Johan Edelheim CULTURE AND CULTURAL TOURISM IN LAPLAND: WHOSE CULTURE IS PRESENTED FOR WHOM AND WHOM IS IT BENEFITTING? ABSTRACT Culture is in its simultaneous simplicity and complexity a difficult word to use so that its meaning is clear to all stakeholders. Stuart Hall claimed it to be one of the most difficult and problematic words in the English language and things are not much better in other languages either. Culture means so many different things, and in combination with some other words, such as tourism or experience, can take on totally new and unexpected meanings to the recipients from what the sender of the message intended. This presentation will investigate the word culture and propose a four-layered taxonomy of different meanings, and will thereafter apply these meanings on what is referred to as culture and cultural tourism in the Finnish Lapland. The aim of the presentation is to propose different commonly acceptable understandings of culture, and thus allow users of the word to appropriately communicate their intention with the use of the word. Tourism in the Finnish Lapland will be taken as a specific case for this presentation and the intended outcome is, if not to answer the question the heading poses, at least to propose possible answers to it.