Reinventing the Countryside: German Second-home Owners in Southern Sweden

Abstract

During the 1990s, second-home tourism experienced renewed interest in the industrialised world. German tourists, who discovered the nearby Swedish countryside, contributed to the new second-home tourism patterns. During a five-year period from 1991 to 1996 the number of German second-home owners in Sweden increased from 1500 to more than 5500. This paper focuses on German second-home owners and their lives in the Swedish countryside. The main objective of the paper is to analyze the German second-home owners' experiences of encounters with the Swedish countryside and its inhabitants. The analysis is based on an interview survey with 91 German second-home owners in Småland, an important region for German second-home ownership in Sweden. It is argued that the German second-home owners employ a conservative and local strategy regarding their lives in the countryside. However, contrary to their expectations, they meet a post-productive countryside and thus fail to integrate. Instead, they create a parallel society and become engaged in preserving the countryside.