What Happens When Visitors Don’t Understand the Place They’re Visiting

Field Notes from Greenland

In a remote village in Greenland, polar bear skins hang over porch railings. A small building doubles as passport control and gift shop, selling seal and bear-hide mittens among some postcards. The only grocery store receives deliveries twice a year.

Moments like this attest a problem in tourism. Visitors often arrive before they understand the place they’re visiting.

I did. My mental picture of Greenland came almost entirely from photographs of glaciers, icebergs, an polar bears. Not from understanding how people actually live there.

Many problems with visitor behavior are not attitude problems. They are explanation problems.

Places that welcome visitors often expect respectful behavior from people who arrive without much understanding of how the place works. Greenland shows what can happen when a place takes that void seriously.