Astronauts have the Nordic countries to thank for the first missions to the moon. And now, the Nordics are giving back.

“Apollo explorations of lunar volcanic terrain gained insights from exposure to the varieties of newly formed volcanic rocks and structures found in Iceland,” wrote Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt in his 2006 book Return to the Moon. “All the lunar landing crews benefited from the examination of the varied rock assemblages that resemble the complexities of the lunar surface.”

More recently—twice in the last two years, in fact—Iceland has had a similar experience with two tourism campaigns leaning on the same concept. Could it be a strange otherworldly coincidence?

One country, one idea

Go to Joy Iceland is a local tour operator that takes visitors on day trips around the country. In 2021 it released an online film called “Iceland Space Program” to promote its services featuring a space-suited “Bjorn” described as “the latest astronaut to join Iceland’s newly launched space program, created to help visitors explore strange new worlds.”

Throughout the 1-minute film, there are panoramic shots of the country looking particularly lunar-esque. It also describes Bjorn as being smart for not spending hundreds of thousands to find the “alien landscapes he had been searching for” and coming to Iceland instead.

The film ends with a space-suited Bjorn trying to hitchhike across the country while holding a sign that reads: “Take me to Iceland.”

Warp speed ahead to November 2022 when the country’s tourism board, Visit Iceland, released its new campaign. It looks particularly familiar, albeit with higher production values.

Made to send up the escapades around the billionaire space race of Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Elon Musk, the “Mission Iceland” campaign features a disillusioned astronaut in a waiting room, complete with spacesuit, who explains to the audience that his flight has been delayed after he’d spent millions on the vacation to space.

He then goes on to explain the benefits of taking a trip to Iceland instead and is seen exploring those familiar panoramic “lunar landscapes.”

“Being a huge fan of SS+K’s past Iceland videos, I was taken aback when my client informed me rather worryingly that the same idea had been used. Not even just the idea but some of the storytelling elements were practically the same,” explained Chris Torres, founder of the Glasgow-based Tourism Marketing Agency, which produced the first campaign for Go to Joy Iceland.

“After a frank but friendly chat, it really does seem to be a simple case of good creative minds think alike… even if it’s years and countries apart,” he added.

“While we acknowledge there are similarities between our video and the one created for Go to Joy Iceland, no one on our team had seen this until it was brought to our attention following the launch of our campaign,” said SS+K executive creative director Stevie Archer. “The similarities were purely coincidental,” he added.

Archer had been working with Visit Iceland for two years on its series of award-winning marketing campaigns, including the Icelandverse, a spoof of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta launch film.

And so it would seem to be just that—a coincidence. That is until Visit Norway chimed in with its own space-themed tourism campaign dating back to 2020, before either Iceland campaign came to life.

A record scratch moment

Norway’s tourism board read about the new campaign in Adweek and followed up with a tweet directed at Visit Iceland that read: “This is ground control to major Iceland, please connect to Norway Space Station.”

The tweet included screengrabs of its own campaign from 2021 alongside that of “Mission Iceland,” comparing the two.

In 2020, Norway released its “Welcome to Space” film that presented panoramic views of the country’s natural landscapes while comparing them to other worlds. This was followed by another film one year later that referenced the billionaire space race and featured a tourist in a space suit (wearing what looks like a white crash helmet and sneakers) taking off in a ski lift. He enjoys a packed lunch and a crossword before arriving at the top of a mountain to plant a flag while overlooking “Norwegian space.”

The message: “There is plenty of space for everyone!”

Katrine Mosfjeld, head of marketing for Visit Norway, told Adweek that the initial idea for the campaign, developed by creative agency Trigger, was to highlight the amount of space the country could provide during the period when Covid-19 lockdowns.

“We wanted to give people the chance to travel somewhere with lots of space and less crowds, limiting the chance of getting contaminated and sick,” Mosfjeld explained.

So far, there is no evidence that fellow Nordic nations Sweden, Denmark or the Faroe Islands have entered the terrestrial tourism space race, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they did.

But the U.S. astronauts of the 1960s space race will always have Iceland to thank, just as Harrison Schmitt remembers it: “The exposure of Apollo astronauts to the geology of Iceland contributed greatly to the experience of Apollo astronauts as they prepared for lunar exploration and sampling.”