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Abstract
In mountain areas without permanent settlements, human activity is entirely dependent on spatial interaction. For centuries, local and regional traffic has followed livestock trails and footpaths. Mainly during the 20th century, new public and private roads changed this situation significantly in large parts of Norway. While mountain summer farming decreased, hydropower development and leisure use became dominant. Protected areas have been established to preserve possibilities for outdoor recreation and ‘wilderness’. However, seasonal farming activity is still an important upholder of cultural heritage. In the investigated area in western Norway, parallels between accessibility and human activity on mountain summer farmsteads have been identified with the abandonment of dairy production between ca 1905 and 1973, recent use by landowners and hikers’ use of publicly accessible tourist cabins. Increased differences in accessibility and protection status have resulted in diversification of human activity in different locations. Custom and tradition represent different principles according to which cultural landscape can be maintained—with emphasis on dynamics or invariance, respectively. Recent landscape protection focuses primarily on tradition. The necessity of easy access to maintain the living cultural heritage in addition to ‘wilderness’ areas, however, requires taking both concepts into account, most probably treated as geographically separate.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks all informants in the study area who have contributed with their time and knowledge to this study, and Anders Lundberg (Bergen), Kenneth Olwig (Alnarp, Sweden), Kerstin Potthoff (Trondheim), and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on the manuscript. Thanks are also due to the discussants of an earlier version of this paper at the 21st session of the Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape (PECSRL) on the island of Lemnos, Greece, in September 2004.
Notes
[1] Gjessing, Norges steinalder; Hagen, Norges oldtid; Prescott, ‘Long‐term Patterns’; Thormods[æ]ter, ‘Land Use Planning’.
[2] Mountain passes between permanent settlements are not focused on, since they are not primarily connected to land use in the mountains.
[3] Thormods[æ]ter, ‘Land Use Planning’; Moen, ‘Endringer’, 19.
[4] Stebler, Alp‐ und Weidewirtschaft; Reinton, Sæterbruket i Noreg III; Thormodsæter, ‘Die Nutzung der Fjellgebiete in Norwegen’; Borchgrevink, Etnologisk feltarbeid i Jostedalen; Vojvoda ‘Accessibility’; Schröder, ‘Die Almwirtschaft in Österreich’; Paldele, Die aufgelassenen Almen Tirols. An extended overview of Norway‐related studies referred to here and in the following is provided by Daugstad, Mellom romantikk og realisme, 281–352.
[5] Anon., Beretning om det f⊘rste norske almindelige Landbrugsm⊘de; Funder, Om h⊘ifjeldets utnyttelse; S⊘mme, Jordbrukets geografi i Norge.
[6] Reinton, Sæterbruket i Noreg III. Significantly, all summer farms that participated in the recent ‘Living mountain summer farms’ (Levande st⊘lar) project by the Royal Norwegian Society for Development (Det kongelige Selskap for Norges Vel) had road connections (Tuv, Prosjekt Levande St⊘lar; H. Sickel, oral communication).
[7] Cf. also Scazzosi, ‘Reading and Assessing’ (336), according to whom, landscape management approaches all over Northern Europe typically focus on the preservation of nature more than, for example, cultural meanings. In Norway, a historically close relationship and overlap on a personal level has existed between key members of the Norwegian Mountain Touring Association (Den Norske Turistforening) and the Norwegian Association for the Conservation of Nature (Norges Naturvernforbund); Berntsen, Naturvernets historie.
[8] Christensen, Etnologisk feltarbeid på Billingen; Austad et al., Kulturlandskap.
[9] S⊘mme, ‘Fjellbygd og feriefjell’; Langdalen, ‘Natur og menneskeverk’; Daugstad, Mellom romantikk og realisme.
[10] Milj⊘verndepartementet, Hardangervidda; Naturvern; Ny landsplan; St.meld. nr. 62; Direk‐toratet for naturforvaltning, Inngrepsfrie naturområder.
[11] Milj⊘verndepartementet, Act No. 63 of 19 June 1970, 5; Direktoratet for naturforvaltning, Områdevern og forvaltning. The English term ‘Protected Landscape’ follows Milj⊘verndepartementet, Act No. 63 of 19 June 1970, which basically uses the same terminology for conservation categories as IUCN, Guidelines, 15–23.
[12] Teigland, ‘Impacts of Hydropower Development’, emphasis in original; see also Teigland and Vorkinn, Effekten av vannkraftutbygging; and Teigland, ‘Impacts from New Roads’; Reinton, Sæterbruket i Noreg III, 467–68.
[13] Teigland and Vorkinn, Effekten av vannkraftutbygging, 56, 63.
[14] Eiter, ‘Botaniske og ⊘kologiske studier’.
[15] Kaltenborn, ‘Forskning’; Daugstad, Mellom romantikk og realisme; Daugstad, Agriculture’s Role.
[16] http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/en/treaties/html/176.htm (accessed 15 April 2004).
[17] Sundin, ‘Nature as Heritage’, 19: ‘How can nature be preserved as heritage without denying the continuing transformation of the landscape by man?’
[18] Merriam Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.m‐w.com (accessed 24 November 2004): custom.
[19] See also Eiter, ‘Protected Areas’.
[20] Merriam Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.m‐w.com (accessed 24 November 2004): tradition.
[21] An important distinction is, however, that custom is a legal term. Being closely related to morality, it regulates communities in tacit consent (cf. habitus) by mutual constraint and social control, or as root of customary law (as opposed to statutory or natural law) (Thompson, Customs in Common; Eiter, ‘Protected Areas’; Olwig, ‘The Landscape of “Customary” Law’). Tradition tends to be used merely in academia and does not play a comparably far‐reaching role in the daily life of the public.
[22] Ben‐Amos, ‘The Seven Strands of Tradition’, 101–2.
[23] Ibid., 100.
[24] Ibid., 101.
[25] Hofer, ‘The Perception of Tradition’, 133.
[26] Shils, Tradition; Hofer, ‘The Perception of Tradition’, 135, emphasis in original.
[27] Hofer, ‘The Perception of Tradition’, 135, emphasis added.
[28] Hobsbawm, ‘Mass‐producing Traditions’; Hofer, ‘The Perception of Tradition’, 136, emphasis added.
[29] Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction’, 11.
[30] Hofer, ‘The Perception of Tradition’, 135–36.
[31] Olwig, ‘“Time Out of Mind”’.
[32] Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction’, 2.
[33] Ibid., 2, 4; cf. also Hofer, ‘The Perception of Tradition’, 133, and above.
[34] Wollan, ‘Landskap som praksis’.
[35] Moen, ‘Endringer’: ‘traditional agriculture’ versus ‘modern farming’; Austad, ‘Den tradisjonelle vestlandsgården’: ‘traditional versus conventional (modern) farming’; Kvamme et al., Conservation and Management: ‘traditional farming systems’; all translated by the author.
[36] Austad et al., ‘Human‐influenced Vegetation Types’; Moen, ‘Endringer’; Hauge, ‘Det vestnorske kulturlandskapet’; Kvamme et al., Conservation and Management.
[37] Olwig, ‘“Time Out of Mind”’.
[38] Howard, Heritage, 199.
[39] K. A. Valvik, ‘Lee—en tradisjonell vestlandsgård? En arkeologisk punktunders⊘kelse av gården Lee, Vik, Sogn og Fjordane’, Master’s diss. in Archaeology, University of Bergen, 1998.
[40] For a detailed description of the area’s transhumance system see Potthoff and Eiter, ‘Transhumance’.
[41] Interview data; Øvreb⊘, ‘90 år på Solrenningen’.
[42] Reasons identified for the abandonment of mountain summer farming have been classified into economic, personal and practical by Eiter and Potthoff, ‘Landscape Change’, 86–87.
[43] Øen, ‘Vik–Voss vegen’.
[44] Kalstad and T⊘nnessen, S⊘rsidevegen.
[45] Fylkesmannen i Sogn og Fjordane, Forvaltningsplan.
[46] More than 5 km horizontal distance of larger technical encroachments; see, for example, Direktoratet for naturforvaltning, Inngrepsfrie naturområder.
[47] Lowe and Moryadas, The Geography of Movement, 21–24.
[48] Walking‐time between permanently settled and mountain summer farmstead was 2–8 hours in each direction, dependent on the particular farm and whether, for example, the trip involved livestock. The mountain summer farmstead of Bjergane already had a road connection by 1967. This was, however, of little practical relevance for mountain summer farming as the permanently settled farmsteads remained roadless until after dairy production on the summer farm had ceased. Only the dairymaid sometimes combined boat and motor vehicle for travel, preferably when the season started or ended. The route was used neither for frequent transport during the season nor with livestock. Moreover, the water reservoir of Kvilesteinsvatnet reduced the pasture area significantly.
[49] The degree of outdoor recreation use of the mountain roads becomes apparent by the fact that the two starting points for hiking trips most frequently mentioned in the questionnaires were Steinsland/St⊘lsvatnet (41.4%) and Vikafjellet/Kvilesteinsvegen (38.4%) (cf. also Figure ). Information was given in 99 questionnaires (90.8%).
[50] http://www.visveg.no
[51] The small number of observations makes it more appropriate to talk about relative probabilities than statistical significance. The slope values of all trendlines are rounded to years since it would not make sense to express an annual event with decimals. Statistical properties were computed by correlation and regression (ANOVA) analyses in Microsoft® Office Excel 2003.
[52] Knaben, ‘Arnafjord‐ og Vikafjell’, 80; Table .
[53] Stebler, Alp‐ und Weidewirtschaft, 290. Note the German double use of the plural term Alpen both for the particular mountain region and for mountain pastures/summer farms. According to Ramsauer, ‘Die Alpenkunde im Altertum’, 47, the latter use seems to be a result of the older Celtic use of the term simply for ‘high mountains’ having become meaningless.
[54] Schröder, ‘Die Almwirtschaft in Österreich’.
[55] Teigland, ‘Impacts of Hydropower Development’; idem, ‘Impacts from New Roads’.
[56] See also the changing definitions of the St⊘lsheimen hiking area by the Bergen Mountain Touring Association; Eiter, ‘Botaniske og ⊘kologiske studier’.
[57] Fylkesmannen i Sogn og Fjordane, Forvaltningsplan, 40, translated.
[58] Ibid., 19, translated, emphasis added.
[59] Fylkesmannen i Sogn og Fjordane, Forvaltningsplan, 15, 20, emphasis added.
[60] Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction’; cf. also section headed ‘Custom and Tradition’.
[61] Hobsbawm, ‘Mass‐producing Traditions’.
[62] Fylkesmannen i Sogn og Fjordane, Forvaltningsplan, 15.
[63] Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction’, 3.
[64] See, for example, Heiberg, ‘Er vern veien å gå’.
[65] Milj⊘verndepartementet, Lov om bevaring, 27, translated.
[66] Olwig, ‘“Time Out of Mind”’.
[67] Axelsen, Ressursutnyttelse i et fjellområde, 103–8.
[68] Olwig, ‘“Time Out of Mind”’, 354.
[69] Op cit.
[70] Eiter, ‘Kari Wester’.
[71] M. Qviström, ‘Vägar till landskapet’, 220.
[72] Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction’, 2; cf. also section headed ‘Custom and Tradition’.
[73] Øen, ‘Vik–Voss vegen’.
[74] Howard, Heritage, 91–92.
[75] Milj⊘verndepartementet, Lov om bevaring, 50.
[76] Riley and Harvey, ‘Landscape Archaeology’, 270.
[77] Howard, Heritage, 116.
[78] Stoknes, ‘Alrekst⊘len’; Stovel, ‘Notes on Aspects of Authenticity’.
[79] Stoknes, ‘Alrekst⊘len’.
[80] Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction’.
[81] Cf. also Howard, Heritage, 199.
[82] Hauge, ‘Kulturlandskap og museum’.
[83] Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country, 69.