ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes that restructuring in a small Icelandic community is all about jobs, jobs, jobs- and only jobs in the manufacturing sector counts. It analyses the relocation of the city centre in Kiruna as an example of an extreme make-over of a town. The chapter shows how new forms of governance, for instance in the form of public-private partnerships, evolve even in quite small and remote Swedish villages as Pajala, as a part of a reinventing strategy aiming at transforming the town into a 'Cultural Municipality'. It explores autobiographical approach in constructing the origin myth of the small town Batsfjord on the coast of Finnmark in Norway. The chapter discusses gendered processes of place reinvention in Pajala in Sweden and Egilsstaoir in Iceland. It tells the story of how Soroya, an island on the harsh coast of Finnmark in Norway, creates itself as 'The Land of the Big Fish'.
