Complicity, resistance, and agency: the ambiguous discursive position of a Faroese tour guide

Over the past decade, the Faroe Islands have increasingly become recognised as an emerging tourist destination. This, however, does not come without challenges, and in the Faroe Islands, tourism’s environmental and social consequences have been a topic of public debate for years. In this article, we explore how a stakeholder in the tourism industry – namely, a Faroese tour guide – navigates inherent tensions in tourism regarding, for example, sustainability, while she at the same time relies on tourism as a source of income. The tour guide is shown to use her agency to educate tourists through the regulation of their behaviour and way of thinking in order to resist and possibly remedy the negative effects of tourism. However, we argue that the guide’s agency should not conceal the ambivalence and paradoxical nature of her position, which encompasses criticising and distancing herself from the way tourism is conducted in the Faroe Islands while simultaneously taking part in this industry.