ABSTRACT
This chapter sets focus on Melrakkaslétta, a marginal place on the Icelandic northeast coast and home to a few hundred people. Generally, Melrakkaslétta is experienced as remote and inaccessible, located far from the country's main route of travels, the Icelandic highway that circles the country. The community has experienced outmigration in recent decades, but, recently, tourism has been brought to the fore as a tool for economic diversification. Based on ethnographic research, we explore the entanglements of placemaking, tourism, and other mobilities in Melrakkaslétta with a focus on road (dis)connections and efforts to develop an attraction that is capable of channelling mobilities to the area. This is the Arctic Henge, a giant rock structure dedicated to Norse Mythology and seasonal as well as celestial movements. Findings bring forth how old and new routes of mobility entwine in relation to the Arctic Henge. We describe it as an effort to tinker with and change Melrakkaslétta's position on the margins, an effort that evokes hopes and controversies among residents and the regional tourism sector. For some it stands as a creation of the area's much-needed tourism magnet; for others it is a more modest intervention in global mobilities, built as a monument with the sole aim of the place not being forgotten.
