Interpreting heritage essentialisms: Familiarity and felt history

This paper addresses both the emergent mobilities and familiarity tourism agendas as essentialisms of nation, Europeanness, and past urban living through the medium of a pre-industrial urban heritage museum, Den Gamle By. The analysis is articulated both through visitors’ own voices and through quantitative modelling. The methods are shown as complementary. Consumption is described as both experiential and empathetic. Despite wider agendas of mobilities and integration, consumption is found to reflect visitors’ nationalities and affinities. Consumption is successfully modelled by combining nationality with a further dimension of cultural familiarity, heritage consumption. From the qualitative and quantitative analysis, visitors are segmented into two main groups: re-iteratives and make-believers.