Dead Landscapes – and how to make them live

Abstract: Certain deadening forces including disneyfication, museumization, and the standardization of heritagescapes have led to the loss of embodied, lived experiences. In an effort to (re)enchant how these landscapes are developed, managed, and encountered, a new landscape model is introduced that combines the more practical components of heritage management (locale and story) with strategies that explore the emotional and affective dimensions of phenomenological landscape experience (presence). Within landscape geography, the model provides a more concise methodology for landscape analysis. Bringing together often opposing perspectives, the model helps to peel back the different material, symbolic, and affective layers of landscapes. Within heritage and tourism studies, the model provides a vital stepping stone between theory and practice, and it serves as an accessible and replicable tool to study the complexity of the visitor experience and the different dimensions of historical landscapes. Applying the model in four sites associated with the Viking Age reveals the desire for more multisensory, hands-on, and individualized encounters with heritagescapes. This illuminates the need to thwart the deadening forces and reawaken the lived experience in landscapes of the past and present.