ABSTRACT

Harvest has been a cause for celebration for humans from time immemorial, and with the growth of tourism, these festivals attract visitors from outside the celebrating communities. As with other forms of cultural tourism, there is a certain balance between maintaining the original focus of the festival, its authenticity if you will, and catering to the growing number of visitors not directly involved in the core activity. This balance is the theme in this study. It expands on previous studies of horse round-ups or horse gathering in Northern Iceland conducted by participant observations and visitor surveys (Helgadóttir 2006, 2015; Helgadóttir & Sturlaugsdóttir 2009). Here the focus is on the subjective experience of the horse farmers as expressed in semi-structured interviews.