The sacralised landscapes of Glencoe: From massacre to mass tourism, and back again

Knox, Dan

Abstract

History is said to hang heavily over the dramatic mountain landscapes of Glencoe. More precisely, multiple memories of the Massacre of Glencoe dominate heritage visions and interpretations of this valley in Argyll, Scotland. This paper makes use of the example of Glencoe to illustrate the processes through which performative acts and utterances make and remake the sacralised landscapes of what some have termed ‘dark’ tourism. Through the repeated telling or citation of stories about the massacre, and about the associated Highland War, Glencoe is repeatedly fixed and figured into discourses relating to fear, terror and bloodshed. What I am keen to demonstrate is the ways in which the effects of performative utterances and acts become concretised as they are made into the stuff of history and heritage tourism. Glencoe is repeatedly figured as, fixed into and haunted by the seventeenth century through the continued operation of ideologies rooted in the Enlightenment and related to a hegemonic Highland and martial vision of Scotland. The rhetoric surrounding Glencoe today, as both a site and as a tourist product, and through which the collective remembering of the events of 1692 is enacted, is overwhelmingly related to one historic incident and the relation of that incident to a particular vision of the Scottish nation. Visitors frequently report finding the glen a haunting, frightening and menacing place: popular photography depicts dark and shaded mountainsides, abandoned settlements and memorials that evoke similar feelings. By conducting a tracing out of connections between the material landscapes of Glencoe, historical and contemporary representations of the glen, and tourist representational practices, this paper sheds some light on the performative power of language and practice through, in and over history, heritage, tourism and landscape.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 14, 2005
• Online Publication Date: Aug 17, 2006
• Publication Date: May 1, 2006
• Journal: International Journal of Tourism Research
• Print ISSN: 1099-2340
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 185-197
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jtr.568
• Keywords: tourism, dark tourism, Scotland, discourse analysis
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1039447
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jtr.568