Northern Periphery Programme

Destination Viking - Saga Lands

Measure: 2.1
Eligible Budget: 1 001 123 euros
NPP Award: 600 000 euros

Sagas and storytelling are unique cultural features of the Northern Periphery. The stories contain embedded information about former land-use and historic events related to the landscape. A major element of the project is the establishment of a number of Saga Trails. The project also aims to revive the tradition of saga and storytelling, and to make information and events from the sagas and stories visible and accessible to the general public. Farmers and other local people will be involved as guides, maintainers and storytellers. The project will also promote community development, social inclusion and add value to cultural landscape management.

Lead Organisation:
Institute of Regional Development in Iceland

Contact Person: Mr Rognvaldur Gudmundsson Address: Technology Court, Dunhaga 5 Reykjavík IS-107 Iceland	Telephone: +354 525 4081 Fax: +354 552 8801 Email: rognv@hi.is Website: www.sagalands.org
Start Date: 01/01/2003	End Date: 31/12/2005

Project Publications

Destination Viking Case Study.pdf - 657K

Objectives

The main objectives are:
• to encourage the transfer of saga knowledge to new generations
• to maintain the landscapes in which important saga and story events took place, and make this a viable base for future tourism development.

Project Activities

The project is divided into 6 project periods, each of which will have a primary focus, as follows:

• The Saga and Storytelling Tradition: establishing the project, update on saga and storytelling traditions of each country
• The Saga and Storyteller: transfer of saga and storytelling traditions, training of guides, establishment of re-enactment groups
• The Saga Trail: establishment of saga trails/footpath routes, including systems for information dissemination (live guiding, signboards, brochures and books, GPS system, web-sites etc.)
• From Tradition to Tourism: linking in with the tourism developers and the industry
• Sagas and Sailing: developing sailing opportunities linked to saga events, and also museum presentations of saga-narrated sea voyages
• The Saga Lands: concluding the project and preparing for the future, working together to exploit further the potential of the unique saga and storytelling tradition of the Northern Periphery.

Expected Results

Partners will re-establish links between countries based on saga events. The project expects to make a number of selected saga stories visible in the landscapes where they once happened. This will be done by creating saga routes with storytellers, signboards, brochures, guidebooks and modern GPS-based information systems. This will bring information on saga events directly to the public on-site. Being such a unique feature of the cultural history and the living culture of the programme region, the sagas and storytelling represent a huge potential for future community development with associated economic development primarily based on increased tourism interest.

Partners: (click name for additional info)

European Union

Cross Programme Initiatives