Dr. Tuomas Hovi, a folklorist at the University of Turku, dates his interest in Dracula tourism to 2002 when he accompanied his father, another Finnish academic, on a lecture visit to a Romanian university. His discovery then of Dracula tourism, as he writes, “led to a short seminar paper, a master’s thesis, several conference papers, a dissertation [submitted in 2014] and finally to this book” (10), which is published in the venerable and prestigious FFC series. (If this number is reprinted, two errors should be corrected. First, on the title page for Hovi’s book itself the FFC number is given as 310 instead of 311. Second, in the Table of Contents, chapter 2 is not included.) Hovi’s book is erudite, despite being about the notorious villain of popular culture, Count Dracula, a focus that Hovi admits, “might seem odd and even ridiculous at first” (13).
Dracula tourism is, indeed, bizarre and seemingly inauthentic. Participants are sometimes housed in modern vampire-themed hotels built in Transylvanian locales mentioned by Bram Stoker in his horror novel. They dine in atmospheric restaurants, sometimes entertained by vampire shows or simulated witch trials. In rural locations they are warned of lurking dangers in the darkness beyond the tour venues, and they enjoy spooky stories told by English-speaking guides around campfires, occasionally followed by “howling contests.” Tourists are regularly taken to the castle ruin of Poienari, which has real connections with Vlad the Impaler but not with Dracula, and to Castle Bran, dubbed “Dracula’s Castle,” which has little or no connection with either one, and to the nineteenth-century castle Peles, which, although an impressive structure, has no reason to be on the tours, except that it is sited conveniently for a visit and has a genuine connection to Romanian heritage. Some tours make a stop at the Snagov monastery near Bucharest where Vlad may have been interred (but probably wasn’t), before his remains (if any) supposedly vanished. The monks at Snagov display a photo of Vlad at the site of his non-tomb, and they charge a fee for taking photos.
In contrast to these kitschy references to the historical Impaler and to the Dracula of the novel, and especially of Dracula films (none filmed in Transylvania!), most of the tours also include some relatively authentic introduction to traditional Romanian foods and to folk traditions, especially legends, costumes, music, and dance. In the village of Arefu near Poienari, for example, some tours present a local person relating genuine examples of lore about Vlad, the presumed original for Dracula. But even here the level of authenticity tends to be “staged,” as the presenter is a young girl from the village reading stories in English from a written text.
Hovi’s review and evaluation of the Dracula data is comprehensive and eclectic. After introducing his main research questions and methodology (chapter 1), he sums up the fifteenth- to nineteenth-century stories about Vlad the Impaler found in German, Russian, and Romanian sources (chapter 2) leading up to Bram Stoker’s creation of his notorious, but entirely fictitious protagonist as a vampire. Chapter 3 surveys the Dracula tourism promoted by ten Romanian companies, taking tourists to places associated both with the historical Vlad and the fictional count. In his fieldwork conducted in 2010 and 2011, Hovi participated in three of these tours operated by two different companies, two of the tours being Halloween-themed. He interviewed tour guides, and he collected information from participants via a questionnaire. Hovi also analyzed the contents of the websites of all ten companies; in appendices he provides full itineraries of four tours.
The next three chapters analyze this data with reference to the many other publications relevant to the general topic of tourism and to Dracula exploitation in particular. Chapter 4 examines the use of tradition in the tours, employing an intertextual approach to evaluate the narratives included in the tours with reference to such topics as vampirism, Medievalism, and Romanian history. In chapter 5, Hovi addresses “hybridisation of culture” as exhibited by, for example, the incorporation of international Halloween stereotypes into Dracula tours. Even the very idea of Vlad as supposedly representing the vampire count is a hybrid notion, since there is no tradition of the historic figure being vampiric except by implication in Stoker’s literary creation.
In chapter 6, Hovi addresses the question that underlies the whole previous discussion, that is, whether anything representing authenticity and true national heritage can be found in this curious branch of tourism. Here he draws on Lauri Honko’s concept of the folklore process involving a “first life” of folklore existing within an original folk community, followed by a “second life” when archived folklore is “resurrected” and re-used in other forms. He refers again to the storytelling done in the village of Arefu where, he suggests, “the folkloric material can be seen as having returned to its roots, if in fact it ever left.” While some readers may find this appraisal overly acceptable of a staged version of authenticity, it cannot be denied that Hovi argues his case coherently and with the full data available for others to review on their own. In his brief final chapter (chapter 7), Hovi recapitulates his major points and comes to the unsurprising conclusion that “the tourists are finding heritage through fiction in Dracula tourism.” Considering that many foreign tourists coming to Romania may not even realize at the outset that a region called Transylvania exists outside Stoker’s novel, perhaps anything learned beyond that is worthwhile, but surely Dracula tourism is a rather roundabout way to approach the rich cultural heritage of this interesting country.
Professor Hovi is quite tolerant of the major role that Radu Florescu’s and Raymond McNally’s bestseller In Search of Dracula (1972) had in creating a demand for Dracula tourism. These Boston College historians recognized the popular potential of their subject matter, and after the success of their book exploited it vigorously on the lecture circuit, in press interviews, and on TV talk shows. They exaggerated the possible connection of Vlad’s history to Stoker’s literary creation to the point that the images tended to merge into a Vlad/vampire hybrid, at least in public opinion and in the minds of filmmakers. They also did not hesitate to make dubious claims about such things as the exact date and place of Vlad’s birth and his supposed burial at Snagov. Sometimes they represented their findings as original and precedent-breaking when actually their sources were well known to earlier scholars. At one point, Hovi seems to apologize for correcting such errors, stating that “it is not my intention to gloat over their mistakes.” Probably Dracula tourism would have developed even without In Search of Dracula, but the book with its careless scholarship speeded the process.
I have a bit of personal evidence that the commercializing of Dracula in Romanian tourism was underway many years ago. Sometime in the early 1970s in a Romanian gift shop I bought a costumed doll that stands about ten inches tall and is clearly designed in its headgear, mustache, clothing, and accessories (a sword, a scroll, and golden spurs on the boot heels) to resemble Vlad the Impaler as shown in a well-known portrait. On the bottom of the base is a manufacturer’s sticker showing that the price was 150 lei, that this doll was made in a craft shop in the town of Oradea (in northwestern Transylvania), and that the name of the figure was (wait for it!) “DRACULA.”
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[Review length: 1240 words • Review posted on May 8, 2018]