by Aure et al. (2018) on Herøy municipality (Nordland, Norway), located between Lurøy and Vega investigated in this report, found that many international migrants working in the aquaculture industry were only partly integrated, since for international migrants the value of place was primarily tied to work opportunities. This implies that integration into the local community was more about living in the same place than actually taking part in a common community together with other individuals they know well. Obviously, this is also associated with migrants’ low-status position in a segregated workplace. Thus, there are many people attached to a local community, but the kinds of attachments differ.

For some – ‘the locals’ – the value of a place lies in its significance as people’s home, where they feel a sense of belonging in living there with their loved ones. For others – ‘the mobile individuals’ – the value of a place lies more in their jobs, which were also the reason for their movement to the place. This more mobile form of life has been a historical tradition in many Nordic Atlantic fishing hamlets, which originally emerged as seasonal places to stay in the fishing season (Bærenholdt, 1998, 2007). This is a tradition found in fishing hamlets (Búðir) in Iceland but is also connected to the seasonal fisheries in Lofoten and other places in Norway. However, research on different forms of contemporary village attachment in the Netherlands shows that it is more complex than a local–mobile dichotomy, since place attachment and mobility is strongly integrated but in diverse ways (Gieling et al., 2017). Ambivalence in locals’ perception of mobilities is also evident, as investigated in a Norwegian ski resort location (Villa, 2019).

It is illustrative to observe how former housing used by seasonal workers has become attractive tourist accommodation, with Rorbu tourism being an example of this. Furthermore, seasonal work and tourism is related in many other ways. Ellingsen (2013) studied the contemporary combination of leisure mobility and labour migration in places in Southern Norway, finding that leisure mobility is highly connected to the translocal life of the very many second homers in Norway, where more and more people feel that they are attached to two or more places at the same time. Likewise, research into transnationalism has shown how migrants also feel attached to more than one place. From research on Polish labour migrants in the West Fjords of Iceland, Skaptadóttir and Wojtynska (2008) found that migrants were attached to places in both Poland and Iceland. In the transnationalist tradition in migration research, this is called bifocality. Migrants feel connected to the place where they live and work but are also connected to the place they came from, and where they aspire to return, when possible. Migrants value the place, where they live and work, but it is not the same kind of value – or attachment – as that felt among those born and raised in the place. Second homers also value the place of the second home as part of their translocal – circulating – life (Ellingsen, 2013). There is thus a diversity of values of place, but when these values are about the same place, place is also becoming a kind of common good. As mentioned in the following chapters, people do feel a strong attachment to places where they feel they belong. But most of the local communities studied are what we call ‘open communities’, where the different population groups feel different kinds of attachment.

The roles of international migration and second homes are certainly more significant in some of the studied local communities than others. This also relates to national differences, where international migration is higher in some countries than in others. For example, Iceland has become an immigration country, with very many Poles and other nationalities living and working in Iceland (Skaptadóttir & Garðarsdóttir, 2020). In contrast, Greenland had negative net (international) migration 2000–2021 (Larsen et al., 2022, 105). As mentioned above, many coastal communities in Norway have attracted a large number of labour migrants, especially in communities where there is demand for labour in the fish processing and aquaculture industries. This is also the case in Lurøy municipality, where the proportion of migrants in the local population is now more than 10%, but the share of migrants has also been high in Tvøroyri in the Faroes for some years. Siglufjörður and Ólafsfjörður (together forming Fjallabyggð) in Iceland have recently seen a growing proportion of migrants (see Table 1). In contrast, Narsaq and Nanortalik in Greenland have seen a decrease in the proportion of migrants in the local population. Here there is less demand for labour, and it seems that the number of Danes and other foreigners living and working in Greenland is also generally reducing. In 2000, among our case-study communities Narsaq had the highest share of migrants, but today it is only Nanortalik that has a smaller share. These numbers concern registered inhabitants, thus not counting, for example, Danes doing temporary jobs.

* Migrant is here defined as foreign born with two foreign-born parents (or with parents’ place of birth unknown, for the Faroes)

# including the whole district with small villages and farms      

Table 1.1: Proportion of migrants in the local population*
Source: Statistics Greenland, Statistics Iceland, Statistics Faroe Islands & Statistics Norway

* Migrant is here defined as foreign born with two foreign-born parents (or with parents’ place of birth unknown, for the Faroes)

# including the whole district with small villages and farms      

For Lurøy and Vega in Norway, international migration plays an important role for the population since net international migration has been positive in all years since 2005 (Lebel et al., 2022, p. 35-36). Without international migration, these local communities would thus have been more depopulated. The role of international migrants has followed a similar trend in Fjallabyggð in Iceland (Siglufjörður and Olafsfjörður), partly due to the use of migrant labour in tourism as part of Iceland’s general development. This is reminiscent of the growth of tourism in Vega. Furthermore, international as well as domestic net migration in this case changed in relation to the construction of the tunnel between the two towns (Eythórsson & Thorgrimsdóttir, 2022, p. 54-55). In the case of Tvøroyri and Vágur in the Faroes, the picture is more complex, since net domestic migration in many years from 2000 to 2020 is higher than net (international) migration, although Tvøroyri in particular has some international migration which can be related to labour demand in the fish processing industry (Bogadóttir et al., 2022, p. 83). However, in Narsaq and Nanortalik in Greenland the proportion of migrants is declining (Table 1.1), but this is not compensated by net domestic migration or a birth surplus. Therefore, the degree to which migrants contribute to the diversity of place values varies markedly. Hence, there may also be variation in the extent to which we should understand the local communities studied in this report as open communities. But it is certainly the case that the different kinds of mobilities, including international migration affecting local communities, cannot be approached as only an external factor. The fact that people come and go, stay for parts of the year or for a part of their life, is something we need to understand as essentially integrated into the development of local communities. Local communities are thus always open and diverse in some way.

In our previous report, we explained the idea of combining the concepts of resilience and value chains. One reason for this is that it is often one individual or a very small number of globally oriented value chains that are particularly important for the broader living conditions of coastal communities. Second, the approach was based on a recognition that there is a lack of understanding of the effect of value chains and their interaction with people and local communities in a broader sense (Bærenholdt & Hovgaard, 2022, p. 13-17). Since the introduction of the resilience concept by Holling in 1973, it has had multiple applications in fields including psychology, economics, sociology, disaster management, urban and rural development, and environmentalism. Recently, there has been a small but growing literature on resilience and coastal communities, not least from an environmental or climate change perspective (Armitage et al., 2017; Filho, 2018; Heidkamp & Morrisey, 2019). Resilience can basically be defined as a response to adversity and refers to the capacity of an area – a coastal community – to adapt to alterations and to cope with their ecological, social and economic vulnerabilities, that is, to reorganise in new ways and build up new sets of structures and processes. The human dimension and the environment condition each other and are intrinsically intertwined, together forming a complex adaptive system, a social-ecological system (SES). But there is also an inextricable connection between different systems and areas, which extends from the local to the global, where resilient development in one area can create vulnerability elsewhere. Using the value-chain perspective is one way to try to capture the complexity of a holistic system.

We know that some coastal communities are more resilient than others and that there are local factors that make a difference. When some peripheral local communities have managed – at least partially – to stabilise their population since 2010, it is closely related to developments in the public sector in the form of welfare arrangements and infrastructure investments, as was also the case in the 1970s (Brox, 1984). But resilience is also based on the expansion of new economic sectors, such as aquaculture, tourism and other blue economies. The expansion of the blue economy sector has also been accompanied by a growing number of international immigrants who perform many of the less attractive job functions. Furthermore, as mentioned above, second homers are increasingly contributing to diversity in community development, demanding services and construction, and renting out their properties, further contributing to tourism. But demographic stabilisation can also depend much on the ageing of the population, since many seniors prefer to stay or even relocate or return to living in small communities; thus, the senior part of the population can be seen as a positive asset. In a few cases, young people in their 30s also settle in these communities. As we saw in earlier sections, local communities differ in their population composition, which raises the question of whether these differences also result in different capacities to meet new challenges, including in resilient ways.

One way of fostering adaptive change is to offer activities that the locals can be proud of, such as different forms of festivals that actively highlight the unique characteristics of the place. Another way is to resist the closure of a school and campaign to get it reopened in a new organisational form. Or new businesses can be developed and defined, with the community as a main identifier. These are examples of organising among local groups to reverse a negative trend where the qualities of the place, image building and local traditions are highlighted as essential goods. An important issue is the legitimacy of such local groups and their work with adaptive processes. To receive legitimacy in the wider community, it seems important for them to be embedded in local government institutions (Amundsen, 2015, p. 270).

Amundsen (2012) put forward six dimensions of community resilience: community resources, community networks, institutions and services, people–place connections, active agents, and learning. Moreover, Kokorsch and Benediktsson (2018) list 11 different components of resilience which are applicable in an Icelandic community context, which they – based on their empirical findings – divide into four main components: the individual, the policy framework, diversification, and education and innovation.

Subjective dimensions like well-being and values have been applied more recently in resilience research. In her analysis of two Northern Norwegian coastal municipalities, Amundsen (2012) found that place attachment is a powerful motivator for adaptive change in a changing social context. Place attachment includes physical characteristics and the subjective meaning of place, simply because it connects with what matters to people and what they care about (Amundsen, 2012, p. 258). Diversity in strong place values makes people and organisations engage with strategies of local redevelopment. But they often need to be held together by a sort of programme or ‘strategy’ (Healey, 2010, p. 166-167; Nyseth & Viken, 2009). Who takes strategic leadership? Is it the municipal authorities or other actors that enact and engage in local development strategies? And what is the role of people’s civic engagement in this? Is the engagement among young, senior or other age groups? And what is the role of state and (if relevant) regional-level decisions? This is particularly interesting, since local communities are ‘open communities’ often composed of a diversity of people. Therefore, it is crucial for strategic leaders to acknowledge the ‘open community’ and thus include non-permanent residents.

Places matter; they have value for people. The money value of land but also the value of belonging to a place matter, pointing to something more common or community like. In contemporary discussions about place, Cresswell (2019, p. 165-184), based on a detailed montage study of a particular place, suggests a theory which goes beyond and bridges some of the binaries in contemporary use of and thinking about place. On the one hand, there has been a tradition of looking at place as a closed community of people, while on the other hand the dominant relational tradition has suggested that places are profoundly about networks and outreach connections. Nordic Atlantic communities are very local, with a strong sense of belonging, as well as very much tied up in global value chains. In dealing with this kind of duality, Cresswell suggests transcending, thereby also combining insights from, traditional phenomenological/subjective and materialist/objective approaches to place. Places thus gather and weave together nature, culture and society, and in line with this Cresswell (2019, p. 176-184) suggests approaching places through the lenses of Materials, Meanings, and Practices.

Moving closer to our kind of investigation, the famous planning researcher Patsy Healey (2023) in her new book on rural development activism, based on her own local community in northern England, addresses how people acting in civil society capacities and roles take care of and fight for the place they call ‘here’. Interestingly, her approach is very similar to our idea of the ‘open community’ when she writes:

Working with the community of Wooler and Glendale (Wooler having just under 2,000 inhabitants, similar in scale to our case-study locations), Healey refers to the Wooler Neighbourhood plan working towards a ‘strong sense of community: a place which attracts visitors and welcomes new residents’ (2023, p. 9). People are attracted to the community because of nature and the landscape, and while housing is cheap, there is also an ongoing ‘form of rural gentrification’ (Healey, 2023, p. 9). Her approach is sympathetic to geographical approaches to place, like that of Cresswell, but her planning perspective means her focus is more on public or common value, involved in making what she calls a ‘place-community’ (Healey, 2023, p. 13). Places have certain qualities (amenity value and more) that are used in and ease the formation of community.

It is interesting to see how common values associated with place emerge in thinking about place–community development. In contrast to the money value of land and houses, the common value of a place is something shared, and if tourism is still ‘small tourism’ (Bærenholdt et al., 2021), the common value can still be shared with tourists and other visitors. However, it is worth mentioning that if the value is no longer commonly shared by an ‘open community’, the common value evaporates, and the community is lost.

Therefore, it is essential to see if local communities can remain – or succeed in becoming – resilient, taking care of the common good when taking care of their place. Here, sociologist Laurent Thévenot’s research on regimes of engagement (Thévenot, 2007, 2016; Bærenholdt et al., 2021) is an interesting inspiration. In addressing the common good, Thévenot suggests a distinction along a dynamic continuum of forms of engagement, starting with familiar engagement, associated with one’s home, such as using nature or taking a walk. But this first (rather private) form of engagement can develop into more collective forms, involving engaging with planning activities of certain types. The third form of engagement is about justifiable actions aimed at achieving societal goods on agendas, where broader societal or political justification is central. Such successive forms of engagement, which can be supplemented with additional forms, can be used to analyse and understand the extent to which place communities can justify themselves and gain recognition among people and within broader society. The continuum spans from personalised to more generalised forms, aiming at gaining wider recognition from more people.

‘Open communities’, as discussed above based on the findings in our first report, can develop along these lines, from communities where people are hospitable and open-minded to more stable place communities, where strategies are built and justified with reference to the diversities contributing to the resilience of local communities in one or more places. This conceptualisation builds on people sharing an attachment to a place due to the common value of the place’s qualities. These common values of place can be analysed through the dimensions of materiality, meanings and practices, as suggested by Cresswell (2019). Meanwhile, the common goods of places are always in some kind of tension with the more private and market-oriented value of place, in the form of private property. This can be the case with second homes, as we saw in a section above.

In the following chapters, we report on case studies in local communities in each of the four countries of Norway, Iceland, the Faroes and Greenland. While these case studies relate to the issues discussed in this introduction, their objective is to obtain further insights into the contextual issues observed in the first report (Hovgaard & Bærenholdt, 2022). Each chapter presents a more precise argument for the focus of its content. Across these chapters and the local communities and places they focus on, there are two general observations we want to stress. First, the places that people live and value, or, for some, only visit for shorter period(s) of time, are always places connected to other places, in some way or another. Here, it is obvious that the very concrete, and different, infrastructural situation of each local community should always be taken into consideration. The other observation is the importance of diversity for every local community. Local communities primarily share a place, but people use, value and deal with this place in very different ways. This allows for the kinds of flexibility and pluri-activity so central for the resilience of Nordic Atlantic coastal communities. 

Amundsen, H. (2012). Illusions of resilience? An analysis of community responses to change in Northern Norway. Ecology and Society, 17(4): 46. DOI:10.5751/ES-05142-170446.

Amundsen, H. (2015). Place attachment as a driver of adaptation in coastal communities in Northern Norway. Local Environment, 20(3), 257-276. DOI:10.1080/13549839.2013.838751.

Armitage, D., Charles, A. & Berkes, F. (Eds.) (2017). Governing the coastal commons. Communities, resilience and transformation. Taylor & Francis.

Aure, M., Førde, A. & Magnussen, T. (2018). Will migrant workers rescue rural regions? Challenges of creating stability through mobility. Journal of Rural Studies, 60 (May), 52-59.

Bærenholdt, J. O. (1998). Locals versus mobiles: Explaining different dynamics in North Atlantic localities. In N. Aarsæther & J. O. Bærenholdt (Eds.), Coping Strategies in the North: Local practices in the context of global restructuring (pp. 201-219). Copenhagen: UNESCO MOST & Nordic Council of Minister, INS (1998):303.

Bærenholdt, J. O. (2007). Coping with distances. Producing Nordic Atlantic societies. Berghahn.

Bogadóttir, R., Gaini, F. & Hovgaard, G. (2022). Divergent development trajectories: Tvøroyri and Vágur in the Faroes. In G. Hovgaard & J. O. Bærenholdt (Eds.), Value chains and resilient coastal communities in the Nordic Atlantic (pp. 72-97). Tema-Nord 2022: 555. Nordic Council of Ministers. 

Brox, O. (1984). Nord-Norge: Fra allmenning til koloni. Universitetsforlaget. 

Coppock, J. T. (Ed.) (1977). Second homes: Curse or blessing. Pergamon.

Cresswell, T. (2019). Maxwell street: Writing and thinking place. University of Chicago Press.

Ellingsen, W. (2013). Hjemme i mobilitet. En studie af fritidsmobilitet og arbeidsmigrasjon. In C. Brun & G. Setten (Eds.), Hus, Hjem og Sted: Geografiske perspektiver på vår samtid (pp. 45-61). Trondheim: Akademika forlag

Eythórsson, G. T. & Thorgrimsdóttir, S. K. (2022). Structural changes and how they are perceived in two Icelandic towns. In G. Hovgaard & J. O. Bærenholdt (Eds.), Value chains and resilient coastal communities in the Nordic Atlantic (pp. 47-71). Tema-Nord 2022: 555. Nordic Council of Ministers.

Filho, W. L. (Ed.) (2018). Climate change impacts and adaptation strategies for coastal communities. Springer.

Gieling, J., Vermeij, L. & Haartsen, T. (2017). Beyond the local-newcomer divide: Village attachment in the era of mobilities. Journal of Rural Studies, 55, 237-247.

Hall, C. M. & Müller, D. K. (Eds.) (2004). Tourism, mobility and second homes: Between elite landscape and common ground. Channel View.

Hall, C. M. & Müller, D. K. (Eds.) (2018). The Routledge handbook on second home tourism and mobilities. Routledge.

Hall, C. M., Müller, D. K. & Saarinen, J. (2009). Nordic tourism. Issues and cases. Channel View.

Healey, P. (2010). Making better places: The planning project in the twenty-first century. Palgrave Macmillan.

Healey, P. (2023). Caring for place: Community development in rural England. Routledge & Royal Town Planning Institute.

Heidkamp, P. & Morrissey, J. (Eds.) (2019). Towards coastal resilience and sustainability. Routledge.

Hovgaard, G. & Bærenholdt, J. O. (Eds.). (2022). Value chains and resilient coastal communities in the Nordic Atlantic. Tema-Nord 2022: 555. Nordic Council of Ministers.

Kokorsch, M. & Benediktsson, K. (2018). Where have all the people gone? The limits of resilience in coastal communities. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift – Norwegian Journal of Geography, 72(2), 97-114.

Larsen, J. N., Hovgaard, G. & Ingimundarson, J. H. (2022). Value chains and social resilience in two Greenlandic towns. In G. Hovgaard & J. O. Bærenholdt (Eds.), Value chains and resilient coastal communities in the Nordic Atlantic (pp. 98-124). Tema-Nord 2022: 555. Nordic Council of Ministers.

Lebel, J., Bjørkan, M. & Temesgen, A. K. (2022). Changing value chains and contexts in Lurøy and Vega. In G. Hovgaard & J. O. Bærenholdt (Eds.), Value chains and resilient coastal communities in the Nordic Atlantic (pp. 24-46). Tema-Nord 2022: 555. Nordic Council of Ministers.

Marjavaara, R. (2008). Second home tourism: The root to displacement in Sweden? [Doctoral dissertation], Department of Social and Economic Geograhy, GERUM, Umeå University.

Milbourne, P. & Kitchen, L. (2014). Rural mobilities: Connecting movement and fixity in rural places. Journal of Rural Studies, 34, 326-336.

Nyseth, T. & Viken, A. (Eds.) (2009). Place reinvention: Northern perspectives. Ashgate.

Persson, I. (2015). Second homes, legal framework and planning practice according to environmental sustainability in coastal areas: The Swedish setting. Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, 7(1), 48-61.

Rye, J. F. (2018). Labour migrants and rural change: The ‘mobility transformation’ of Hitra/Frøya, Norway, 2005-2015. Journal of Rural Studies, 64, 189-199.

Skaptadóttir, U. D. & Garðarsdóttir, Ó. (2020). Becoming an immigration country: The case of Iceland 1990-2019. In K. Loftsdóttir, U. D. Skaptadóttir & S. B. Hafsteinsson (Eds.), Mobility and transnational Iceland: Current transformations and global entanglements (pp. 23-38). University of Iceland Press.

Skaptadóttir, U. D. & Woytynska, A. (2008). Labour migrants negotiating places and engagements. In J. O. Bærenholdt & B. Granås (Eds.), Mobility and place: Enacting northern European peripheries (pp. 113-126). Ashgate.

Thévenot, L. (2007). The plurality of cognitive formats and engagements: Moving between the familiar and the public. European Journal of Social Theory, 10(3), 409-423.

Thévenot, L. (2016). Engagementsregimer. Hans Reitzels Forlag.

Villa, M. (2019). Local ambivalence to diverse mobilities: The case of a Norwegian rural village. Sociologia Ruralis, 59(4), 701-717.