Melrakkaslétta the Meeting-Ground: Performing Qualitative Research at the Tourism Margin

This chapter follows the journey of a doctoral research project from the setting of a research agenda, a theoretical framework and a methodological approach to conducting research on site. The research sets focus on Melrakkaslétta, a rural area on the Icelandic northeast coast. Melrakkaslétta is situated far north of the beaten Icelandic tourism track and has as such mostly been bypassed by the recent global tourism boom. This, however, does not mean that Melrakkaslétta is an immobile place as it has for centuries been inhabited and visited by humans and other beings.

The research design is set within a qualitative research paradigm, where through flat ontology and a post-ANT lens, ethnographic methodology is applied with the aim of co-creating knowledge with the humans and the more-than-human world of Melrakkaslétta. The chapter explores the decisions and reasoning for the research, where the aim is to inspect tourism in a non-touristy, rural area, with the agenda of avoiding perceiving the margin either as a rural idyll or a site of rural hardship, decline and struggle. Instead, at the core is the assumption that in Melrakkaslétta, as elsewhere in the world, joy and well-being occur amongst the various challenges of any existence.