Polar tourism in Greenland is not a subject frequently addressed in French economic and social sciences. Yet Marie-Noëlle Rimaud is now able to capture what was once just over the horizon, and observe it through her own unique lens.
Short-haired, her skin tanned by the light of the sea, Marie-Noëlle Rimaud has finally found her way to the Polar Regions, twenty years after contracting “the virus” in Canada. Although this summer, the expedition yacht Atka – on which she was scheduled to set sail for Greenland – remained in Reykjavik due to an abnormal amount of sea ice off Kulusuk, it has been taking her around the icy island since 2017. There, she is staunchly conducting research into tourism. A far cry from the terrain of glaciologists who venture deep onto the ice sheet. Brochures, visitor and host opinions: “I work where other scientists don’t go,” she starts to tell us. Tourist centers – like Ilulissat – small towns or cruise ships give her a lot to think about.
According to her observations of company brochures, the product offer is based on epinal images that are “a little out of touch with reality, if not completely out of touch, when they use a representation of ‘ingenuous’ natives. There’s too much folklorization.” The attitude of certain operators “in seduction mode” towards the Inuit also leaves her sceptical: “they show them around the cruise ships to create an exchange, but we forget – or we don’t know – that young people are hyper-connected and concerning Greenland, that many study in Denmark, where they sometimes spend vacations.”
Her students could very well go into Arctic tourism and work for French operators for polar destinations. Her only fear is that they know too little about these regions, which she portrays in the auditoriums of universities and business schools.
On the one hand, she updates what has been said about the Inuit and their way of life; on the other, she attempts to de-demonize tourism. This economic activity could become one of the pillars of the island’s government, and one of the solutions for ensuring income alongside fishing and Danish subsidies, with a view to independence or at least autonomy. But under what conditions is it possible to sell Inuit culture without distorting it? This is a question she regularly addresses to the French polar research society, the Comité national de recherches arctiques et antarctiques, of which she is a member.
“Without mentioning responsibility, or whatever terminology we use, what kind of tourism could be meaningful, both for the local population and for those discovering the area? This question has always been my starting point”, she explains from Ile d’Aix on the French Atlantic coast, before the sound of the weather report for sailors rings out on the sailing club’s VHF.
Between tours and tourists, her research is focused on the poles. On the Ile d’Aix, her personal life is anchored in this territory, which she has frequented since she was a child. A former town councillor, an active member of the sailing school and the French National Sea Rescue Society…
“I’m fighting to preserve the maritime and island aspects that define our island: we fish on foot, we go boating…” she lists. It’s a fight that’s close to her heart, and reflects her love for the great Greenlandic island, discovered through reading. From the extraordinary adventures of Nansen and Malaurie to the warm-hearted novels of Jensen, Riel and Mathias Storch’s famous Dream of a Greenlander, the young Marie-Noëlle Rimaud dreamed of being part of it all.
In the early 90s, she was studying international law in Canada while putting together the first women’s crew for the St. Lawrence Regatta, the famous ice canoe race on the Québec estuary. “You have to run, row, push, lift the canoe over huge blocks of ice, and make headway in the opening veins of water… being tactical, for example, anticipating currents.”
Busy with her library duties, she was unfortunately unable to follow her friends Marie-Claude Prémont and Herbert Schwartz along the Mackenzie River or into James Bay. Herbert Schwartz was the 1st non-native doctor to settle in Tuktuuyaqtuuk, author of Elik and Other Stories of the MacKenzie Eskimos. “His wife Marie-Claude also did a lot for Inuit women,” recalls the researcher. The two met in law school at Université Laval. When they returned home, Marie-Noëlle Rimaud would listen in on their adventures, touching on “issues such as violence, alcohol and others” that are inextricable from the darker side of colonial history.
Return for a better start
“I became interested in tourism development, in the Tadoussac area, in relation to hunting communities,” she recalls. The university outdoors club, which she temporarily chaired, enabled her to get involved in a marine mammal interpretation center on Quebec’s north coast. But, lacking the legitimacy of an early career and the opportunity to work in the field in the social sciences – at the time, publishing tourism management studies was not part of any academic tradition – she returned to France.
Running a scientific culture association and working with sailor Isabelle Autissier have kept her in touch with the poles, albeit somewhat distanced, but her passion remains intact. She sharpened her political sense of territorial development before returning to teaching in 2005.
In 2017, sailor François Bernard invited her to overwinter in Greenland on the sailing ship Atka, whose association she now chairs. In 2021, her childhood friend Patrick Marchesseau, also from Île d’Aix, took the helm of the powerful icebreaker Le Commandant Charcot. Two doors opened and the study of polar tourism could finally begin.
Camille Lin, Polar Journal AG
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