Game of Thrones tourism and the (re)imagination of the new Northern Ireland

Abstract

For decades, Northern Ireland was best known for the violent conflict referred to as the Troubles. However, the filming of HBO's Game of Thrones in Northern Ireland has had a profound effect on boosting tourism numbers as well as the country's image in the global awareness. This article examines the role of Game of Thrones tour guides as cultural mediators who are uniquely positioned to redefine the image of Northern Ireland. Through an analysis of the guides’ tour narratives, this article demonstrates how tour guides redefine the past and construct an image for the future of Northern Ireland via the fantasy world of Game of Thrones. It concludes that tourism provides a platform for communicating new social imaginaries.

It's 7:45 on a Sunday summer morning, and a Game of Thrones (GoT) tour bus idles at the pick-up point. Standing beside the bus is the guide with long wild hair, full beard and a knapsack slung over his shoulder. He looks like he just teleported from a Wildling camp into modern-day Belfast (and we later find out, that's almost true. Like many of the guides, he was an extra on the show). Half the passengers arrive late, bleary-eyed, coffee in hand. Our guide, John, remains unfazed as he herds everyone onto the bus. Once the group is seated and accounted for, John begins his schtick.

‘Welcome aboard your Game of Thrones tour. I am John your guide. And I’m very pleased that you’re here because my country wasn't known for very many things.’ He holds up three fingers and starts ticking them off:

‘One was an alcoholic, wife-beating footballer called Georgie Best. We named an airport after him. The other was a ship that sank. You might have heard of it, it's called the Titanic.’ As a theatrical aside he adds in a mock whisper, ‘Although to be fair, it was fine when it left here.’ This joke yields a faint chuckle from the lethargic crowd.

‘And then the other thing is,’ he pauses and in a dramatic voice, utters, ‘the Troubles.’

‘Now, I’ll tell you about the Troubles. The trouble all started when Joffrey Baratheon cut off Ned Stark's head!’ The audience, now wrested from their morning stupor, recognize the reference to the show's most iconic scene and laugh heartily.

‘And that's the only trouble I’m talking about today because we are a Game of Thrones tour, we are here to celebrate the majesty of the greatest fucking television show that has ever been created!’ (Guided tour, 13 May 2019)

John's joke is often repeated by other guides in various incarnations. The country's proudest achievements – memorialized in development projects like the George Best Belfast City Airport and the £97 million Titanic Museum (McDonnell, 2012) – warrant a disclaimer. Even things to be proud of, like world-class athletes and feats of engineering have their dark sides. The underlying implication is that Northern Ireland having very few successes to choose from tends to celebrate its failures. And of course, Northern Ireland's most infamous claim to fame is the Troubles.

The Troubles was a 30-year period of low-level urban warfare, triggered in the late 1960s over civil rights demonstrations for equal access to housing, voting and jobs for Catholic citizens. At the core of the conflict was the ongoing political struggle to determine the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. The country was divided between Protestant unionists who wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom and Catholic Irish nationalists who wanted to secede from the union with Great Britain and unite all of Ireland under one government. From the 1960s through the 1990s, images of riot-burned streets, masked gunmen and militarized security checkpoints dominated international news media representations of Northern Ireland and it continues to do so today in popular TV and film representations.

It has been two decades since the conflict formally came to an end with the signing of peace agreements in 1998. Despite great attempts by politicians, policy makers and industry professionals to wipe away the negative association with violence, the reputation lingers. Troubles tourism is a robust (although still controversial) sector of the tourism industry and many people visit Northern Ireland specifically to learn about the conflict. As a result, most tour guides anticipate that the Troubles dominates the tourist imagination of Northern Ireland. As exemplified in John's opening speech, GoT guides acknowledge this from the outset of the tour and then challenge tourist expectations by stating that this tour is about anything but the Troubles.

This article addresses the question of how new representations of Northern Ireland are being mediated by tour guides through GoT tours and how these representations reflect attempts to reconcile a difficult past with a desired future for the country. Our aim is to examine the role of GoT tour guides as cultural mediators who are uniquely positioned to reshape the image of Northern Ireland. Through an analysis of both the GoT tour narratives and interviews with tour guides, we uncover how guides’ personal reflections on GoT tourism reveal alternative social imaginaries of Northern Ireland. While the tour itself helps redefine Northern Ireland in the tourist imagination, the way guides talk about guiding is particularly useful in illuminating the meanings that guides assign to their guiding practices and their general reflections on a post-conflict Northern Ireland.

Game of Thrones in Northern Ireland

GoT has been a promising avenue for recreating the image of Northern Ireland in the global imagination. The popular hit TV show, averaging 44.2 million viewers per episode (Fitzgerald, 2019) was filmed predominantly in Northern Ireland between 2010 and 2018 at 49 outdoor locations around the countryside and 2 film studios (Feldman, 2019). Public tourism bodies and industry professionals have capitalized on this, using the region's connection to the show to establish global visibility as a must-see tourist destination (Rappas, 2019). At the same time, and independently of official tourism initiatives, local entrepreneurs and pre-existing tourism companies noticed the demand for GoT-related tourism and either incorporated filming locations into their traditional sightseeing tours, or developed their own tours aimed specifically at the GoT fan base.

While tours about a pseudo-medieval fantasy TV show seem an unlikely arena for societal debate over image and identity, it in fact fits in with Northern Ireland's regeneration strategy. The transition to the post-conflict period – colloquially referred to as ‘the new Northern Ireland’ (Ramsey, 2013) – relied heavily on investment in commercial and leisure activities (Shirlow, 2006), and prioritized the revitalization of the tourism and hospitality sector. The world-wide popularity of GoT made it a central feature in Northern Ireland's tourism agenda. In 2019, GoT tourism was responsible for attracting 350,000 visitors and contributing over £50 million (Tourism NI, 2019). Tourism NI Chief Executive John McGrillen proclaimed GoT to be ‘one of the biggest success stories of our tourism offering … with the latest figures estimating one in six international leisure visitors choose to visit Northern Ireland because of the hit TV show’ (NI Connections, 2020). The £50 million bump doesn't seem immediately impressive next to the total £669 million spent by external visitors in 2018, especially when considering that the 148th Golf Open Championship hosted in Northern Ireland that same year contributed double – £106 million – as a one-off event (Tourism NI, 2019). Despite being a niche but growing segment of the overall tourism market in Northern Ireland, GoT is massively visible thanks to highly successful social media campaigns paired with the development of additional visitor attractions located in Belfast city centre by Tourism Ireland and Northern Ireland Screen ¹ (Rappas and Baschiera, 2020). These institutions have created a positive discourse which celebrates and strengthens the reputation of Northern Ireland as the ‘Home of Thrones’ (Rappas and Baschiera, 2020). GoT, however, has impacts reaching far beyond simply increasing Northern Ireland's tourism portfolio. We argue that GoT provides a visible outlet for those invested in changing old representations to actively engage in the production of alternative social imaginaries. These imaginaries, while situated in the present, draw upon the country's infamous past, but ultimately help articulate a vision for a potential and desired future.

At the time of research in 2018, outdoor film locations tours made up the bulk of GoT tourism offerings. Therefore, we focus specifically on tour guides to illustrate their unique ability to mediate between dominant discourses, tourist expectations and their own personal experiences. We present a case in which tour guides use the fantasy world of GoT as a springboard for renegotiating a collective identity in the aftermath of political conflict. Although this article presents a specific case located in a particular geopolitical context, the findings will be of interest to scholars of Northern Ireland as it contributes a bottom-up perspective to an area of study which has predominantly been examined from a policy perspective. More generally, this research can resonate with other places that use tourism as a redevelopment strategy after conflict. This research demonstrates the potential for tourism, and popular culture more generally, to be recognized as arenas of empowered agency for renegotiating representation and identity after conflict.

Theoretical framework: tour guides and the mediation of social imaginaries

Many scholars have noted the power of media to redefine the image of a destination and its influence on our decisions to travel (Reijnders, 2010; Šegota, 2018; Tanzanelli, 2007). Examples abound, such as Lord of the Rings in New Zealand, Braveheart in Scotland, Breaking Bad in Albuquerque. Screen tourism has become an increasingly popular motivation for travel and tourists flock to sites where their favourite films or series were made. National and local governments, together with tourism institutions, actively harness the popularity of media-induced tourism as an opportunity to rebrand the image of a city or nation through global advertising campaigns and the development of tourism products (Beeton, 2005; Goh, 2014; Lundberg et al., 2018; McElroy, 2011; Torchin, 2002). However, the act of reimagining place through screen tourism is not just the business of governments or official tourism bodies. Alongside global advertising campaigns which stimulate, promote and encourage media-based imaginings of place, exists the physical site of touristic encounters and the imaginings which emerge from ‘being-there’. A crucial axis point in bridging the relationship between media, tourism and place is that of tour guides, the so-called ‘ground troops of the travel industry’ (Wynn, 2010: 6).

Conceptualizations of the relationship between tourists and tour guides are ever present in the field of tourism studies. Guides are often conceptualized as gatekeepers, pathfinders or mentors who select and interpret sites for the unknowing tourist or provide access to an unfamiliar culture (see Bruner, 2005; Cohen, 1985; Edensor, 2001; Smith, 1977). Tour guides are seen to act as facilitators of the touristic experience whose primary role is to transform the identity of place for tourists’ consumption. This study recognizes tourism's ability to transform not only tourists’ perception, but also includes the guides’ own imagination and relationship to the places they represent. Therefore, we draw attention to the tour guide as both constructer and consumer of imaginaries produced through tourism and the effect that has on how guides relate to their own culture, heritage and sense of place.

In order to conceptualize the role of tour guides, we draw on Feldman and Skinner’s (2018) use of the concept of cultural mediation. Mediation goes beyond seeing the guide as a mere facilitator, but acknowledges ‘intense emotional labour’ (Feldman and Skinner, 2018: 7) performed by the guide, who is not merely playing a role, but whose work may be extremely personal and intertwined with their own persona. They can be highly invested in the outcome of their job as self-proclaimed ambassadors or educators who place upon themselves the burden of representing their culture or country to a visiting audience. As the people who select and present information, tour guides become active agents in determining how they want their own society to be seen. Mediation in this sense, foregrounds the guides’ awareness of occupying a middle position as they negotiate not only between visitors and the host destination, but between broader social discourses of representation (Feldman, 2018).

Under this conceptualization, imagination is therefore an intrinsic part of tourism. Our concern is not with tourist imaginaries – the role of imagination from the tourist perspective has been dealt with extensively – but rather with the tour guides’ own capacity to imagine and to communicate that imagination through the tour. As Feldman and Skinner (2018) have noted, tour narratives ‘feed off wider imaginaries, culturally shared and socially transmitted representational assemblages that interact with people's personal imaginings and are used as meaning-making devices, mediating how people act, cognise and value the world’ (Feldman and Skinner 2018, p. 8–9; cf. Salazar and Graburn, 2014). As such, these imaginings can be turned into a tourism product, for example, via the sites, discourses and stories narrated on the guided tour (see Salazar and Graburn, 2014).

Imaginaries, though inherently intangible, can be observed through the guides’ narration of place and society on the tour. Expressed through what Andrews (2014) calls narrative imagination, the form of imagination that we are concerned with emerges in the stories guides tell about themselves and their country. These stories are situated from a personal standpoint and stem from everyday ideological, institutional and socio-political context. Most importantly, these stories indicate how the guides make sense of their own changing environment. Narrative imagination ‘both synthesizes and deconstructs the knowledge we acquire from being in the world, thus it helps us to bring together discordant entities, to perceive a new “wholeness”, a new reality or potential reality’ (Andrews, 2014: 14). Our capacity to imagine is intrinsically tied to what is known, yet moves beyond into the realm of speculation and possibility to imagine what could be. Narrative imagination connects the real world as we know it to the possible, the potential, the not-yet-real through the stories people tell about themselves and the societies they claim to represent. Through the tour, guides attempt to create a new ‘wholeness’, a new understanding of a place, society and people, as much for themselves as for their visitors.

This focus on tour guiding as an expression of alternative social imaginaries is relatively novel, and creates potential to see guided tours as a medium for communicating social change. In this case GoT guides, who act in most cases as the main (or only) point of contact for visitors, are well positioned to reinforce or challenge the expectations and pre-existing imaginaries of visiting tourists and supplant them with their own imagination of, and desires for, Northern Ireland as it moves forward (see Feldman, 2018; McDonald, 2006). This research contributes a guide-centric approach to media tourism research more broadly and deepens our understanding of the cultural ‘work’ of tour guides as they negotiate between various (and sometimes competing) imaginations of place. This information also indicates how popular culture can be interpreted and utilized as a vehicle for social change not only by tourism institutions and policy makers, but also by local citizens in their everyday lives.

The research for the article is part of the primary author's dissertation on tourism in Northern Ireland. The data for this article is selected from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the summer of 2019. The primary author participated in ten GoT locations tours from four different tour companies. These are bus tours, lasting a full day (approximately 10 hours) in which the tour group of 16–40 people, led by a guide, travel to various filming locations around the countryside. At the time of research, there was one company operating exclusively as a GoT locations tour, with tours departing from Belfast, Derry/Londonderry and Dublin daily. All other companies the primary author toured with added a GoT-themed tour to their existing repertoire or incorporated GoT sites into their traditional sightseeing itinerary. In addition, the primary author conducted ten in-depth, semi-structured interviews (eight interviews with tour guides, and two interviews with industry employees ² ).

What follows is an analysis of the ways in which GoT tour guides act as mediators by crafting a new image of Northern Ireland through the guided tours. We begin with a presentation of the guides' discursive creation of temporal boundaries between the past and the present through the juxtaposition of their descriptions of the Troubles with the new Northern Ireland. Second, we illustrate how guides use the GoT tour locations to highlight additional historical information about the site, thereby redefining a past that is more than just the Troubles. And finally, we show how guides draw on their own personal stories of working on the show and connect them to the broader discourse of the region's successful transformation away from conflict. By way of conclusion, this article then returns to the idea of mediation and considers the ways in which GoT tourism offers a platform for the new imagining of place.

Putting the Troubles in the past

As indicated by the vignette at the opening of this article, most GoT guides begin their tour with declarations that this is not a Troubles tour. In reference to the plethora of Troubles tours already available, guides warn: ‘If that's what you came for, then you’re on the wrong tour!’ (Guided Tour, 9 August 2019). However, during the dull stretches of highway between locations, they inevitably turn to stories of the Troubles. Chris, who grew up during the conflict, addresses the past with levity and humour. He jokes about the ironic coincidence of an island known for its ancient warring tribes, violent uprisings, disputed political allegiances and division of north and south to produce the world's most-watched show about precisely that. ‘I’ve had enough of Northern Irish politics, give me some simple incest and violence,’ Chris jokes on the tour, inferring that the political animosity in Northern Ireland is more absurd than the fictional power struggles that the show is famous for. However, he then adds more seriously, ‘[the Troubles is] an extremely embarrassing part of our history, let me tell you. We just don't want to talk about it. It's long in the past thankfully’ (Guided tour, 5 May 2019). This cognitive and discursive distancing is a common occurrence with all the guides, regardless of age or upbringing. They are adamant that the Troubles are ‘over’, ‘in the past’ or ‘part of our history’. Such strategies are an attempt to decentre the Troubles from tourist imaginations of Northern Ireland. The guides collectively show a need to set the record straight with their audience, who in many cases demonstrate no discernible interest in the Troubles. Nevertheless, the affective weight of a difficult past is still clearly felt by the guides.

The construction of the Troubles as past, is further strengthened by a contrast with the present. Another guide, James, who has two teenage children, exemplifies this process:

The Northern Ireland that my kids are growing up in is a much more peaceful place than the one that I knew when I was their age during the dark years of the Troubles. Belfast is now one of the safest cities in the world. We have a very troubled history, but now we’re in a very peaceful, friendly time. (Guided Tour, 9 August 2019)

Bryant (2012) notes that discursively delineating boundaries around particular periods (such as the Troubles) is a way of organizing time itself and influences how the past it understood. By placing ‘the dark years of the Troubles’ in contrast with the current safe and peaceful version of the country, James creates clear boundaries between the past and ‘now’, and challenges any associations his audience may have of Northern Ireland as a dangerous or violent place.

This societal transformation is subtly interwoven into the tour narratives as guides repeatedly point to the role that GoT has played in helping the country leave the Troubles behind. Descriptions of the Troubles are also coupled with the stagnation of industry and opportunity. Many guides speak about having felt cut off from the rest of the world because the conflict discouraged visitors and stifled economic growth.

Back then, Northern Ireland would never have been considered for the filming of Game of Thrones. Never. Apart from a very small independent film or maybe a BBC production, nothing was ever filmed here. It just wasn't somewhere you could have had a film industry. (Guided Tour, 11 May 2019)

These characteristics are contrasted with the present economic boom since the conclusion of the conflict. Now, GoT tour buses run year-round and tour operators can barely keep up with demand during the summer. In contrast to the negative associations to the Troubles, guides formulate a new image of Northern Ireland, one characterized by the development of globally focused industries stimulated with the help of GoT.

The collective negative association with the Troubles and the conviction that the Troubles are over forms characteristics of difference and delineates the border between the Troubles era and the new Northern Ireland. This narrative also demonstrates a restructuring of the relationship with the Troubles as something that is no longer present. From this standpoint, the guides are able to redirect the image of Northern Ireland.

Revitalizing ‘real’ heritage through a fantasy landscape

Throughout the tour, guides rely on a variety of strategies that have become commonplace in other film locations tours (Goh, 2014; Šegota, 2018; Waysdorf and Reijnders, 2017) in order to give tourists an ‘authentic’ GoT experience. At each stop, guides show screen shots and video clips of the on-screen Westeros to compare with the real landscapes of the North Antrim Coast or Tollymore Forest as proof of the sites being the actual filming locations. Guides give visitors cloaks and swords to dress up in, re-enact fight scenes and pose for photos at stunning rural locations. The tour group stops for lunch at a restaurant frequented by the cast while on location, and occasionally tour groups get the opportunity to meet the dogs that played the Stark children's pet direwolves. Clearly apparent in the tour narrative is the guides' attempt to connect the fantasy world of Westeros to the actual landscape and history of Northern Ireland.

Among the show's many accolades are those for the consistently breath-taking landscapes that provided the settings of GoT and the Northern Ireland countryside and that provide the backdrop for many of the diverse geographies seen in the show. As John succinctly states on the tour, ‘The landscape of Northern Ireland speaks of Game of Thrones’ (Guided tour, 8 May 2019) and guides are well aware that most people are motivated to take the tour because of the scenic images that make up the fantasy world of Westeros. John plays out his imagined scenario of what the viewers were thinking when they first saw GoT.

[It] came on the TV and everyone was like, ‘Whoa! Look at that CGI!’ And we’re like, ‘That's not CGI, that's Northern Ireland.’ And you guys all went, ‘We must go there.’ And here you are. (Guided Tour, 8 May 2019)

GoT may have motivated tourists to travel to Northern Ireland, but tour guides use the fantasy landscape of Westeros as a springboard to promote the history and natural beauty of the actual landscape and unique geology of Northern Ireland. At a common stop on the tour, where most of the scenes for the rocky archipelago of the Iron Islands were shot, the guide gathers everyone under a small wooden shelter out of the wind and rain that assaults the northern Antrim Coast in the summer months. This time Chris is guiding and he explains:

‘This is Balintoy Harbour, or Lordsport Harbour as you know it from the show.’ He holds up a laminated print-out of a screen-shot of the Lordsport Harbor.

‘There it is in the show,’ he points to the screen-shot, ‘and there it is in real life.’ He sweeps his hand towards the harbour in front of us.

‘Balintoy has been a fishing village for centuries. In fact this little harbour was built between 1605 and 1612. But it would have been a fishing village for centuries and this little building would have been a fish gutting cottage. There's no fishing industry here anymore. If you come back in a couple of weeks, it just turns back into modern water sports centre. There's jet skiing, parasailing, all that sort of stuff.’ (Guided Tour, 5 May 2019)

After comparing the harbour before us to the image depicted in the screen-shot, Chris also plays a few video clips on his tablet to remind us what the on-screen version of the harbour looked like and to point out recognizable features. Other screen tourism scholars have commented on the intersection of the real and fantasy landscapes that play a crucial role in the tourist experience (Buchmann, 2010; Roesch, 2009; Waysdorf and Reijnders, 2017). The case most similar to GoT is that of Lord of the Rings (LOTR) tourism in New Zealand, where much of the filming took place in many of the country's stunning rural landscapes and which continues to attract tourists. Goh (2014) describes how the physical landscape of the site meets the fantasy landscape and is materialized by their juxtaposition during the tours. However, unlike the LOTR locations which have left sets in place, such as the village of Hobbiton, the vast majority of GoT film sites contain none of the infrastructure of the show. ³ What tourists primarily see is the ‘real’ landscape of Northern Ireland. The lack of GoT infrastructure allows guides use the tour as a way to ultimately show off the real Northern Ireland by way of the fantasy world of Westeros.

The tours consist of an eclectic combination of GoT filming locations, facts about the geology and geography of the North Antrim coastline, Celtic legends and Northern Irish history. The weaving of information of the real Northern Ireland into the GoT tour occurs throughout the day as the bus passes various locations with or without an association to the show. While driving in between locations, the guides point out sites that have no connection to GoT, but are well known locally. Sites such as Rathlin Island, where Robert the Bruce took refuge during his fight for Scottish independence, and Loughareema (aka the Vanishing Lake) where the otherworldly Children of Lir appear and disappear along with the lake itself. The landscape, along with the Celtic mythology, complements the fantasy theme of GoT. The guides’ tour narrative switches seamlessly between the fictitious landscape of Westeros and the real landscape of Northern Ireland in a way that wouldn't necessarily work on an urban city tour. Reijnders et al. (2021: 9) point to the reciprocity between the tour narrative and the selection of sites: ‘locations are chosen because they fit well with the story, but at the same time, these stories reaffirm and empower the associations that the location inspires’. Within a tourism context, the symbolic power of landscapes can therefore be ‘legitimised as alternative perceptions and powerful consumption experiences and economies’ (Goh, 2014: 280).

Two stops along the coast, the Giant's Causeway ⁴ (Northern Ireland's only UNESCO World Heritage site), a unique geological formation of interlocking basalt columns and the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, ⁵ which fishermen used to traverse a narrow channel to a natural outcrop to set their nets, are not in GoT at all, but are part of the traditional tourism route, and so the tours stop there anyway. The guides provide their audience with the history of these sites, including the legend of how the Causeway was formed by the giant, Finn McCool. Some guides reminisce about family outings to these locations during their childhood. They recall being packed into the car during the summer holiday for a day out at the coast, or being conscripted to take visiting relatives to ‘the pile of stones’.

Throughout the tour, guides select historical information, interesting facts or personal stories to entertain the audience and to share their knowledge of Northern Irish heritage. Scholars have long posited that heritage is a resource for the present, one which is carefully selected in accordance with current social and political circumstances and with an eye to an ideal, imagined future (Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1995: 6). During the tour, guides choose from pre-Troubles and non-Troubles heritage to remake a desirable narrative of the past. In effect, they are creating a past that is made up of features of the landscape that they knew quite intimately in their lives growing up in Northern Ireland, but were overshadowed by the conflict. By selecting what aspects of the country's heritage to present on the tour, guides are helping to redefine the past in the eyes of the tourist. This new understanding, however, is not only limited to the tourists, but also holds true for the guides themselves. This is most exemplified by an explanation given by Chris:

I hated this country for years because of the obvious. Now my different influences and my different interactions with this place, it's changed me in a lot of very positive ways. It's opened my eyes to a lot of things that I was blind to before. (Personal Interview, 12 May 2019)

For many people such as Chris, the violence of the Troubles and the negative portrayal in international news media caused a sense of embarrassment and shame regarding their country. He confessed that, as a musician, he spent much of his professional career travelling abroad, largely to escape the restrictiveness of growing up during the conflict. The renewed sense of national pride sparked by the presence of GoT and a rekindled appreciation of the unique natural landscape and heritage during his years as a tour guide has significantly changed his relationship to Northern Ireland.

Other guides indicate the effect of GoT has had on their own relationship to their country. At the end of the day, John always finishes his tour the same way:

I wake up every day, no matter what the weather, and feel I am blessed to come from here. Because I’m in absolute awe and wonder at the natural beauty that's on offer in this island. To me this really is a jewel in the sea, the Emerald Isle. And hopefully by coming out with me today on this tour you might get a little more of an appreciation of our favourite show, Game of Thrones, and hopefully you might just leave with a little bit of that awe and wonder of the natural beauty on offer in my country. (Guided Tour, 8 May 2019)

The conclusion of this tour gives an indication of some of John's personal motivation as a guide: yes, this is a GoT tour, yes he is a fan of the show, but this tour is just as much about Northern Ireland as it is about Game of Thrones. The rocky shores, ancient forests and sweeping glens of the Northern Irish countryside are infused with the symbolic power of ‘imaginative geographies’ (Urry and Larsen, 2011) in which the mythical world of Westeros is materialized. However, their significance is twofold. For the guides, these landscapes are the physical location of Westeros, as represented in the HBO series, but they have also been re-infused with personal meaning; they represent the catalyst for changing the imagination of the ‘real’ Northern Ireland. Guides are eager to share aspects of their home country that they personally find interesting or beautiful. This allows them to correct the version of a conflicted Northern Ireland that they feel misrepresents them and provide a narrative of the past that is more than just the Troubles. However, this collective reimagining of place and heritage doesn't stop at the present, it filters back into the mundane everyday ‘real’ world of the new Northern Ireland and its potential future.

A (re)imagined future for the new Northern Ireland

Another unique feature of the tours is that many of the guides also worked as extras on the show. During the dull stretches of motorway between filming locations, guides entertain their audience with their own personal stories. They explain how they became extras and the roles they played: Stark guards, Wildlings, Dothraki horsemen, bannermen for various houses, foot soldiers, archers, and battlefield corpses. Some started with season one, others joined mid-way. Despite the long hours, physical work in wet or freezing weather and low pay, many of them returned year after year. They announce to their tourist audience that they don't see themselves as professional guides but as GoT enthusiasts: ‘I’m not a certified tour guide, I’m a fan, same as all of you’ (Guided tour, 5 May 2019).

Many of the guides, like Chris, are musicians or artists with irregular work schedules, and became extras to supplement their income. Some joined only for one season and returned to their office jobs, preferring a stable income and comfortable working environment. Others left their traditional nine-to-five jobs to work as an extra permanently. Now that filming has concluded, a small group of these extras have become GoT tour guides.

One of the guides Liam, had already been an extra on several other TV shows before GoT. He was initially hesitant to work on a fantasy series because he personally doesn't like the genre. After three seasons however, he joined the ranks of avid GoT fans, not just for the content of the show, but because of the positive impact it had on his life:

Game of Thrones is huge. It really is. It's changed lives, it's changed my life. Before I became involved in Game of Thrones I was a graphic designer sitting in a boring office every day designing advertisements. Now I’m a Game of Thrones tour guide doing this four days a week, meeting people from all over the world, talking about the best show in the world. Can you think of a better job? People say to me, ‘Do you not get bored of it?’ No. Because every day is different, and I love it! (Guided Tour, 18 May 2019)

All of the guides who were also extras freely comment on the profound sense of benefit they as individuals have received. As part of the group of people who continue to gain from GoT, it's not surprising that this viewpoint is enthusiastically shared by all the guides. The personal success of the guides is used as living proof of the positive impact of GoT, not just in their own lives, but on the country as a whole.

I think that Thrones has just brought so much positivity to this tiny little country. Whether people like the show or not, it's irrelevant […]. It's definitely a unifier. I think that – this is only my personal opinion, of course – but I see how Game of Thrones has indirectly united us. That might be the wrong word because the two sides still have issues, but it's not just problems any more. There's a lot of things in our history that would always be divided, but [GoT] is most definitely something that we can all be proud of. (Personal Interview, 12 May 2019)

Such affirmative thinking about GoT has penetrated the social imagination and filtered down to the everyday tour narratives of guides. The stories of individual success, or ‘mini biographies’ as Andrews (2014) calls them, reflect the wider discourse coming from Tourism Ireland and NI Screen about GoT as ‘the gift that keeps on giving’ (Personal Interview, 7 August 2018).

As Andrews (2014) notes, personal storytelling is often wrapped up in broader political narratives that reflect a given social context. The stories that guides tell on the tours indicate how they position themselves within society and how they articulate real and alternative versions of Northern Ireland. It is particularly poignant on the tours where the opportunity to imagine alternative possibilities is attributed in large part to the presence of GoT. Thus, such narratives ‘engage the imagination, not only in constructing stories about the past and the present, but also helping to articulate a vision of an alternative world’ (Andrews, 2014: 86). Liam and the other guides not only share their own stories of how GoT has affected their professional and personal lives, but they also share their idealized imagined scenario for the future.

There are so many young people who were maybe doing menial little jobs when they were students working at Tesco [supermarket] and trying to do their studies. And then they got a little part-time job being some kind of an assistant, a runner, and now suddenly they’re trained up and they’re ready to go anywhere in the world. If that's their dream, it's there for them. (Personal Interview, 8 May 2019)

The imagined potential of GoT is explicitly clear and the show's utility as a vehicle to carry Northern Ireland into the future is identifiable in the tour narrative. Guides hold GoT responsible for opening up viable career opportunities for the next generation in the tourism and film industry, something that the older guides didn't feel like they had for themselves. These stories are used to imagine possible futures for the next generation and the wider Northern Irish society. There is hope that the skills learned by those involved with the making of GoT, along with the film infrastructure left behind, will lead to a sustainable film industry in Northern Ireland in the future.

However, in spite of the overwhelmingly positive media proclamations, some scholars question the real economic benefit of film production (Baker, 2017; Ramsey, 2013; Rappas, 2019). They argue that GoT has actually stimulated a relatively low number of new jobs and relies predominantly on pre-existing industries and temporary unskilled labour. Baker (2017) and Rappas (2019) criticize the industry discourse as ‘over-celebratory’ and challenge the premise that GoT will have a lasting economic impact. Nevertheless, the positive discourse which praises and strengthens the connection between GoT and Northern Ireland is pervasive. Even if the lasting economic benefit is debatable, the symbolic impact of the show's presence is undeniable. A NI Screen employee describes during an interview just how important GoT brand been:

Over time Northern Ireland's story has evolved since Game of Thrones has been filmed. It has become part of the fabric of Northern Ireland because of the knock-on impact that it has had. […] It really is a significant part of Northern Ireland's story as we try and move beyond our reputation for politics and bombs and bullets and all of that. […] We can build a brand association with something like Game of Thrones, something like film tourism and even tourism more generally, that is actually a symbol that we are stabilizing and moving forward. (Personal Interview, 7 August 2018)

The tours are evidence not only of the importance of GoT is for the guides, but also how the show is connected to the success of Northern Ireland's transformation into a peaceful and prosperous society. It shows how people take meaning from their daily lived experiences and map that on to the broader scope of social and political change.

Conclusion

This article examined the ways that GoT tour guides mediate a new image of Northern Ireland. By both redefining the past and imagining a future, guides challenge the associations of Northern Ireland with conflict and create a new image of the country based on its connection to GoT. This article described the ways in which guides participate in this reimagining during the tours. First, the discursive distinction of the past is a form of distancing from negative associations of the Troubles. Then, by contrasting the past with the new Northern Ireland, guides present tourists with an alternative image of the country. Second, guides compare the real landscape of Northern Ireland to the fantasy landscape of Westeros to reformulate a past that is more than just the Troubles. They use the filming locations from the show to incorporate parts of their heritage that they feel were overshadowed by the conflict. Finally, through their involvement in the making of GoT, they are able to draw on personal stories of success as evidence of a collective transition to a peaceful society and entry into global mainstream culture.

The results of this inquiry show that the content of the GoT tours produces a unique narrative. While any tourism activity can be implicated in the reimagination of heritage or identity, what gives GoT power is its status as a globally recognized cultural phenomenon. It puts Northern Ireland in the spotlight for something other than the Troubles. This gives guides a lens through which a future can be imagined, one in which Northern Ireland can participate in mainstream creative industries and integrate into global culture. By using the tours to prove ‘how far we’ve come’, guides convey the strong sense of hope and optimism they have for their country and future generations. The stories that guides tell on the tours are personal articulations of their own ontological versions of the new Northern Ireland. Such narrative imagination, as described by Andrews (2014), plays ‘a critical role in creating and recreating history – at the level of the individual, the community, and the nation’ (Andrews, 2014: 88). The gradual process of societal transition away from war to a time of peace is condensed into a consumable tour narrative as the guides reveal the changes that have been actualized, the potentialities of the not-yet-actualized and point to an ideal vision of the future. Such understanding is unique to the in-situ encounters with individual tour guides who divulge personal and intimate aspirations and cannot be discerned from official rebranding campaigns. Through guides’ personal reflections that reveal how their participation in tourism has transformed their own understanding of place, we gain insight into the evolution of a new social imaginary of Northern Ireland.

Conceptually, an examination of tour guides in this light increases our understanding of the actual work that tour guides do and the social effects it produces. As cultural mediators and the direct point of contact with tourists, mediating between tourist expectations, dominant societal discourses and their own personal experiences to produce particular representations of Northern Ireland. They become active agents in a process to ‘(re)fashion identity, to (re)animate cultural subjectivity, to (re)charge collective self-awareness, to forge new patterns of sociality, all within the marketplace’ (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2009: 26, cited in Feldman, 2018: 51). While the GoT tours themselves are part of a broader strategy of changing the reputation of Northern Ireland in the global imagination, they also contain symbolic significance that goes far beyond place-branding attempts. This shows that tourism and the imaginings that arise from it are not simply produced for tourist consumption, but also contribute to guides’ own collective understandings of the new Northern Ireland and their place in it.