Those who left: Local emigrants and their connection with Fjallabyggð

Abstract

This article presents findings from a survey amongst those that have departed two communities in Fjallabyggð municipality, focusing on their patterns of visitation to their former homes. Through their travel and visitation these departed former community members express relations to their respective communities, relations that the survey shows are sustained through their second home ownership or access to free accommodation and partly enhanced by the tunnel built. Survey findings also indicate that most respondents see themselves as local and had to relocate due to work or studies. The opening of the Héðinsfjörður-tunnel does, however, not affect their plans of resettling in their former communities. The article ends by discussing how expressed community relations possibly serve to sustain the marketing efforts of these communities and help in the development of tourism, albeit in an indirect manner. The need for former community members to express their ties to the community arguably weaves with processes of image building reliant on framing these communities as a pleasure periphery, thus fuelling processes that originally displaced these people.