‘Come: It is time to keep your appointment with the Wicker Man’: The re-enchantment of Scotland through Wicker Man tourism

Abstract

The location filming of The Wicker Man (1973) used a number of places to invent the Pagan Scottish island of Summerisle. In the film, Summerisle feels like a timeless place in the Inner or Outer Hebrides. The actual locations are well-known in fan and academic literature. The film begins with aerial shots of the plane carrying Sergeant Howie passing over the dramatic mountains of Skye. But the rest of the film was shot somewhere else. In this article, I will explore how fans online make sense of the construction of the film, and how that feeds into wider academic debates about horror films and outsiders, and Scottishness and Gaelicness. I will then discuss my own pilgrimage tourism to the location sites in Scotland and use my own pictures and reflections to argue that while all tourism is a highly contested leisure activity, Wicker Man tourism allows tourists to find themselves off the map. It also allows people to re-enchant Scotland, and make meaning of Scottish landscape and history, even if the film draws on English folklore and music and The Golden Bough as much as Scottish folklore and music.