Paper short abstract:

What happens when digital scavenger apps like Geocaching are given agency in the re-discovering, re-narration and ritualization of formerly culturally important places like the Norwegian Saint Olav wells?

Paper long abstract:

Scavenger hunts by way of digital apps has had a steady increase in popularity on a global scale during the last couple of decades. With GPS-technology as an integrated locative aid in the activity, these apps and games are constructed around targets or posts on physical locations that people visit. Guided by the GPS people can participate in guided exhibitions in museums, detective games or other theme trails set out in the city environment or in the nature. This paper will explore what happens when digital scavenger apps like Geocaching are given agency in the re-discovering, re-narration and ritualization of formerly culturally important places like the Norwegian Saint Olav wells. Anthony Bak Buccitelli suggests that locative gaming apps should be seen as “spatial ‘regimes’, value-encoded systems of power that play out in the individualized user’s experience of space and place” (2017,9). Following this line of thought, in what way does the app contribute to the construction (or restoring) of the St Olav wells as places? Moreover, how does the app contribute in the negotiation of national-religious historical figure still subject to debate in Norway?