The commodification of (bad) weather: Destination branding of the Faroe Islands

The Faroe Islands is one of the world's smallest countries but has in recent years become increasingly noticed in the global tourism market. Using the notion of “destination branding”, this article investigates how the official tourist board of the Faroe Islands, Visit Faroe Islands (VFI), brands the destination to tourists on their Facebook page. The data consists of VFI's Facebook posts from 1/9–2020 to 31/8–2021; these are analysed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches, namely corpus-based analysis, grounded theory categorisation, and multimodal analysis. Through the analyses, it is concluded that VFI promises unique and authentic experiences by turning the Faroe Islands' unspoiled and unexplored nature and unpredictable weather into tourist commodities. The Faroese destination brand includes a dichotomic relationship between elements of convenience and inconvenience – between accessibility and inaccessibility – that both emphasise the destination's extremeness and, on the other hand, mitigate it.