Heritage Authenticity and Swedish Folk dancers in Skansen Museum

Abstract: Intangible Cultural Heritage is a dynamic presentation of the local community’s cultural authenticity and identity (UNESCO, 2003), differentiating it from other tourist destinations. Authenticity concerns arise in modern tourism studies (MacCannell, 1973), especially in heritage studies with a significant trend on safeguarding the "living culture" after 2003. However, there is little agreement on the notion of authenticity in tourism and a lack of information on how intangible cultural heritage practitioners perceive heritage authenticity, who plays an essential role in transmitting along to future generations the immaterial heritage effectively (Lenzerini, 2011). Furthermore, the dominant tourism settings in both academia and industry have overlooked the voices of local people and heritage practitioners for a long time. Through the lens of Swedish folk dancers in the Skansen Museum, this research here explores how practitioners interpret heritage authenticity during tourism activities and further involves the discussion of the authenticity issues in heritage tourism, the cultural identity of ICH practitioners, and the connotation of authenticity in the field of ICH by using Skansens Folkdanslag as a representative case study. This research is expected to contribute to the understanding of authenticity from the practitioners' perspective and the preservation of intangible cultural heritage during tourism activities.