"Not a Museum Town": Discussions of Authenticity in Coastal Communities

This paper centers on the discussion of authenticity in coastal communities. Theoretically, MacCannell’s (1973) insights into the attraction of primitive cultures and modernity’s loss of connection to the workbench, Relph’s (1976) conceptions of placelessness and kitsch, and Stilgoe’s (1994) articulation of quaintness bridge the theoretical and the empirical in this paper. Empirical material from three Danish cases connects the authenticity discourse to a recurring turn of phrase used by respondents, the ‘museum town.’ A‘museum town’ epitomized a place absent of life. In this manner being authentic required a working fleet, which carried deeper implications for transformation of fishing communities.