Recreation and Rural Development in Norway: Nature Versus Culture

Abstract

This paper explores the author's observations on the barriers, risks, and, to a greater extent, opportunities associated with natural amenity‐led or recreation‐led rural development in Norway, which others might term rural tourism. It seeks to establish an argument for a refocusing of rural amenity‐led development away from traditional “high‐amenity” areas and toward previously overlooked places, thus geographically and substantively broadening the potential for this type of development in Norway. This change in orientation seeks to avoid the tourism‐dependence that has emerged and is similar to older forms of natural‐resource extraction dependence. Finally, the paper presents two cultural contradictions of cuisine that constitute barriers to the proposed broader geographical and cultural development of recreation and tourism in rural Norway.

Keywords:

• Recreation
• rural development
• culture
• nature
• Norway

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the support of the Norsk Senter for Bygdeforskning through its Norwegian Research Council funded Seasonal Homes Research project. I wish to thank Johan Fredrik Rye, Reidar Almås, and the editors of this journal for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, which prevented me from grossly mischaracterizing the situations that I observed. Finally I want to thank Anne Iversen, Nora Hofstad, Tor Bidtnes and their families for hosting me during my visits to Norway and enduring my many questions.