ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the secular re-enchantment' of society, nature and landscapes, which observe in the Olympic project that is, in a big, public, science-based, modern project. It focuses on the project of promoting the town of Troms. The Troms region become very attractive economically if the town is chosen by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to arrange the Olympic Winter Games. The chapter observes a few religious elements activated in this process particularly the idea of magic'. It constructs four discourses involved in the Olympic project: visions, economy, national integration and identity. In order to become a healthy, natural human being, uncorrupted by the artificiality of modern civilization, it became necessary to be in touch with wilderness in nature and in the depths of the soul. This reversal of the meaning of wilderness is a consequence of Romanticism and its critique of rationalized and industrialized modernity.
