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Abstract
This paper explores Norwegian youngsters’ (and, to a lesser extent, adults’) engagement with conventional and lifestyle sports via an examination of recent trends. In the process, it explores the significance or otherwise of ‘nature-based settings’ and the developing character of lifestyle sports. In terms of changes in youth sport, young Norwegians are the quintessential sporting omnivores. However, the particular mix of conventional and lifestyle sports that Norwegian youngsters favour has shifted within a generation, with the latter more prominent in 2007 than they had been even a decade earlier. The changes appear emblematic of a shift among Norwegian youth towards sports activities that offer alternative forms and styles of participation to those traditionally associated with ‘the outdoors’ as a style of life. In theoretical terms, the findings suggest that, as a generic and popular collective noun, the term lifestyle sport is most useful when it draws attention to the ‘commonalities’ shared by many of the activities often corralled under it.
Acknowledgements
We are immensely grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful comments on the original draft of the paper.
Notes
1. Based primarily on quantitative data from the Norwegian Statistisk Sentralbyrå (Statistics Norway) study of Mosjon, Friluftsliv og Kulturaktiviteter (Vaage, Citation2009) supplemented by preliminary qualitative data.
2. We are grateful to a reviewer for this point.
3. It is worthy of note that some lifestyle sports have grown out of (e.g. bouldering) or are versions of (e.g. indoor climbing) activities more than a century old, such as climbing and mountaineering. Wheaton (Citation2004) refers to those ‘traditional’ activities (such as mountaineering, surfing and canoeing) that have developed newer variants – and, in the process, taken on new meanings since the 1960s – as ‘the residual elements’: in other words, the traditional forms still popular with and practised by many.
4. Throughout the rest of the paper, sport and physically active recreation will be subsumed under the label ‘sport’. For the sake of consistency, we will use the term ‘lifestyle sports’ – rather than ‘lifestyle activities’ – to include physically active recreational and adventurous activities as well as conventional competitive, institutionalised and vigorous ‘sports’.
5. The UK Office of National Statistics (Seddon, Citation2011, p. 2), for example, defines ‘lifestyle’ ‘as a way of living: the things that a particular person or group of people usually do … based on individual choices, characteristics, personal preferences and circumstances.’
6. Vaage actually labels these ‘physical activity to train or exercise’, even though they amount to the same thing.
7. The figure of 42% is indicative of an upward trend (28% in 2001, 39% in 2004 and 42% in 2007): an increase of 14 percentage points in six years.
8. ‘Cultural events’ include such things as visiting the cinema, theatre, library and museum and attending sports events.
9. Interestingly, there was a positive correlation between the amount of involvement in cultural activities and the amount of participation in sport – as much among young people as adults. Conversely, those children not engaged in physical activity also were the ones who took part in the fewest cultural activities.
10. Such ‘wide sporting repertoires’ have been shown to provide foundations for lifelong participation (see, e.g. Haycock & Smith, Citation2012; Roberts & Brodie, Citation1992).
11. Adventure sports are broadly defined as those sports or physically active recreations involving seeking adventure in order to generate fun and excitement (see Kerr & Houge Mackenzie, Citation2012).
12. In the groups’ own terms, their activities appeared particularly well placed to provide them with peak experiences (or ‘flow’), through activities where the skill required meets the challenge of the activity and the participant becomes absorbed (Csikszentmihalyi, Citation1990).
13. Between 2003 and 2006, ‘outdoor pursuits’ is said to have been the subject with the highest number of new higher education programmes as Norwegian institutions compete to recruit students following to 2003 ‘Quality Reform of HE’ which introduced 'market dynamics' to HE in Norway (Karhus, Citation2012).
14. Among those who exercise a lot, there is no gradual decline in participation.