This paper looks at the nature of contact and communication in art, popular music in particular. It explores popular music in Iceland as a specific example, looking at popular music's history and function in the Icelandic context.

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Foreign tourists' images and ratings of Iceland before and after a visit to Iceland were investigated. Two self administered questionnaires were used to gather the data. Of 372 tourists, mainly from the USA and Great Britain, answering the first questionnaire 243 answered the follow-up questionnaire. / The tourists come mostly because of the scenery and particular landscape features and there is evidence of further tourist potential having to do with history and perhaps culture and customs. Changes in image during stay were considerable. The image of cost, which is the most negative aspect of the country, worsened, but the image of many landscape attributes improved. The importance of attributes changed in some instances. / The evidence supports the hypothesis that the greater the negative difference between expectation and experience of an destination attribute and the more important the attribute is to the tourists, the likelier they are to become dissatisfied.

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The Icelandic government continues to campaign for regulated commercial whaling in its territorial water, and advocates the maintenance of this practice as part of what it terms the "rational management of the ocean ecosystem," despite international pressure for a termination of whale hunting. Support in Iceland for a pro-whaling policy is extremely high, and the debate about whaling has over the last twelve years become increasingly nationalistic in focus. / This dissertation examines the whaling issue in the context of Icelandic nationalism and the rise of the Icelandic nation-state during the 19th century. It argues that the national self is constructed through discourses which articulate space and construct it as the locus for social action. Three spatialdiscourses relevant to the nation-state--as territory, property, and nature--are discussed in terms of their emergence in Europe during the 17th century, and their relation to the "institutional clusters" of capitalism, industrialism, surveillance, and control of the means of violence. / Icelandic nationalist discourse celebrates three key symbols: a pure and ancient language, a pure and beautiful land, and the sagas, a body of medieval historical and heroic literature. The idea of independence is pivotal to political action, as well as a moral imperative for guiding individual behaviour and attitudes toward the survival of the nation. For Icelanders, all are forms of knowledge about the world which situate their identity in relation to other nations, and to their own past. The whaling issue and associated events arouse nationalist sentiments because they are seen to threaten the independence of the nation.

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In the central highlands of Iceland, the implementation of new measures to delimit property rights spatially and to establish new regional management plans have caused debates over the use of natural resources with regard to their exploitation, protection and ownership. This study has tried to highlight how to resolve the debate over the use of natural resources and over the definition of land ownership in Iceland with respect to traditional user-rights and ownership practised by local communities. The answer to these questions are particularly important for marginal local communities that use the commons as pasture for sheep grazing because they will directly be affected by hydropower plants and ecotourism projected by the regional development plans. Collecting data through personal interviews and analyzing legal documents with regard to ownership rights and regional planning have been the principal approaches. Firstly, the thesis discusses the theoretical context of conflict resolution within the future developmental plans for Iceland's central highlands. Secondly, the historical and traditional aspects of locally based agricultural production and the social System practiced in the commons are explored. Thirdly, the new rules for the application of the management of resources, ownership rights as well as for the management of national hydropower energy projects are analyzed. In this case, the tools for territorial conflict resolution and the process of territorial planning are discussed in their relation to the construction of hydropower plants in the commons of the Fljótsdalur valley, located between the highlands and the fjords of the eastern region. Finally, the case of Fljótsdalur is presented by focussing on the conflicting interactions between interests in and values given to either the traditional ownership rights or the regional plans for developing tourism and hydroelectric power. The results indicate tensions over how natural resources of the central highlands should be used. There is also a noticeable difference among the various lobby groups with respect to the level of comprehension of what is the area's significance for the country and its resource development. The results obtained show that monetary compensation or clarification of ownership rights is not sufficient for territorial conflict resolution. More important, rather, is the coordination of regional planning procedures, in a way which enhances cooperation among local institutions, and recognizes the interests and values that local community's associate with their environment.