Cultural Heritage across Borders? – Framing and Challenging the Snapphane Story in Southern Sweden

Abstract

Cultural heritage has developed into an important tool in marketing and destination development projects. Cultural heritage, as well as multiplicity, is also a political concept that has become important in the academic and public debate. The aim of our study is to analyse cultural heritage as a tourism and marketing product in relation to multiplicity. The discussion focuses around how the story of cultural heritage is constructed, whom it is for and what is incorporated and what is not. These questions are discussed using a marketing project in southern Sweden aimed at developing attractive activities related to the story of the Snapphanes (a resistance group active in the Swedish-Danish war in the 17th century) as a case study. The conclusion highlights how local identity-making is not always easily combined with place marketing processes. The article claims that it is important to leave space for the bottom-up to keep a more diversified storytelling.