Improving the factual knowledge of landscapes: Following up the European Landscape Convention with a comparative historical analysis of forces of landscape change in the Sjodalen and St⊘lsheimen mountain areas, Norway

Abstract

A focus of implementing the European Landscape Convention (ELC) in Norway is on improving the factual knowledge of landscapes, which implies analysing the forces transforming them. The article aims to identify important forces of change and to elucidate its complexity by a comparative historical study of land cover and land use in two mountain areas in Western and Eastern Norway. The land covers and uses in focus are transport infrastructure, seasonal farming, vegetation, tourism and outdoor recreation, and nature and landscape protection. Based on an understanding of forces as something being exerted, a framework including pressure, attraction, friction, repulsion, and working force is developed. A comprehensive literature analysis shows how differences in intensity and extent of land use and development of land cover result from a complex interaction of common extrinsic forces with locally different intrinsic forces. To control landscape change and to maintain diversity among landscapes as a Europe-wide resource, the national implementation of the ELC will require a strong focus on the local level. Moreover, understanding the ELC as an origin of forces is recommended, because it allows more appropriate individual responses to landscape change.

Keywords:

• diversity among landscapes
• land cover
• land use
• local level

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Jesper Brandt, Roskilde (Denmark), Michael Jones, Trondheim (Norway), Anders Lundberg, Bergen (Norway), and Kenneth Olwig, Alnarp (Sweden) for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. We also thank the anonymous reviewers. The fieldwork was supported financially by the Research Council of Norway.

Notes

1. Edwards, M., Jones, M., Olsson, G.A. & Olwig, K. 1998. 'Customary rights, cultural practice and biological diversity in mountain agricultural landscapes. A research proposal for a culturally and ecologically sustainable future. Trondheim'.

2. A fifth master's thesis from the project (St⊘rseth 2002) investigates reindeer pastures in Sjodalen, while a further scientific article on St⊘lsheimen deals with farmers’ and tourists’ practices as part of landscape diversity (Eiter 2004). S. Eiter (unpublished data) refers to a submitted article manuscript under review: Eiter, S. ‘Landscape as a diversity of values: Recommendations for a qualitative approach to management units, based on a case study from the Norwegian mountains’.

3. Some authors translate the regionally differing Norwegian terms seterbruk and st⊘lsbruk as summer farming. However, not all localities involved are used (only) in the summer. To avoid constructions such as ‘spring-’ or, as in one of our study areas, even ‘winter summer farming’, we use seasonal farming as an overall term. Mountain summer farming specifically refers to activities in the mountains and during summer (Potthoff 2004; 2005b).

4. J. Brandt ‘Land use change in “the Progression Landscape” ’. Paper presented at the yearly meeting of the German section of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (IALE). Eberswalde, Germany, 30 October – 1 November 2003.

5. Winter stays also occurred in other areas in Norway but were much less common than summer stays (Reinton 1955). Only a few other sources report on similar winter stays throughout Europe (Maas 1930: East Carpathian Mountains; Frödin 1940: Giant Mountains).

6. For more detailed characterizations of the ownership situations in the two areas, see Brokhaug (2001) and Potthoff (2005a).

7. ‘In Norway, the dugnad is a well-established local institution involving voluntary collective work on a project, frequently directed towards building or the maintenance of common areas’ (Jones 2006, 4).

8. The latter brought about comparably higher prices for milk delivered unprocessed from the seasonal farms (Reinton 1961; Potthoff 2004).

9. Other forces originating from, e.g. climate change, often discussed as a cause for changes in alpine treelines, have not been investigated in the study areas and are thus not considered in the present paper.

10. A law can thus be understood as a non-material land cover (it ‘lies on the land’).

11. Adjoining watercourses were developed from the late 1960s (Fig. 2).