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Performing nature in Norway:
A literature review prepared for the project ‘Performing nature at the
‘world’s ends’; A comparative study of the cultures and politics of nature in
Norway and Australia
Gro Ween, Simone Abram, Marianne Lien Anne Katrine Norbye,.
This paper has a straightforward ambition; it describes Norwegian academic narratives of
Norwegian nature and landscape. The paper is written to aid the comparative efforts of the
project ‘Performing Nature at Worlds Ends.’ The project shows an interest in the following
approaches; Ideas of nature and wilderness connected with cultural and political processes;
political and cultural significance of nature; nature that unites and divides; feelings associated
with nature and wilderness; movement and interaction with nature. With this as a starting
point we wish to focus on existing categories of Norwegian landscapes, descriptions of
nature-culture in political and cultural processes, natures role in Norwegian nation formation,
nature connected with exercising Norwegianess and central Norwegian nature and landscape
conflicts.
Underlying this project is the assertion that the division between nature and culture is by no
means unproblematic (Latour 1996). Society and nature are not pure categories, and dualisms
block deeper understandings.
Our procedure for choosing which publications to include has been fairly simple. We have
made library searches on central terms such as nature, landscape, governance of nature,
cultural heritage, animals of prey, agriculture etc, at the same time as Gro Ween has read
widely, based upon my existing knowledge of Norwegian nature and landscape. As a starting
point we have focused upon three related disciplines; anthropology, geography and ethnology.
In the course of the last month Gro Ween have read forty books, master’s degrees, doctoral
degrees, articles, collections of articles, which serve as a basis for this paper. Other
researchers involved have concentrated on particular topics: Simone Abram describes
cottages and tourism. She has also had hand in editing the document. Marianne Lien has
edited but also contributed based upon her former research on Norway. Anne Katrine Norbye
made an overview of early approaches to landscape between 1950 and 1970.
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There are some themes that I have not yet been able to include, which I feel should be
included: Anthropological approaches to food, described by Lien (1987) and Døving (2003).
Focuses on coastal areas are also fairly recent additions in academic approaches to landscape.
Except some historical approaches, little has been done with the Arctic, including
Spitsbergen. I also think it would be interesting to include animals and perceptions of animals,
anthropomorphisms (see Risan 2003, Ramslien 2006). Finally, I have not written specifically
about national parks, although the themes involved in national park issues are included as part
of other discourses.
Part of the mandate for writing this overview was to illuminate the ways in which nature
unites and divides. Gro Ween has focused on how nature divides, while Simone Abram will
provide perspectives on the ways in which nature unites
The question of how to define nature is central and raises questions about how perceptions of
nature are enacted by the different parties and how such enactments construct and verify
perceptions of what nature is. Nature is also complimented by the term landscape. This
addition was made necessary by the introduction of indigenous topics into the overall
comparison. The imagination of nature as an external environment is a concept shaped in the
Western enlightenment and, as such, is rarely shared by indigenous peoples. The idea of
nature is also closely associated with the term wilderness, as somewhere devoid of human
dwelling. Nature has been adopted by the natural sciences and taxonomies, and the term has
political connotations, in relation to environmentalism and governance. Landscape on the
other hand, can be defined broadly, as a material manifestation of relations between man and
environment, as a product of dialectic relations.
In Norwegian ethnographic, geographic and anthropological texts, the term landscape is
assigned specific origins. Many argue that the word has its origins in continental fine arts
from the 16th century: Landschap paintings were exported to England and the name stuck.
Landscape in this painting tradition was a landscape in use, in other words, not wilderness. In
ethnologists’ descriptions of the term, it is often underlined that this kind of representation of
landscape is an ‘outside’ perspective - of scenery – where the viewer is external to the actual
landscape (Syse 2000, Christensen 2002, Gaup 2005). Olwig (2002) cautions such
representations of landscape and scenery as equivalences. Certainly, he says, the word
landscape was introduced into English around the start of the 16th century from Germanic
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languages along with the import of landscape paintings. But we need to look at these
paintings in a different light. They are sceneries but representations of interaction between
people, culture and land. The etymological origins of the term landschap are not associated
with scenery, but rather with enacting customary law and defining legal bounds between
people and land. Lien, following Hirsch (1995) emphasise a different aspect of the association
between painted landscape representations and the world of social relationships. Here,
landscape is a process, that in certain idealised and transcendent situations, such as a painted
landscape representation ‘attains a form of timelessness and fixity. This fixity can however
only be achieved momentarily, if ever, in the human world of social relationships’ (Hirsch
1995: 22 in Lien 2005).
The term ’nature’ also arose during Enlightenment, with notable works, such as that by
Gianbatista Vico, arguing that humans were separate form, not part of the natural world.
Nature became associated with the wild, the untamed, as opposed to the civilised, and
something to be controlled. At the same time, nature became a persistent connotation to the
representations employed to legitimise colonisation, which occurred in parallel with
industrialisation. As always there is a strong connection between politics and science.
Approaches to nature encouraged discovery, and science was able to conquer new territories
through the work of Linnaeus, Rousseau and Newton (Stryken 1989).
Several ethnologists have been interested in describing attitudes to nature through aesthetic
norms. Johannison describes three aesthetic categories; the beautiful, the sublime and the
picturesque (Johannison 1984 in Syse 2000). The beautiful is described as cultivated and
symmetrical – the early landschap pictures, a landscape tamed by humans, idealised as the
biblical garden of Eden. The sublime is the untamed, the unsymmetrical and the emotionally
gripping. The picturesque stood as a contrast to the tamed landscape. Nature here had
dramatic features, but landscape still included mankind. The picturesque landscape became
part of the European painting tradition before it became the norm in Norway and coincided
with the European elite’s interest in the Swiss Alps as an aesthetic landscape during the late
18th and early 19th centuries. At this point, the Barbaric and untamed landscape represented an
ideal (Syse 2000).
This was also the time when Europeans – predominantly Brits and Scots discovered Norway
as a tourist destination, with extensive trips into the Norwegian high mountains and yachting
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trips to Spitsbergen (Stryken 1989). Mary Wollestonecraft visited Norway in 1795, and
although her attention was mostly focused on the politics and living conditions of people she
met, she reproduces the romantic concept of landscape current among her peers, waxing
rapturously about Nature, ‘the nurse of sentiment’ (1796/1987 :99) and referring to Italian
scenery (123) and Elysian scenes (135). A century later, Gosch was able to write in the worldweary patter of a seasoned tourist, recounting the tribulations of finding suitably comfortable
and fashionable hotels, and the disappointment of arriving at a very rustic hotel highly praised
by Norwegian holiday-makers (2001/1890). During the course of this century, a tourist
infrastructure was put into place, and the landscape carefully presented for appreciative
viewers.
The wilderness image of nature may be found among Norwegian painters throughout
Norway’s National Romantic era in the early 18th century, although Norwegian National
Romantic painters never saw the landscape as quite as untamed as the European landscape
painters of the era (Witoszek 1998). Witoszek, sees the comparative lack of drama in
Norwegian picturesque landscape paintings in light of historical conditions. In her opinion,
the comparative lack of wilderness in Norwegian painting is a consequence of that
urbanisation came late in Norway. As a result, there was a sense of reason and groundedness
in Norwegian perceptions of landscape that was missing in other European landscape
paintings (1998). Nature tourism became a Norwegian elitist practice at the turn of the 19th
century, when an urban elite was consolidated. As tourists the Norwegian urban elite
maintained a connection with the rural population and the farmland as an ideal.
This coincided with the deepening of the conceptual divide between nature and culture.
The emergence of an image of ‘nature’ as something separate during the 19th centrury may be
traced within two separate arenas: the untouched wilderness associated with the high
mountains and the Arctic, and the idealised image of rural landscape and traditional farming
practices, which has later been captured by the more recent concept ‘kulturlandskap’ (see
below). While both of these visions of nature were celebrated by an urban intellectual elite,
and are connected to images of the nation, their implications, as well as their cultural and
political justification are different.
Increasingly throughout the 19th century, nature is to be found outdoors, and particularly in
the high mountains. This need to be in nature is manifested in the early perception of trekking
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meditation, a pilgrimage to a holy place, available only for those with the appropriate
knowledge. To Norwegians in the 19th century, nature was dramatic, but also a quiet place for
meditation, happiness, and freedom binding people to the divine (Witoszek 1998). The
centrality of humans conquering the wild and the unknown to the Norwegian nation building
project was also manifested in its polar interest: Bomann Larsen (1996) writes: Nansen turned
poetry into action. Norway became a reality; he united the Norwegian ideal of Viking blood
with conquering the polar challenges…Polar challenges combined heroic effort with
discovery; ideas of the rights of the state, of colonising terra nullius and possibilities of
resource exploitation. These thoughts are expressed in the establishment of the Norwegian
Trekking Association (Den norske turistforeningen, DNT). For the urban elite, fronted by the
then General Secretary of the DNT, and Director of Ethnographic Museum in Oslo, Yngvar
Nielsen, the high mountains became nature, wilderness, untouched, and something to be
protected.
As Norwegian nationalism increased towards the mid-19th century, an idealised image of
traditional farming practices as traditionally Norwegian became more prominent.
In nationalist representations rural Norway was quintessentially Norwegian. The Norwegian
rural landscape was associated with ideals, such as the lack of slavery and games of power.
This, according to Witoszek, is manifested in the Norwegian fairytales, which again bear
features of the Sagas. In both narratives the existing world has no hierarchies; there is an
ontological equality between different beings and species. The ideal is represented as
Askeladden, a pragmatist with an amazing adaptability and autonomy (Witoszek 1998).
Towards the end of the 19th century, Norway experienced a massive population increase. The
population increase caused a lack of available farmland, and there were few other
employment opportunities. The resulting depression inspired massive migration. In the second
half of the 19th century, half of all young people traveled from Norwegian villages to North
America. The annual number of emigrants at this time was twice as large (20 000) as the
number of people migrating to Norway today (10 000) (Almås 2002), while the Norwegian
population was half the size of the present population. At this point, Finnmark, the
northernmost county of Norway and formerly a predominant Sami area, also experienced a
large population increase. The importance of the colonisation of Finnmark is underlined by
the fact that this was one of two central issues raised by the first Norwegian Foreign Ministry
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in 1905 after the liberation from Swedish rule (next to the need for large scale Norwegian
representation at consulates abroad to protect the large number of Norwegian boats and
seamen and the centrality of Norway as a seafaring nation). There were several reasons for
colonizing Finnmark, the process served to appease the need for land amongst the dominant
farming interests and to further the marginalization of the Sami.
Between 1905 and 1940 Norway experienced industrialization and a war (1940-45).
Norwegian inland subsistence and revenue was still dominated by agriculture, and agriculture
consisted of combinations of activities such as cereal and potato production along with small
scale herding of cows or sheep. New industries changed peoples’ moving patterns, and some
villages were industrialized. In the 1930s an industrial crisis, put a halt to economic
development, and the supply of domestic agricultural products exceeded market demands,
causing severe difficulties in rural areas as well. A historical agreement in 1935 between the
Norwegian Labour party and the farmers’ party (‘Venstre’) to adopt a new agricultural
policy, inspired by Keynes’ economic model, established a platform for further agricultural
development. Cooperative networks and associations were developed, subsidies were
established, and since then, Norwegian agricultural practices have been strongly regulated,
and protected from international competition through high tariffs. Gradually, the political
justification for such protective measures has shifted towards considerations for the
environment and (more recently) food safety and animal welfare, while Norwegian farming
practices and produce are consistently portrayed through symbolic associated to ‘nature’ in
advertising and public discourse (Lien 1995).
After the Second World War a renewed rise in industry (along with increased mechanisation
of agriculture) came as a result of a perceived need of self-sufficiency. The mechanization of
agriculture caused a reduced need for an agricultural work-force, at the same time as there
was considerable expansion in industrial and service occupations. A new wave of migration
followed from rural to urban areas, and some marginal localities were completely
depopulated. Next, the importance of maintaining Norwegian populations in rural areas
became central, both to protect Norwegian borders and in order to ensure a viable farming
population. The mobility of the working force was a necessity for the aim of increased
productivity and wealth, while the ability of the margins to maintain a labour market and
regional occupancy remained a significant aim. This tension has persisted as a central theme
in Norwegian politics (Brox 1984).
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By the end of the 1960s, public criticism focused upon the agricultural structural
rationalization. In 1966 Ottar Brox published the book ‘What’s happening in Northern
Norway’ outlining the negative consequences of state agricultural policies of rationalization
and industrialisation. The political aim of establishing mono-production represented a new
practice, and caused a decline in traditional forms of subsistence combining farming and
fishing. Brox argued that the fishing-farming families had higher levels of non-economic
welfare than urban industrial workers even though their wage levels were lower (Brox 1966).
Brox’s analysis indicates the role of the state in defining rurality across the country. He
highlights the importance of understanding the politics of governing nature and how closely
they are tied to particular nationalist and state-building trajectories. To grasp the complexities
of governing nature we must explore the networks of interaction between a number of
different actors, departments, legal practitioners and scientists. Within a Norwegian context
nature is governed by the Ministry of Environment, the Directorate for Nature Management,
County Governors, Municipalities and the State Forest Ltd. All these actors aim to encourage
some ‘sustainable’ uses within an existing framework of protection. The governance and
protection of natural resources is offered by the Allodial Rights Act (1974); Outdoors Act
(1957); which include the Rights of Access; Law of Protection of Nature (1979); the Cultural
Heritage Protection Act (1978) and with time; the Planning and Building Act (1978).
Approaches to agriculture.
Agricultural landscapes have an important place in academic approaches to landscape.
Several Ethnologists are concerned with changes in tool use and technology (Christensen
2002, Daugstad, Kaltenborn og Vistad 2002) i.e. the different periods in Norwegian history
where farmers have engaged in different combinations of production, with or without external
pastures, and with regards to the changes in the landscape that occur as a result of
technological changes.
Professor of Ethnology, Arne Lie Christensen (2002) has been central to this field, with work
culminating in 2002 with the book ‘Norwegian Landscape.’ Here Christensen presents four
places in Norway as ideal types for specific Norwegian landscapes, and analyses their
development from pre-industrial times to the present.
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Landscape 1. The captain’s farm at Hjelle in Valdres, Vestre Slidre, an ideal type based upon
a painting by National Romantic figure-head J.C. Dahl, also described by author Jonas Lie, a
novel illustrated by another National Romantic leading painter; Erik Werenskjold. These
representations are all from the 1850-60.
Landscape 2, Todalen at Nordmøre, far into a fjord. Represented through the cartoon
’Vangsgutane’ by Leif Halse in the first half of the 19th century. Between the coast and the
mountains, by the river vital for the timber industry. Central industries are forestry, timber,
herring fisheries, pre-industrial farms. With time the steam boat dock would provide the area
with valuable wage labour.
Landscape 3. Grunnfarnes at Senja. Represented through the novel ’The Cod’ by Arthur
Brox. Here Sami combination farms and Sami reindeer herders coexisted. After the first and
Second World War, new farmers arrive and new farmland was developed. Mountainous land,
agriculture with pastures, and buildings associated with fishing industries. Large scale fishing
in the 18th century. Combination farming collapsed in the 1960s with the introduction of
mono-cultural agriculture.
Landscape 4, Opakermoen at Romerike. Former combination farmers. Celluloses factory
from the 1870s. Early wage labour area in an otherwise agricultural region.
Christensen (2002) also describes how rural and urban people at the turn of the last century
developed different perceptions of landscape, described as ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ perspectives
(see also Syse 2000). An ‘inside’ perspective perceives landscape as a place of production,
while in an ‘outside’ perspective landscape is somewhere exotic. The introduction of
technology in nature however combined the two: This is illustrated by two of National
Romantic painter Teodor Kittelsen’s paintings– the palace of Soria Moria.1 and his later
painting of the hydro-electric power plant at Norsk Hydro, at Rjukan in 1908, where the
power plant is represented as Soria Moria (Christiansen 2002).
Archaeologist Audhild Schanche (Andersen 2002) includes a type of landscape ignored by
Professor Christensen (2002) - the Sami farm in Finnmark; combining agriculture with
extensive hunting and gathering. Schanche (2002) describes how the Sami farm landscape
physically is organized in a different topological, organic order than Norwegian farms: The
1
Soria Moria is the fairy tale palace which lies behind the seventh mountain range in a Norwegian fairy tale.
Soria Moria is owned by a troll, it is made of solid gold and it is where a beautiful princess is kept captured.
Obviously she must be rescued..
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buildings do not demarcate space represented as farmland vs. outfields (utmark). The Sami
outfields is in other words a different concept than Norwegian outfields. In such marginal
areas the men were gone 6 to 12 months every year. This is why land is not described as
outfields – or in Northern Sami (meahcci) before the house is well out of sight and you have
walked for at least one night. Women, on the other hand, stayed in the vicinity of the farm,
taking care of the animals, hoeing the land, gathering berries and mushrooms, and trapping
small animals in snares (Schanche in Andersen 2002).
Schanche (1995) moreover nuances Christensen’s levels of meaning in landscape. In her
opinion, there are the:
1. The historical landscape which describes settlement, uses of landscape, subsistence and
resources.
2. The magical landscape associated with religious practices.
3. The political landscape (Schanche 1995).
Place names.
Thuen (2003) describes landscape as two types of relations, between the past and the present
and between nature and culture, these relations are reflected in place names. Place names
encultures landscape and place: Although places change with time, place names provide
people with continuity, and a common denominator. People place themselves and their
activities in space and in landscape, in a way that represents a precondition for interaction
over time, and as a starting point for development of representations of unity. The connection
between people, activity, place and time may be strong or weak. Different groups’
interactions with nature provide nature with different place names (Thuen 2003).
Very few accounts has been found of academic approaches to Norwegian place names.
According to Helleland (1993) place names bear witness of human activity. Most older place
names describe what a particular locality has meant to particular people: for example a place
to hunt, a place to gather something in particular, somewhere to farm, travel etc..
A place name mirrors one particular feature of the landscape from the position of the name
provider. The name encapsulates these features and enables such information of the landscape
to be carried on, even if the place changes character with time (Helleland 1993: 12). Sami
place names often describe features of a used landscape, particularly in reindeer herding areas
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(Kappfjell 1991, Jernsletten 2001). They may also be associated with a particular event (Gaup
2005). Place names may therefore have an iconological character: Associated not with
features and uses of landscape, but as an association connected with place or with what has
happened in a particular place, the association which represents the origin of naming and
narrating (Gaup 2005).
Farm names originating in the Viking era, ending with -vin, -heim, -land, -stad -rud etc.,
became frequent towards the end of the 19th century with the increasing nationalism, to the
extent that they can be characterised as naming patterns. After a name has become integrated,
it is no longer necessary to know the origins of the name. With time, however it became more
common to provide name more consciously through particular naming practices. An example
of this practice is the renaming of the Norwegian capital Christiania, as Oslo. Other
politisiced place names are names transformed from Sami to Norwegian (Kappfjell 1991).
Anthropological analyses of place names tend to have a phenomenological approach
underlining our being in the landscape (Thuen 1999). Odd Are Berkaak (1999) could be used
to exemplify this approach in his description of Kvitfjell, the Norwegian downhill slope for
the 1996 Olympic Games in Lillehammer. He describes the physical modification of
landscape and the following changes of names, which went from representing the farmers’
landscape to a gendered global landscape.
In our opinion, the guide to Norwegian place names published by Helleland 1993) ignore not
only the religious and mythical levels of meaning in landscape, but also the political. For
example Kappfjell (1991) and Jernsletten (2000) have written about Sami place names and
their later transformations into Norwegian place names.
A dramatic debate regarding Norwegian place names occurred during the National Romantic
era when, the boundaries where to be drawn between areas of Norwegian and Sami user right
and property rights. It was started when the previously mentioned director of Ethnographic
Museum, and the third general secretary of the DNT, Yngvar Nielsen was commissioned by
the Norwegian state to undertake an investigation into Southern Sami conditions. Nielsen
undertook a two week journey through Sør- and Nord-Trøndelag. The interviews Nielsen
conducted with locals (non-Sami) did not make him aware of the existence of any Southern
Sami place names, therefore, he concluded, Southern Sami place names did not exist (1891).
On the basis of this investigation he concluded that there was no such thing as a Southern
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Sami, and that those present had migrated from the north in the 18th century. His conclusions
caused several Southern Sami groups to lose their rights to herd reindeer, and their rights to
land. Many academics made outrageous conclusions in those Social Darwinist days, but the
problem with Nielsen’s is that they remained valid in Norwegian courts until 1993. In
Southern Sami areas there have been ongoing land battles in court since the 1970s, and here
Nielsen’s conclusions were often used as evidence, and as confirmation of later theories by
local historians Sandnes (1974) and Haarstad (1992) (see Fjellheim 1999, Ween 2005, 2006).
Many academics have engaged themselves in this debate, including Knut Bergsland (1991)
and Hansen (2004), along with Sami academics such as Sverre Fjellheim (1991) and Tom
Kappfjell (1991).
The emergence of agricultural as a topic of social science and humanistic research, have
paved the way for further classification of landscape. Commonly used terms are gårdsmiljø
(farm environment), kulturlandskap(see below) and villmark. The latter connotes to the wild vill and is a concept which often indicates an outside perspective: what appears as villmark to
the visitor may be cultivated by inhabitants, as is typically the example in relation to the
Southern Sami. Utmark (‘outfield’, i.e. cultivated areas at some distance from the farm) and
’allmenning’ (commons, see below) are other common terms. (Vistad 2002 i Daugstad,
Kaltenborn og Vistad 2002).
Kulturlandskap.
Kulturlandskap is a key term in recent Norwegian discourses about landscape. As with many
emic terms, the term is a complex bundle of meanings with no direct translation, tying
together perceptions of history and significance of place. The popularity of the term in recent
discourse must be understood in light of its position within governing processes - the
designation of an area as kulturlandskap could make that land eligible for immaterial cultural
heritage protection. It is often used to describe areas that reflect traditional cultivation
methods that are now on the decline, such as grazing in mountainous areas. The maintenance
of kulturlandskap thus requires some sort of human engagement with the land, directly
through cultivation, or indirectly through the use of animals. Kulturlandskap thus represents a
notion of nature and culture combined, and any description of it would include aspects of both
biology and cultural practices. The term kulturlandskap is normative in a sense, as it describes
an ideal and authentic landscape that should be protected from the withering of time.
According to Christensen (2002) the term was institutionalised by landscape architect Vidar
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Asheim in 1972. The term emphasizes the extent to which mankind shapes the environment
and particularly in traditional subsistence forms. However, such shaping of a landscape is not
always visible to outsiders. What to a stranger appears as nature could easily have been
cultivated and shaped over a longer period. One unintended consequence of the agricultural
revolution after the Second World War has been that older agriculturally shaped landscapes
were no longer maintained by grazing animals and are slowly transformed by re-forestation.
A very visible result of this in South/East Norway is that a forest type of vegetation has taken
over what previously appeared to be mountainous areas, - in Norwegian often described as the
upward movement of the tree line. Unlike in many other parts of the world, such reforestation
is seen as problematic, as it involves what is experienced as dramatic changes of a landscape
over the course of only 30-40 years. Kulturlandskap is a term through which such changes
can be talked about, and through which conservation interests can be expressed.
New mono-production also produced more unified landscapes. Efficiency, urbanization and
centralisation meant that large tracts of land were no longer used. Such realizations motivated
state institutions to document and conserve traditional farmland, classified as kulturlandskap
(Christensen 2002).
There is some disagreement, however, regarding the origins of the term. Lidén (1991) argues
that the history of such landscape protection is much older, and came as a result of National
Romanticist ideas of volkgeist and medieval art, which in Norway was first manifested as a
movement to conserve and keep the old Stave churches. Jones (1992) agrees with Lidén
suggesting that the concept of kulturlandskap was first introduced by German geographers at
the turn of the last century. These geographers were also motivated to conserve what was left
of the old agricultural society that was in process of disappearing, as part of the
industrialization of agricultural production. This German movement was national and
democratic, and was started on the basis of a particular value – to keep the cultural
preconditions of the nation, cultural heritage and national liberation (Jones 1992).
Between the first and the Second World War, and after the Second World War, cultural
heritage protection was maintained, but for different purposes. Heritage protection aimed to
mirror progress, to stand as a point of reference, and to help people understand modernization.
The farmers were losing their political power and therefore former justifications of protection
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lost their value. Jones (1992) maintains that farmland as a site of cultural heritage in this
period was more of interest to researchers than common Norwegians (Jones 1992).
In the 1980s cultural heritage was systematically discussed (Myklebust 1990). The discussion
was focused upon the social, political and cultural context of cultural heritage protection and
questioned the force of modernization which had ruled after the Second World War. The
discussion also included a certain reflexivity regarding an exclusive and elite based perception
of culture emphasizing the difficult relations between rural and urban areas (Tordson 1997).
Immaterial cultural heritage protection can also be classified as a form of environmentalism,
one based on a motivation to continue protection of ’kulturlandskap’, to secure culturally
induced biodiversity. Such forms of protection often induce conflicts between local industries
and environmentalists (Daugstad og Grytli 1998, Gaukstad 2000 i Daugstad, Kaltenborn og
Viestad 2002).
Jones (1992) is interested in how the term ’kulturlandskap’ was taken up by the Ministry of
Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture in the 1980s. By following the term in practical
use he is able to illuminate how various professions, and scientific disciplines use the term
differently:

Geographers perceive kulturlandskap as associated with use of particular areas. The
term is defined as human shaped, human influenced landscapes, as opposed to
theoretical nature landscapes. The term includes urban landscapes, rural landscapes,
and both what is aesthetic and not.

Ministry of Agriculture only associates the agricultural landscape and rural
landscapes with the term.

Botanists and ecologists view kulturlandskap as culturally conditioned vegetational
societies, cultural fields, fields of grass to be cut and dried, grazing lands. These
landscapes exist to protect and cultivate a diversity of landscapes.

To architects, buildings in landscape are important to a kulturlandskap, they structure
the landscape and represent an aesthetic experience.

For most people, kulturlandskapet is something valuable that stands apart from the
landscapes of everyday life and that therefore should be protected (Jones 1992).
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Blomquist (in press) argues that the developments in law manifest changes in approaches to
kulturlandskap as a particular form of immaterial cultural heritage: In 1972 cultural heritage
protection and environmental protection became synchronised. Until 1978 the term cultural
heritage protection was used in a normative sense and generally described elements of cultural
history of value to those in power. (Tordson 1997).
Berkaak (2005) is concerned with how the inland is embedded in the idea of kulturlandskap.
He has argued that cultural heritage protection is defined too narrowly, and in a way that
largely ignores coastal heritage. Outfields used as grazing land for sheep or cattle were
typically the landscape described as worthy of cultural heritage protection as the
quintessential kulturlandskap, therefore the coastal landscape and coastal cultural heritage
protection is ignored both officially and in academic contexts (Berkaak 2005). Although
eighty percent of the Norwegian population live in coastal areas, the State heritage institution
only have one and a half of 143 position in place for coastal heritage protection and heritage
protection of boats. (The same argument can be used to criticise Christensen (2001) – if
eighty percent of Norwegian people live in coastal areas, why are half of his described
Norwegian landscapes inland landscapes?) In contrast, however, coastal landscapes are
heavily regulated through the planning system, which aims to maintain coastal zones publicly
accessible. Hence, there is a general embargo on building within 150m of the high-water
mark. This is not in the name of cultural heritage, though, but in the interests of public
roaming rights, an issue we return to below.
This connection between farmers and the hegemonic kulturlandskap has also represented a
problem to the Sami, until the Cultural Heritage Protection Act was changed in 1978, when
Sami cultural heritage older than 100 years was automatically protected. This represented an
enormous political breakthrough for the Sami. To prioritise Sami cultural heritage was
considered important because such heritage generally speaking was made of less durable
material, because the Sami to a lesser extent had considered it important to leave visible
marks on their land, and because majority groups did not notice the Sami kulturlandskap:
reindeer left different marks upon the landscape to sheep or cattle. As a result, Sami
‘kulturlandskap’ was regularly classified as wilderness in official understanding (Ween 2005).
Sami cultural heritage protection also has a different emphasis from non-Sami heritage
protection. It tends to emphasise immaterial cultural heritage rather than traces of man-made
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culture in nature. A Sami cultural landscape can be a migration track, or a ceremonial place.
The last category is almost non-existent in terms of protection of non-Sami heritage.
In Southern Sami areas cultural heritage registration was turned into a political movement.
The Cultural Heritage Act (1978) provided a means to register heritage sites. It became
important to the Southern Sami to control their own heritage registration. Second, the
Heritage Act included a new opportunity for self determination or more likely, participation in
decision making processes (see Fjellheim 1999). For the first time, the Sami had an
opportunity to say no to area development.
The Commons.
According to the Directorate of Nature Management, the idea of commons has existed within
a Norwegian context since our first written laws, and is reflected in the Allodial Rights Act
(1974). The first written laws regarding uses of commons were the early Landscape laws,
particularly in the Laws of Gulating and Frostating.2 These rules were continued by Magnus
Lagabøters law of the land in 1284, Christian the IV (1604) and Christian the V Norwegian
Law (1684) (Borgnes 2003).
When wood export increased in the 15th and 16th century, the value of the commons
increased, and so did the King’s interests in the land. Under influence of Roman law,
developing modern private ownership, the Danish king were able to claim that all property
that was not privately owned belong to the King. Christian the V law of state established that
local farmers could not grow anything without permission from the King through the sheriff.
This implies a legalization of the State property rights in Norwegian Law. In the 17th century
the King sold commons, both to those who had user rights and to outsiders. This is how
Village Commons (bygdealmenninger) came into existence. The commons that were not sold
were called the Kings Commons and later State Commons. Forestry in the commons was
increasingly regulated in the 18th century, to control the rapid destruction of forest areas. At
the start of the 19th century, with an increased population, it also became increasingly
necessary to regulate rights to game and fishing, and associated farming rights in commons.
These changes led to the establishment of the High Mountain Commission in 1908. This
2
As early as 900 A.D. delegates from Norwegian districts met to award legal judgement and pass laws at
Gulating, Frostating and Eidsivating. The legal developments of these three regional representative assemblies
were written down as one single jurisdiction under Magnus Lagabøte (Magnus Lawmender) between 1263 and
1280.
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Commission was to decide upon the rights conditions in the State Commons, and establish
borders between State Commons and private property, and to determine the content of
existing user rights. This commission worked until 1952 before it reached conclusions
defining borders in Southern Norway and the Counties of Sør-Trøndelag and Nord-Trøndelag
(Borgnes 2003).
To govern the State Commons the Mountain Law was established in 1920. The Mountain
Law provides Mountain Boards with the right to administer user rights (and lunnende
herligheter) in State Commons. This includes farm associated user rights to transhumance,
seter (summer farms), grazing, hunting, gathering, and fishing. Administration of the property
development in the State Commons have since been transferred to the Norwegian State
Forestry Company (Statskog SF). The State Forestry Company also executes administrative
duties for the Ministry of Agriculture. In Southern Norway, every municipality has governing
rights through Mountain Boards while the State and the County Governor administers the
State Commons in the North of Norway. The North of Norway – that is, the counties of
Finnmark, Troms, and Nordland are not included in the Mountain Law. This, althought the
State Forestry Company actually administers large proportions of county lands: In the
counties of Nordland and Troms, the state owns fifty five percent of all outfields, while in
Finnmark, the state owns 96 percent.
.The state has a larger role both as owner, and as governor of outfields in the North of
Norway. In the counties of Nordland and Troms, conflicts often arise between citizens, small
municipalities and farmers interests on the one hand, and urban people, the Hunters and
Anglers Association, and the State Forestry Commission on the other hand. Farmers and rural
people, mountain boards etc. want more influence, at the same time as urban people, hunters
and fishermen believe that the present administrative system, consisting of one large owner –
the state – provides better protection of access rights. Both the Hunting and Angling
Association, and the Norwegian Trekking Association have close working relations with the
State Forestry Company regarding administration and development of outfields (Kalland
1999). This is institutionalised in special agreements stating that these organisations are
partners in cooperation and special advisers to the Forestry Company. As a consequence of
these bonds between state and civil society, the Norwegian majority, living in urban areas or
on the coast has secure access rights to land and resources inland. At the same time, rural
people and Sami feel as if they are loosing influence (Kalland 1999). However, for the North
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of Norway has recently been changed as the property of the Forestry Company was handed
over to a new company called the Finnmark Estate in 2004, to be locally governed. This could
also happen with time in the counties further south: The Sami Rights Comission whose
suggestions gave the establishment of the Finnmark Estate is about to conclude (July 2006)
that a similar company should be established for Nordland, Troms, and Nord-Trøndelag – the
Hålogaland Estate.
Since the shorteage of timber became a problem of national consequences in the 17th century,
the commons have increasingly been considered a contested space in terms of resources. As
Stryken (1989) points out, the idea of limited resources has been present since Malthus’s
publications in 1789, suggesting that everything living has a tendency to develop beyond its
own potential to get food. This perspective was brought up again in the 1950s when the idea
of a coming environmental disaster again became more pronounced. At this point, Borgstrøm
became a central name in Norwegian environmental research. He warned of an increasing gap
between access to food and the population increase. His growth curves were even steeper than
Malthuus: In Borgstrøm’s opinion, the population would double in 25 rather than 35 years
(Stryken 1989).
The idea that people do not have a capacity to take care of their environment also became
prominent in Hardin’s tragedy of the Commons (1968). As a true champion of capitalism and
private ownership, Hardin argued that it is impossible to maintain healthy administration of
the commons. In a common where all, according to Hardin has the same rights to resources,
no one will feel responsible and each person’s overuse will lead to an increase in other
peoples use. In a Norwegian context, Hardin’s words seemed to some prophetic in terms of
the fisheries and the reindeer industry.
Hardin (1968) presented two possible solutions to the Tragedy of the Commons: A firm stategoverned control or privatisation. His work has been heavily criticised by Norwegian social
scientists. Kalland feels that Hardin (1968) confuses the commons with open access (1999).
Gaski (1993) argues that the Tragedy of the Commons implies maximising actors capable of
only acting according to their own good. The opposite could in fact be the actual practice: i.e.
actors that cooperate and that act according to a communal rather than an individual
rationality. According to Gaski (1993) it is the transformation from local to public control that
leads to opportunism and creates the conditions of Hardin’s tragedy. In the former locally
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governed Sami outfields, there were no system of open access, but rather a system of user
rights administrated by the siida. As Kalland notes, there is no reason to think that conditions
have been very different elsewhere; people are often able to take care of their own local
resources for subsistence purposes (Kalland, DN notat 1997:2).
Jentoft (1998) also contributes by nuancing the original problem, asking for a specification to
which particular rules and choices prevailed or failed in Hardin’s (1968) hypothetical case,
social norms or the market. According to Jentoft, Hardin’s (1968)commons are purely
theoretical. The freedom implied in open access is less and less evident in actual practice.
Strict regulation has made fisheries and reindeer industries into occupations available only to
a chosen few. The Tragedy of the Commons fits badly with the actual occurring practices and
underplays the influence of organization, and the importance of knowledge in resource
administration. This is particularly the case in terms of the possible solutions provided by
Hardin to his hypothetical problem; state or private ownership. Instead, Jentoft (1998) feels
one should recreate the Tragedy of the Commons as the Comedy of the Commons. This term
emphasizes the importance of norms, the functions of socialization, the power of social
relations and coordinating potential of collective user organizations (1989).
Access Rights.
Kalland (1997) describes Access Rights as an opposition to Rights in Commons. While rights
in commons provide a local population with user rights and common responsibility to govern
existing resources, access rights are founded in the Outdoor Act (1978) which was established
to govern nature as national heritage. As Kalland (1997) asserts, most Norwegians take
Access Rights for granted, but these rights could in fact be seen as State appropriation of local
resources, imperialism and colonization of local areas. This does not mean, according to
Kalland (1997), that Access Rights in some contexts cannot be an important common good,
and not intended for colonisation.
At the same time, it is clear that access rights represent wider society’s access to local land.
The Norwegian Trekking Association (DNT) has remained an activist for access rights in the
past hundred years. It is important to see this access right within a national political context,
as part of what Kalland (1999) calls a redefinition of resources from open or local to national
and international. Through the last couple of centuries perceptions of nature have changed
from local landscapes which only are meaningful to local populations, to become symbols of
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national significance. Yngvar Nielsen started the fight for national parks at the end of the 19th
century. Large mountain areas were to be marked, protected, and made accessible to national
elites.
Many have contributed to the mythologisation of access rights; writers, poets, fairy tale
writers, artists of various sorts, and outdoor enthusiasts. New groups of consumers are
becoming interested, contributing to new layers of meaning that contrasts with perceptions
held by local groups. Traditional users are challenged at two levels; materially, in terms of
access to resources, and cognitively, with regard to the meaning of landscape. Both levels are
part of a national and nationalist discourse, which implicitly promotes the idea that Nature is
our common heritage (Kalland 1999).
Kalland (1999) exemplifies the differences between rights to access and rights in commons
with the conflicts regarding whether the Mountain Law should be implemented in Northern
Norway (1999). The Mountain Law was, as previously described only implemented in the
countys in the Norwegian south. Local users wanted the Mountain Law implemented, to
establish Mountain boards and to become represented in the administration of the resources.
Those who were against the implementation of the Mountain Law in Northern Norway were
urban outdoor enthusiasts, hunters and anglers, members of the Norwegian Trekking
Association (DNT), environmental organizations, who all argued that access rights would
suffer if local users gained control over our common heritage. To them, the Mountain Law
entailed differential treatment of non-locals (Kalland 1999).
By redefining resources as something that can be claimed by access rights, local areas are
opened to new interest groups that all articulate legitimate demands to participate in the
administration of land. As a consequence, people from Oslo have a right to partake in the
administration of local mountains to the same extent as local farmers. As there are more urban
people, local interests are often outnumbered. At a national level, the majority will be able to
dictate the use of common resources (Kalland 1999).
With an increase in interest in the Outdoors, and of new kinds of tourism, open access may
cause an environmental risk. This, in turn will force regulations over access to nature, most
likely tied to economic cost. Local groups may as a result have to pay for what they
previously have used and thought of as their common property. With the introduction of
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economic inducements, local common property could change from being perceived as local to
become state property. Examples of this are the grazing fees in the State commons, or the
sale of fish quotas (Kalland 1999).
Being in nature.
The discussion above refers to many local and non-local uses of nature, and the forms of local
use of commons and outfields, in agricultural industries, and in relation to non-local users.
We have indicated the importance of nature to Norwegian nationalism, and how in the
National Romantic era Norwegian nationalism prescribed ‘being in nature’ rather than urban
areas. Nature was ascribed cultural attributes, such as being ideal, authentic, and pure.
Norwegian polar hero and national icon Fritjof Nansen’s speech on the importance of Outdoor
life states, that urban life is ‘unatur’ – non-nature (Nansen 1921:578). Such discourses further
extend into concepts of nature as leveling. Kirsti Pedersen describes (1999) the Norwegian
assumption of Outdoors activities as egalitarian and as part of a Norwegian everyday life.
That is, the idea that all people are equal in nature, since in the face of nature the status
attributions and trappings of urban life lose their value. Hence, a typical comment made
during a walking tour, ‘we’re all equal when we’re out in the mountains’ represents a core
concept of nature and wilderness in Norwegian discourse. This extends also to a particular
strand in the history of Norwegian holiday cottages. While 19th century holiday homes were
the preserve of the wealthy, who built often grand dachas in the mountains, a post-war boom
in holiday homes was anchored in war-time discourses of self-sufficiency and immersion in
nature. Hence, the new cabin-fields of the 1960s in particular were small wooden
constructions, far from roads or mains supplies, requiring ingenuity and labour to be enjoyed.
In these simple mountain cabins, Norwegian families could shed the trappings of urban life
and indulge in some ‘back to the land’ simplicity through outdoor life.
A wonderful example of the extent of the internalisation of this stereotypical ideal of how one
should perform such activities is exemplified by sociologist Kjetil Rolness (1992) who refers
to an interview with Norwegian philanthropist billionaire Olav Thon in a weekly magazine.
Olav Thon is known for his sobriety and his love of the outdoors. In this interview the
journalist chases after seventy-something year old Thon on skis through the forest to his
rudimentary cottage in the mountains, which has neither electricity nor water. At the cabin,
Thon refreshes himself by rolling in the snow outside, before ending the day by eating a
simple sandwich made from his own home-baked bread (Rolness 1992).
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This striking dichotomy between the urban as a social space of inequality and competition,
and the mountains as natural space of community is not unusual in European ruralism, yet it
has particular resonances in Norway, where the purest sites of urbanism were based on
foreign exploitation. That is, Bergen as a Hanseatic port was associated with German trade,
and Oslo as the capital of Danish colonialisation is still referred to by various political
historians as the least Norwegian place in Norway (Østerud 2005). In most other European
countries, the rural areas were a prime location of inequality, with land owned by nobility and
aristocracy, and peasants and serfs subjugated sometimes to extremes of poverty. In contrast,
the weakness of the Norwegian nobility has been stressed by a range of Labour historians to
reinforce the idea of Norway as a land of equality based on the solidarity of yeoman farmers
rather than the rule of a unified elite. Although Norway was actually ruled as a region of
Denmark, and yeoman farmers had poor landless servants, the discursive construct of peasantsolidarity served to maintain the legitimacy of social democratic politics over many years.
The history of industrial strife in the rural areas remains predominantly a form of subaltern
history, present yet not threatening dominant discourses, and all but invisible in nonNorwegian publications. The predominant representation of Norway, especially outside the
country itself, maintains an ideological line from the landscapes of 19th century National
Romanticism to postwar social democracy, carefully side-stepping the Labour riots in
between. The latter are inscribed in the landscape, however, if one has the knowledge to
interpret the signs.
One key moment of industrialization, however, does challenge the mountain-purity-nature
matrix, since the basis of industrial power rests on hydro-electric electricity generation.
Hydro, Norway’s second largest industrial corporation (recently merged with Statoil) grew
out of saltpeter fabrication which started in a tiny village in central Telemark. In Rjukan, one
of Norway’s greatest waterfalls –a major tourist attraction since the mid 19th century - was
tamed to provide the energy for a new factory at the beginning of the 20th century. Thus, the
very motor of Norwegian industry was established at the heart of rural Norway. That industry
itself arose from a high-mountain natural phenomenon ironically may serve to confirm the
significance of nature for Norwegian nationalism, since the nation’s most important industrial
organization is able to participate in a form of national romanticism through the landscapes of
its foundation. Hydro has an ambivalent relationship to nationalism, however, having been
founded by a Franco-Norwegian with investment from Swedish and French banks, and having
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developed through collaboration with German industrial firms BASF and IG Farben. In
common with other developing industrial towns, Hydro built high-quality housing for its
workers in the spirit of modernization. Building hydro-electric power stations was not only a
large industrial enterprise, however, and it is the collective energies of small communities
building small hydro-electric apparatus all around the country which reinforces the idea of a
Norway built by Norwegians. The idea that ‘we built the land together’ finds literal reference
in the hundreds of small powerplants dotted around the landscape.
However, while this is a counter-weight to nature-idealism, it is also tied in to the idea of
honest outdoor work, and outdoor activities continue to call on, and regenerate national
symbols.
Movement in Nature.
Tordsson (1994, 1995, 1996 i Tordsson 1997) describes the National Romantic categories of
our cultural heritage as continuing to be a central influence to how we experience nature,
landscape and cultural heritage. For ‘true Norwegians,’ experience is the true way of reaching
insights into nature, landscape, and the larger picture. The ability to understand and appreciate
landscape aesthetically rather than experientially is seen as an expression of class, and for a
long period was associated with the establishment. for whom free nature, a landscape with an
embedded cultural heritage and farmers’ heritage remained popular expressions. The aesthetic
experience was emphasised over raw use (Dalløff 1981 i Tordsson 1997). At the same time,
though, the national democratic project preached the importance of valuing aesthetic
expressions of nature to the larger population, as part of a national campaign of education.
Learning to master Outdoor skills, and to appreciate moving Outdoors is still a central part of
the educational agenda in rural as well as in urban areas, as exemplified through the
elementary schools’ fairly institutionalised practice of making trips to the nearby recreational
areas once a week, (uteskoledag), spending at least a day out skiing every season (skidag) and
similar activities. In Oslo’s inner city neighbourhoods, where a large part of the population
have immigrant backgrounds and where parents are not expected to master the basic skills of
skiing for example, voluntary organizations make an effort to organize outdoor activities for
children to teach children how to ski, and how to move about in the forest areas around Oslo.
Such activities are seen as central to process of cultural integration (Rickfelt 2006).
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Even so, and despite the discourses of equality associated with it, the idea of outdoors
activities is immersed in history, power relations, gender, ethnicity, class, age and regionality.
Modern life has transformed nature to an arena of experience and adventure. New industries
and population movements, combined with new wealth, technology, more spare time and
more global contact has altered the distance between rural-nature and urban-culture. While
there are still many rustic mountain cabins, a steady development of cabin styles has sped into
a thorough redefinition of cabin life since the late 1990s. Newer cabins are likely to be
equipped with all the modern sophistication of normal houses, including wifi, dishwashers,
central-heating and flushing toilets. Outdoor activities have also developed, from simple
hiking and skiing to extreme sports.
Sami researcher Kirsti Pedersen (1999) describes three types of Outdoors practices: trekkers,
collectors and specialists. Trekkers aim to exhaust themselves, and therefore are not prone to
employ new technology beyond clothing and sticks, while collectors and various forms of
specialists are much more likely to adopt high-technology.
Specialists engage in a wide range of activities from fly fishing to dog sleighing. They are
after excitement, challenge or recreation. More than other Outdoors activities the specialist
activities represent distinct identities, ways of distinguishing oneself from the masses.
Specialists approach nature for kicks, effects for experiences. Experience has become a
market product; we are consumers of experience (Kvaløy Setereng 1990, Tordson
1997).Sidsel Mæland (2004) describes particular risk-based specialist activities, such as
mountain climbing, hang gliding, diving, and rafting. Like Kirsti Pedersen (1999) she is
concerned with how recent equipment innovation has initiated new uses of nature and new
ways of mastering nature. Fragments of traditional Outdoors activities are placed in new
contexts. This generates new forms of mastering nature, new reservoirs of knowledge about
particular phenomena of nature (Christensen 2001). New uses of nature channel opportunities
for individual expressions and dramatise distinctions performed as symbolic and cultural
capital. New uses of nature represent a meeting between tradition and innovation. Risk-based
use of nature initiates intensive and even violent meetings with nature.
Mæland (2004) points to how Nansen’s view of nature is very close to the extreme sports
rhetoric; nature as an opposition to the alienated, the inauthentic, the unnatural represented by
urban life. In Norwegian Outdoors activities these ideas are embedded normative ideals.
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Outdoors activities are character-shaping identity projects which historically, symbolically
and emotionally are embedded in the Norwegian; the pure, the simple. These normative ideals
are brought by the National Romantic expeditionism. Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen’s
polar expeditions expressed heroic courage, discipline, self-control, altruism. Personal
motives, such as excitement, self-gain, and prestige are underemphasised (Mæland 2004). At
the same time as base jumping represents, she maintains, a cultural reorientation, an
oppositional activity. The drive for intensity, for high emotions, panic ridden desire, the drive
for self-confirmation and subjective expressions - all are taken to represent an antiestablishment attitude (Mæland 2004).
Pedersen (1999) includes a gendered approach to her analysis of Outdoors activities. She is
concerned that men’s traditional activities and knowledge – such as hunting and fishing are
being transformed into sports and leisure, status activities, and part of the field of tourism. All
these activities aim to master nature. Women’s traditional activities however, such as
collecting mushrooms and berries, receive little attention. At the same time, women of the
middle class are starting to move into fields previously monopolised by men, such as sailing,
hunting and dog sleighing.
Perceptions of nature; myths and legends.
Harald Beyer Broch (NAT 2004) describes the knowledge and ideologies used to legitimate
motives both for different forms of protection and forms of governing of nature. Such views,
he argues, are emotionally saturated through uses of nature, and often established in
childhood. Children’s perceptions of nature include a form of co-existence. Before they have
learned what is dirty, nice or bad tasting, children taste nature. Children observe nature
differently to adults, they have few perceptions of what food is, and more curiosity. They
understand animals differently, and project will and intentions onto animals as if they were
humans (Beyer Broch 2004).
In a similar fashion, Jernsletten (2001) describes how children who grow up with subsistence
forms of living learn what the landscape is through their movement in it, by walking and
engaging with the landscape together with their families. These learning processes are multifaceted, and describe different uses of nature. Children learn through observing and
participating in the making of equipment, by collecting food, through animal movements in
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nature but also, significantly through oral history associated with the landscape, taught while
participating in, and engaging with the landscape (Jernsletten 2001).
Gaup (2005) describes the cognitive landscape, where past and present are unified in the
presence of myths. She is concerned with how particular landscapes are associated with
danger; for example that places that have no name feel chaotic and are difficult to move in.
She furthers asserts that landscapes that are dangerous for people and reindeer in bad weather,
also feel dangerous in a general way, particularly for people who are not familiar with the
land. This feeling of danger is materialised, in Gaup’s (2005) opinion, in urban legends, such
as that of the mystery hitch-hiker which in her material is associated with one particular place
outside of Kautokeino. The people who claim to have met the mythical hitch-hiker are all
outsiders; none of them are actually familiar with this particular landscape. Although this is a
dramatic and difficult landscape, locals are familiar with it and know their way through. As
they do not associate the landscape with something threatening, they do not meet the hitchhiker (Gaup 2005).
One way to understand conflicts between local communities and governing networks is to
analyse the different perceptions of nature at play. Kalland (1997) argues that industrialisation
and modernisation have altered many peoples’ relations with nature. In modern society we are
cut off from life and death, we have gone from having a pragmatic to having a romantic
relation to nature. Instead of pragmatism we now see nature as good, caring and harmonious
(Kalland 1997). This contrasts with farming communities still working on the land, struggling
on a daily basis with the challenges agriculture presents. For them, the non-pragmatic may be
found in quite different quarters, such as in the little people described by Norbye in her study
of farming families in Hallingdal (Norbye 2006). The little people (småfolket) are a link to
earth spirits, another world of beings whose activities can determine the happiness and health
of humans. Little people are generally associated with particular places, and their unhappiness
or anger may be the cause of disease and problems with buildings. In some cases, houses and
barns may be moved to assuage the little people’s displeasure. Good contact with the little
people can be cultivated, and can be a source of omens and even contact with ancestors.
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Environmentalism.
Environmentalist organisations draw a direct connection between wilderness and freedom.
According to an environmentalist worldview, though, wilderness is defined as a place without
human habitation. This has consistently been a problem for indigenous peoples, whose
presence has been interpreted by environmental activists (and then conveniently for politicalcommercial interests) as destructive for wild nature, even where careful research indicates that
the landscape conceptualized as wild is the outcome of long-term human intervention (e.g.
Fairhead and Leach 1997).
Blekesaune and Sætre (1997) describe how classic environmentalism developed at the end of
19th century, as the awareness that exploitation of resources for economic development has
negative impacts upon the environment. At the same time classic environmentalism increased
its engagement to reduce pollution (Blekesaune og Sætre 1997). The 1960s ideologies were
concerned that human interaction with nature disturbed an ecological balance. Such a view
was often combined with an unrealistic belief that an increase in ecological knowledge could
regulate people’s actions (Jansen 1989 in Blekesaune and Sætre 1997). Two main directions
in the ecological ideologies were scientific ecology and philosophical ecology. These two
directions included different perceptions of the role of the experts in the development of
ecological politics, as well as the status of biological knowledge (Jansen 1989 in Blekesaune
and Sætre 1997).
In the Norwegian Trekking Association (DNT) established version, environmentalism aims to
conserve the particular image of untouchedness that tourists prefer. Richardson (1993)
describes how the Trekking Association constructs mountains as mythical places and makes
them part of National Romantic rhetoric (Sörlin 2002). In other words, environmentalism is
associated with an aesthetic quality through which the tourist moves. This merger between
recreation, Outdoors activities and environmentalism became more prominent in the classic
environmental ideology in the 1950s-1960s.
From the 1960s, environmentalism gained a scientific understanding of nature based upon
universal values, to be mapped according to size and species with an objective eye (Sörlin
2002, Asdal 2004). Representative phenomena of nature were to be protected from human
influence by conserving areas, objects and species (Jansen 1989), and the question of
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representativeness of particular environmental types was to be decided by scientific expertise.
Jansen (1989) describes this ideology as technocratic because the competence of the experts
becomes more valuable than the layperson whose decisions are supposedly based upon the
aesthetic value of nature. Conflicts between experts and laypersons are often also conflicts
between periphery and centre (Hundeide 2001, Thiis Evensen 2001, Magnussøn 2001).
Environmentalists regularly employ scientific rhetoric. Biodiversity remains high on the
political agenda. Environmentalism is associated with an understanding of the world as an
eco-system, as a network of relations where action in one place can give response in another.
The ecological understanding of nature belongs within a globalised conceptual framework, is
often visualized by images of ‘the blue planet’, and is fundamentally dissimilar to traditional
representations of nature (see also Lien 2004).
Anker and Rønnow (2002) are concerned that environmentalist are no longer at what they
were in the 1970s – a group of academics which chained themselves to construction
machinery (see Paine 1985). Environmentalism has become an integral part of the established
power, and is represented on the national agenda. This however is problematic because
environmentalism is not always compatible with democratic process. The notion that the
survival of mankind depends upon upkeep of the present level of biodiversity, provides a
sense of urgency. There is no time to lose. Democracy becomes a luxury in such a scenario,
while traditional land users and indigenous people are disempowered and alienated from their
right to govern their own resources and learn from their own experiences (Kalland 1997).
Rønnow (2004) is concerned with how Christianity is connected to environmentalism in the
Norwegian context. Rønnow has followed the modern environmental movement and points
out that in an early phase – from 1970 to 75, certain groups developed a critique of the
Christian tradition’s desacralisation of nature and of a radical transcendant perception of God
as being to blame for contemporary environmental problems. This should be understood as
part of a western cultural critique, combined with a growing interest for other religions; the
religions of indigenous peoples, Buddhism etc. Kalland’s concept of Green Orientalism is a
further elaboration on this theme (Kalland 2003 in Rønnow 2003).
Maintaining biodiversity also concerns animals. Animal species are as important as biotopes.
There are countless environmental groups that focus on animals; WWF, Greenpeace, etc.
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Kalland (2004, 2003) has analysed the international Save-the-Whale discourse. He brings out
the logic of this particular discourse; a discourse where the whale has equal rights to humans.
The whale is not owned by others than itself, but is common property to be governed by
global institutions. Save-the-whale enthusiasts attempt to establish a monopoly with regards
to the governing of whales. In Norway, on the other hand, whales are not seen as common
property, but as owned by nobody. Similar conflicts have arisen in relation to kangaroos in
Australia (for a comparison, see Lien 2004)
Ketil Skogen (1995) (in Blekesaune og Sætre 1997) argues that members of Norwegian
environmentalist organisations are generally from fractions of the middle class that he
classifies as social-humanist. This group is positioned on the outskirts of production, the
market and central economic decision-making processes. Members of environmentalist
groups are generally teachers, social workers, health workers, artists or people employed in
public administration. Their lack of knowledge and association with industry and commerce
makes it easier for these people to develop a critical attitude towards production and
materialism, he suggests.
Pedersen (1999) genders environmental conflicts. She is concerned with discussions of
motorised Outdoors activities that cause conflicts in environmentalism. Motorized activities
are criticised not only because rare biotopes may be destroyed but also because motorized
vehicles make ‘ugly’ marks in nature, whereas people who are in favour of technological
innovation associated with Outdoors activities see such developments as a sign of progress
and well-being. For women in the North of Norway, technological advances such as
snowmobiles liberate women and enable them to experience the high mountains (vidda).
Pedersen deliberately avoids mention of ethnic belonging of such perspectives. Other people
may however consider this more as an issue of ethnicity rather than gender.
Predators.
Environmentalist organisations also associate wilderness with wild animals, and particularly
predatory animals. Campaigns for wilderness use charismatic animals with a strong aesthetic,
emotional and symbolic value to people in western society, such as whales or wolves (Kalland
1997).
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Blekesaune and Sætre (1997) argue that majority society actually agrees with
environmentalists on the question of predatory animals. In an opinon poll described in a major
Norwegian newspaper (Aftenposten) in 1997, 62 percent thought that sustainable populations
of bear, wolf, wolverine, and lynx were more important than sheep. Of people under thirty,
three out of four thought that sheep farmers should restructure their way of keeping animals to
reduce conflicts with predatory animals. Environmentalist groups also wanted to maintain
sheep grazing in predatory animal zones, and argued that the solution to the problem with
such as wolf, wolverine and lynx were proper compensation systems in these core predator
zones. Between 1988 and 1993 state guarantee systems paid between 20 and 86 million NOK
annually to sheep farmers for loss of animals to bear, wolverine, wolf, lynx and eagles
(Asheim 1995). For reindeer owners the compensated annual losses in the same period were
recorded as being between 4,5 and 30 million (Dunfjeld og Christiansen 1995).3
According to Sandberg in Kalland (1999), the present level of conflict between
environmentalists and farmers hinders our view of the development of the current conditions:
Since the 19th century, agricultural authorities perceived predators as being an obstacle to
agricultural development, have consequently exterminated predators that have stood in the
way of the agricultural revolution. Predators were less important than Norwegian food selfsufficiency, a national aim of increased trade in raw materials, and regional development
policies. In this political climate with a steadily decreasing presence of predators, intensive
outfield grazing without the presence of herders could develop (Sandberg 1998b). With the
industrialisation of agricultural production there was also a development of sheep species,
more suitable for industrial production requirements but less suitable for long periods
outdoors (Mysterud og Mysterud 1995). When ideas of biodiversity caused the presence of
predators as an asset, grazing animals had become more or less unprotected (Kalland 1999).
Every year, agricultural and reindeer industry claims of compensation for losses to predators
are much larger than the state authorities are willing to accept. The gap between official
numbers of predators and farmers and reindeer owners’ estimates are considerable. Central to
this ongoing conflict is that there is little trust or common understanding between authorities
and people in the primary industries (Aasetre 2000).
3
To be compensated for loss of livestock to predators it is not enough to have lost an animal, the owner has to
find the body of the dead animal and be able to prove that predatory animals were the cause of death.
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Every year a farmer or a reindeer owner shoots predators attacking their animals. Such actions
are defined as self-defence, but normally lead to police prosecution and legal action and
negative media coverage. Norwegian farmer activists are aware of the low standing of their
animals in public opinion. This is made visible by their efforts to move public opinion.
Blekesaune and Sætre (1997) characterise this through their description of a planned media
intervention planned by Foreningen Norsk Fangstmannsforbund- the Norwegian Hunters
Association – who wanted to provoke a bear attack on a named lamb – ‘Little Lulle’ – in
Lierne, in the summer of 1994 while emotions were running high in Lierne, after the local
county board threatened to encourage shooting animals in self-defence.
Public Administration.
Kalland (1997) has previously described conflicts between majority society represented by
public administration and local society, or traditional users of natural resources. These local
vs. national conflicts describe the administration of fisheries, agriculture, forestry, protection
of predators, the establishment of national parks, etc. He divides the aims of the state
administration of nature into three measures:
1. To serve the primary industries.
2. To serve majority society.
3. To protect nature.
Kalland (1997) argues that the modern ideal in terms of administration of nature is founded on
scientific thought. Central to administrative practice is the idea that one must regulate
people’s use of nature to secure sustainable use. Scientific knowledge builds upon modernist
divides between subject and object, nature and culture, science and social science. Truth is
absolute; knowledge is used to dominate nature (Kalland 1997). In a scientific paradigm,
biologists, economists and lawyers have considerable influence.
Socio-cultural aspects of the use of resources gain little attention. Nature administration
operates with narrow definitions of how much one can harvest from particular resources, and
how one should employ economic means to make a profit. Nature administration really asks
on behalf of whom they govern resources (Kalland 1997). This understanding is confirmed by
Palsson (2004) who describes how nature administration privileges scientific knowledge
above local knowledge and how the state is able to ignore things not represented through the
medium of science.
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At the same time, local participation or co-determination are important issues at present.
Andersen et al. (2002) discusses local participation in association with Agenda 21, part of the
Rio Convention on Environment and Development, which demands local consultation, codetermination and local participation. International rights negotiations attempt to influence
national development of the governance of nature, and particularly so in Sami areas. Still,
Sami interests were not mentioned in the first two strategic notes on Local Agenda 21 from
the Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Fisheries and of Agriculture, and only partially from
the Ministry of Regions and municipalities. Only the Ministry of Foreign Affairs kept its
focus on indigenous rights (Mona Schanche 2002 in Andersen 2002).
Eythorsson (in Schanche 2001) describes a divide between traditional and modern knowledge
promoted in Environmentalism. At the same time as there is a need for scientific legitimacy,
some environmentalists are drawn to traditional knowledge and indigenous knowledge.
Sandersen and Olsen (in Schanche 2001) argue that Sami knowledge of nature makes official
protection regimes unnecessary. Eythorsson also notes that traditional knowledge is at times
employed in the governing of natural resources, and that the gap between local and
scientifically based knowledge is not necessarily so big. What separates these two forms of
knowledge is the context in which knowledge is placed (in Schanche 2001).
Arne Kalland and Harald Beyer Broch (Kalland & Beyer-Broch 2005) on the other hand,
describe the romanticising of indigenous knowledge and TEK - traditional ecological
knowledge - by media, environmentalists, and indigenous peoples themselves. They argue that
TEK here should be seen as a critique of modern society, where industrialism, objectivism
and imperialism is perceived as the cause of damage to the environment.
Kalland (1997) argues that both local and scientific knowledge are based on detailed
empirical observation, but that selection processes and observation are undertaken differently:
Local knowledge is not model-based, and is not falsified and verified, it is not true or false.
Instead it is about where resources are, how they should be harvested, and what they should
be used for. Local knowledge is thus practically oriented, founded in history and in
contemporary practice.
With such different foci, it is perhaps no surprise that biologists and fishermen disagree. It
does not help that scientific models often demand unavailable information. Researchers and
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Rough 1st draft: do not quote without permission of the authors.
administrators often have fragmented knowledge about the piece of nature that they are
governing, and often work with limited time-frames. Local knowledge could therefore be
useful to researchers, because it would provide scientists with a broader access to a particular
part of nature, both in time and space. Kalland emphasises that governing regimes need the
legitimacy of empirical and practical knowledge, the kind of knowledge available to local
society (Kalland 1997).
Phenomenological approaches to landscape in anthropology
Phenomenological approaches to landscape generally speaking are about being in landscape
and how ones presence shapes perceptions of landscape and space. Anne Katrine Norbye has
undertaken a phenomenological analysis of mountain farming in Hallingdal, where she
describes how ideas about the little people (småfolk) still are part of milkmaids’ and farmers’
cosmology, and are part of what provides meaning to life on mountain farms (seter). To
Norbye, narratives of little people functions as a marker of identity and create a feeling of
community and distance (Norbye 2006). Ween (2005) describes how the little people also
serve to demarcate Sami space, and remain central in how Sami children are taught being in
landscape. Similarly, Jernsletten (2001) describes how Sami children are introduced to the
Sami landscape, through participating in local subsistence activities, through oral history and
local narratives associated with the naming of landscape.
Krogh’s (1995) phenomenological position is critical of Christensen’s (2002) view of
landscape as visual. In Krogh’s (1995) opinion, we approach landscape through a number of
senses. We should therefore ask what describes relations between people and landscape in a
social and cultural context. Being in landscape is what creates meaning, so one should focus
on the meeting between landscape and body. Movement, sensing, creating relations between
humans and landscape, or landscaping, includes what the bodily subject sees, smells, hears
and senses in meeting an environment. Changes in bodily meetings with the environment are
made meaningful in relation to prior experiences.
From such a perspective, landscape is a human construction. Landscape is physically shaped
by human presence and practices, at the same time as human perceptions of landscape and
human actions can not be seen separately from a human being-in-the-world. Humans and
landscape stand in a communicative relation to each other. Therefore, theoretical attempts to
32
Rough 1st draft: do not quote without permission of the authors.
divide humans as subjects and landscape as an object are resisted by the term landscape
(Krogh 1995).
One could say that perceptions of landscape and landscaping builds upon an interchange
between subject and object, participation and observation, closeness and distance, action and
reflection. Reflection and action presuppose both closeness and distance; through people’s
subsistence and practice of skills and knowledge in concrete physical surroundings one
creates a personal space and landscape (Krogh 1995).
Through her focus on subsistence, skills and knowledge, Britt Kramvig (2005, 2006) takes her
phenomenological methodology to nature one step further with her efforts to remove
distinctions such as nature/culture, body/soul, subject/object, but also nature/technology
through the use of actor-network theory. Like Pedersen (1999), Kramvig avoids demarcated
ethnic distinctions between Sami and non-Sami. She uses phenomenology to explore how
experiences and interaction with and in nature are embedded in a reciprocity that is built into
social practices. The story of Ingmar ( Kramvig 2005, 2006) illuminates how reciprocities or
flows of substances embed Ingmar in the place where he lives. At the same time,
embeddedness in space is not the most important here, what is important is the reciprocity that
place provides access to, that creates place. Kramvig (2005, 2006) employs Ingmar’s term å
se i været – ’to look in the weather’, to break the epistemological boundary between people
and environment, to merge ideas of how Ingmar both see himself as a subject and the
surrounding landscape as an object for his actions. Kramvig desribes Ingmars
term‘Fortapelsen – ‘to be lost’- as a break (Haraway 2004, Jackson 2002), as something
dangerous and threatening both to personal knowledge of action, and power of action.
Actor-network theories of nature.
Our two most prominent academics within this tradition are Kristin Asdal (2004) and Lars
Risan (2003). Kristin Asdal (2004) describes interaction between science and politics, as a
co-production, as something relational and co-developing, despite a public understanding of
science and politics as two separate spheres, an understanding central to the legitimacy of
both science and politics. From this starting point, Asdal draws our attention to how the
reigning environmental discourse represents a new way to speak and write about nature.
Nature has become problematic and environmental problems are presently understood as
defects in a natural history or cultural history machinery. Environmental problems are
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Rough 1st draft: do not quote without permission of the authors.
something to be identified and discovered, and therefore something that can be defined as a
question of knowledge, which again creates a belief in and a demand for research and
scientific knowledge.
In other words, environmentalism should not be symbolised as a wave that washes over us,
but rather as something that was actively created, with the participation of science. We must
investigate how science frames and creates environmental problems and environmental
politics in this co-production, where science is in politics, not just as a frame of knowledge
but as constitutive of the different ways in which politics engage in environmental debates.
In order to analyse this process of co-production of specific forms of environmentalism, from
an actor-network perspective, symmetry is important, in other words, this process must be
investigated both for its successes and failures.
According to Asdal (2004) Norway as the vulnerable country was constituted by the
identification of acid rain. She exemplifies this by analysing the different stages of this
constituting process: The first phase started with providing evidence for connections between
effluents of sulphate and nitrogen and damage to forests and fish. Phase two mapped the
effects on nature and marked sustainable levels of such pollutants. This Asdal sees as
mapping of specific forms of vulnerable and governable nature. The last phase is about
making nature visible and manageable, by finding the tolerance limits and bringing out a new
nature reality. We must look to practice to see how science is made, because actors’
descriptions of their own practices do not match what is actually taking place. With time,
practices are layered and co-produced, constituting new issues and new areas to nature (Asdal
2004).
Risan (2003) criticises Anker & Rønnow (2002), and is concerned with not reducing
environmental problems to political ideology, symbolic matters or religion. Critiques of
ideology will reveal that the world is not really approaching an ecological disaster. According
to Risan (2003), this approach tries to be both social constructivist and realistic at the same
time. The term co-production is therefore about saving constructivism from social
constructivism and reality from realism. The ambition is to include non-humans, nature,
animals and machines as actors or actants in the production of truth, of nature and culture, but
at the same time, include an approach to constructivism that does seek to a constructor one
place, and a construction in another.
34
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Risan’s (2003) specific focus is a particular cow breed – Norsk rødt fe – created as part of
agricultural industrialisation. This milking cow he represents as a cyborg; not as pure nature,
nor as passive in a capitalist production system. The cow is co-responsible and a co-producer
of technology, and of the nature it is part of. These are connections that include radical power
differences. Risan (2003) illuminates that Norsk rødt fe’s science is culture, at the same time
as its science, including its technology is also nature; techno science is nature as a result of the
breeding that produces the cows’ experience of udder engorgement and hunger. Specific
feeding and milking technologies make science part of the Norsk rødt fe population, as a
cybernetically regulated and integrated population.
Summary.
To summarise, the history of Norwegian nature has moved from naturalism to technologism,
encompassing equality and difference on different planes of meaning. Throughout, nature has
been heavily politicised, first through national symbolism where the ideal Norwegian was,
almost literally, down to earth, and latterly through the promotion of environmentalism which
is used to characterise Norway as a nation. Throughout, also, these nationalist movements
have consistently excluded significant parts of the population, specifically leading to the loss
of rights for Sami, and continuing conflicts over land-management based on contrasting
perceptions and definitions of nature, wilderness and sociality. These changes are also
exemplified in the local and national traditions of mountain cabins, which in the post-war
period have developed from rustic and simple cabins which demanded work, knowledge and
autonomy, to luxury apartments functionally resembling city housing yet mostly conforming
to a rural aesthetic (log-walls, turf roofs, etc). Outdoor life, once the definition of Norwegian
autonomy and self-reliance is giving way to sophisticated and extreme sports, the
commercially satisfied high-tech requirements of snowboarding overtaking the popularity of
cross-country skiing, whose demands are more localised in familiarity with local land and
weather conditions. It is worth noting, finally, that one of the ‘problems’ identified by local
and national authorities with immigration is the tendency of immigrants not to participate in
Outdoor sporting life. This has repeatedly been the focus of municipal integration efforts, and
symbolically defines the need to embody the national through outdoor activity and
associations with nature.
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