Dark Tourism BLOG
This page is intended to provide a more flexible and also more interactive element to dark-tourism.com, which is otherwise more static (more like an encyclopedia). The idea came about after the DT page I used to curate on Facebook was suddenly shut down by the company (full story here). So I’m continuing here – with regular blog posts, either featuring particular dark-tourism destinations or marking specific days in dark history and sometimes reacting to current affairs that are in some way relevant to this site’s topic.
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On the Northern Edge
I was reminiscing recently about my travels to Norway back in 2012 after reading a couple of articles focusing on places I visited during that trip. Both articles are about how places of Norwegian-Russian contact have been affected by the current war Putin is waging against Ukraine. The first article is about Spitsbergen, more specifically about the Russian mining town of Barentsburg. The other article is about Kirkenes and the nearby border with Russia. So both places are a bit on edge at the moment, and both are located in the far north – hence my choice of title for this post.
In both places
Israel now and then
Just like recent developments in Artsakh inspired me to take a nostalgic look back to when I travelled to that region, I can now do the same for Israel. I visited the country in August 2006, at a time when Israel was having “troubles in the north”, as the euphemism back then was when referring to the border war with Lebanon at the time, but it was nowhere on the scale of the horrors now.
The reason I went to Israel was completely unrelated to those
Artsakh Lost?
First of all, to explain: Artsakh is the Armenian name for the region that is more widely known in the rest of the world as Nagorno-Karabakh. This has been in the news recently, for very disturbing reasons, now that Azerbaijan appears to have achieved its mission of “reintegrating” the territory, which had been a self-declared republic since 1994, fully back into Azerbaijan. The latest aggression by Azerbaijani military forces, in violation of the peace deal brokered in 2020, seems to have sealed the fate of the Armenian population living in the region. In recent
Inside a Volcano!
As the title says, it is indeed about going inside a volcano. Obviously that won’t be an active volcano (any such volcano you could enter only once, and get instantly vaporized). Instead it’s a very special, probably even unique commodification of a dormant volcano, more precisely a drained magma chamber, going down over 120m below the crater top. It is located on the Reykjanes Peninsula a ca. 20-30 minute drive south of Reykjavik.
As you may recall from the general Iceland post, the Reykjanes Peninsula is also where
Copenhagen in August 2023
Just under two weeks ago I returned from a short trip to Denmark’s capital Copenhagen, arranged at short notice too. But I had three wonderful days in that fabulous city. It was in fact the last capital city in Europe I hadn’t yet visited. Now I can’t understand what kept me from visiting Copenhagen for so long.
Well, partially I can: I had put off a visit for years because I had read about one of the main attractions in terms of dark tourism, namely the
Iceland in 2023
Twelve days ago I came back from my return trip to Iceland. Like on my first trip there back in 2004, I totally fell in love with the Icelandic scenery, be it glaciers, volcanic wastelands or dramatic sea cliffs (full of puffins in various places). Unlike in 2004, though, I brought back plenty of much better photos too, compared to the ones I took with my very first digital camera in 2004 (see this previous Blog post). So I can give you another little overview photo essay now – up to date and obviously with a