Ski areas attract and cater to tourists and are often powerful symbols of cultural identity and place-based meaning. Within contexts of mountain tourism development, ski areas also communicate messages to orient visitors and residents to special features and qualities of the natural environment. This research specifically focuses on how Vermont ski areas and their neighboring rural communities use language, symbolism and imagery, within the context of website communications, to shape cultural meanings of nature and place. A sample of small, medium, and large ski areas, representing a range of development sizes, locations, and recreational offerings, were paired with their adjacent rural communities. A qualitative content analysis and a textual analysis of photographic images and written texts from ski area and town websites examined presentations of “nature” and place. Website presentations were compared across ski areas of different sizes, and between towns and ski areas. Findings show that portrayals of “nature” differ by the size of the ski area, but are similar across rural towns – though towns tended to produce a discourse about “nature” divergent from that of ski areas. In addition, both ski resort and town websites used images and texts of “Vermont” symbolically in constructing their place identity, though they did this in different ways. This study contributes a better understanding of the ways that ski areas and rural communities work both independently and collaboratively to create and sustain meaningful physical places and cultural myths. Aligning public communications electronically to present a more unified place identity to visitors and residents alike has potential planning and management implications for tourism development, especially in rural regions in Vermont and elsewhere.

Syftet med den här avhandlingen är att studera de roller bilder har i skapandet av dominerande föreställningar om en plats. Exemplen är hämtade från Visby, en stad med välkända medeltida lämningar på ön Gotland i Östersjön. Teoretiska verktyg kommer från kulturarvspolitik, som belyser kulturarv som konstruktioner med objekt värdeladdade av specifika aktörer i särskilda syften och från visuella kulturstudier som fokuserar hur vi betraktar vår omvärld. Bilder och berättelser skapar socialt konstruerade seenden och bortseenden. Dessa seenden, skapar i sin tur mindscapes tillsammans med upplevelser, drömmar, minnen, medierade budskap och ”före-bilder”. Det är Visbys mindscapes som fokuseras här. Med utgångspunkt i Visbys tio-i-topp-motiv diskuteras bilder hämtade från tre grupper av aktörer, kulturarvsbilder, konstbilder och turismbilder. Begrepp som autenticitet, tilltal och modus är viktiga i förståelsen av hur Visbys ikoner tillkommer bland annat genom upprepning av ett litet antal bildmotiv. Då medeltida lämningar och Visbys guldålder som Hansestad ofta ingår i människors mindscapes döljs och överskuggas andra tidsperioder, sociala kontexter och miljöer i Visby. Fotografier, målningar, teckningar, tryck och souvenirer är kraftfulla redskap i den processen. Detta resulterar i att 9/10 av Visby hamnar i skymundan genom stadens status som en medeltida ikon. Den historiska innerstaden har också fått anpassa sig efter föreställningarna om densamma. / This thesis deals with the roles pictures play when collective imaginations of a city are constructed. The examples comes from Visby, a city with famous medieval remains, on the island Gotland in the Baltic. Cultural heritage politics points out heritage as a mode of cultural production. Heritage is constructed when values are added to specific objects by specific actors for specific purposes. Visual cultural studies underline the practices of looking. We are always looking from specific positions. Images and narratives create socially constructed gazes. Gazes together with experiences, dreams, memories, mediated messages and “fore-sights” creates mindscapes. The urban mindscapes of Visby are at focus here. Starting in a Visby top-ten-image-list, images produced and frequently used within the three domains; heritage and tourist industries and the art world are discussed. The images characteristic marks are defined and discussed in terms of authenticity, emotive modes and ways of address. This study also deals with four socially emergent Visby icons and the consequences of the mono-thematic in Visby. When the medieval remains and Hanseatic traders are dominating people’s mindscapes, other periods, social contexts and Visby settings are hidden or overshadowed. The agency of display, a few repeated views in all sorts of media, produces gazes, ways of seeing and unseeing. Photographs, paintings, drawings, prints and souvenirs with Visby motifs are powerful tools in this process. The result is hierarchical orders hard to change. It has not only had the effect that 9/10 of the contemporary city of Visby is being shaded by its status as a medieval icon. The historical centre has also been adjusted in order to fit with the conceptions of the place.