Abstract.
Although Torsten Hägerstrand is not known primarily as a landscape geographer, he made significant contributions to the understanding of landscape in Swedish geography. This paper argues that Hägerstrand examined the importance of representation for the understanding of landscape as place and territory, which is a key ingredient in current engagements with landscape within (Nordic) geography and the broader European political context. The current debate on landscape, however, reaches beyond Hägerstrand's rather “scientistic” approach and brings out a stronger sense of the cultural, social and political powers conveyed by landscape and representation. We show that this is made explicit in recent scholarly work on the so‐called substantive landscape. The paper also provides an introduction to the essays of this theme issue, which reflects a selection of the landscape research presented at the Inaugural Meeting of Nordic Geographers at Lund, Sweden, in May 2005.