Frozen 2 premieres worldwide

Norway hopes new Disney film will bring blizzard of visitors

Photo courtesy of Disney
The Nordic landscape appears in all its glory in Frozen 2.

Victoria Garza
Norway Today

Frozen 2, Disney’s new animated musical feature film, opened in cinemas around the world November 22. The film is a sequel to runaway box office success Frozen, the most lucrative animated film of all time.

Filmmakers drew much of their inspiration for the film from Norway and from Sámi culture, broadcaster NRK writes. 

Norwegian travel board Visit Norway said it believes that the new film will create increased interests from visitors who want to experience Norwegian and Sámi culture.

“Internationally, the new travel trend is that tourists want to experience something real and natural, and distinctive cultures that are not so well known. We plan to use this in our marketing,” Visit Norway media specialist Harald Hansen told NRK.

Local tourism business is also hoping for a boost from the film, the broadcaster writes.

“It is very special for Sámi culture to be shown throughout the world in this way. We hope that it will make people curious about us,” Elen Solbritt Eira Utsi, head of travel company Boazo Sámi Siida, said to NRK.

When the first Frozen movie was released in 2013, Visit Norway partnered with Disney to market Norway as a source of inspiration for the film. The campaign resulted in a huge increase in tourists to Norway, particularly from the United States.

In five years, the number of nights spent in Norway by tourists from the United States increased by 170%, and the United States is now Norway’s third-largest tourist market.

“The effect Frozen 2 will have is difficult to predict, but we can see that American tour operators have already begun offering Frozen 2 trips to Norway,” Hansen told NRK.

“We have also released press releases to all our markets in Europe and North America. It is clear that we will use the film as much as we can, but it is difficult to say in advance what effect that will have,” he added.

This article originally appeared in the November 29, 2019, issue of The Norwegian American. To subscribe, visit SUBSCRIBE or call us at (206) 784-4617.