International audienceIn a period of agricultural decline in the uplands of Europe, agriculture is ceasing to provide the primary rationale for the organisation, utilisation and functioning of rural space. Policy reform, market trends and changes to the way citizens and consumers think about the countryside all suggest a need for thinking strategically about the future development of these areas. However, without a broad involvement of stakeholders, land use conflicts, and social and cultural conflicts in general, may increase. Involving stakeholders in upland areas can be facilitated by using scenario technique and by discussing alternative futures in local stakeholder panels. In this paper we present four scenarios of land-use change for the year 2030, and their assessments by stakeholder panels in Scotland, France, Norway, Switzerland, Slovakia and Greece. The aim of the paper is to explore the ways in which stakeholders in these locations advocate and assess these scenarios. We also explore how stakeholders in different countries weight the visual landscape impacts, the livelihood and biodiversity aspects of the scenarios in their assessment, and the reasons for their prioritising. The cross-country analysis shows that stakeholders across the study areas are united in their overall rejection of agricultural liberalisation, advocating a production-oriented, but multifunctional and environmentally-friendly agriculture that maintains landscapes and biodiversity

Rural landscapes are the product of consumption for increasing numbers of tourists from urban areas. Many Nordic rural landscapes face a situation called spontaneous reforestation: as mowing and grazing have almost come to an end, scrub and trees thrive. The national tourism industry is concerned, leaning on the assumption that well-managed agricultural landscapes are central to Norway's touristic appeal.This article seeks to investigate how tourists understand and make sense of the landscapes they visit. It presents findings from qualitative interviews with 75 domestic and international tourists, conducted in three different study areas in Norway that are prone to spontaneous reforestation. The tourists were asked to describe the surrounding landscape and to reflect upon the meaning of the landscape and the different landscape elements. Manipulated photos of the past and probable future development were brought into the interview to aid reflection.A main finding is that landscape elements that the tourists perceive as threatened, seem to be preferred over those experienced as plentiful. Another important finding is how the tourists in our study in different ways tend to make sense of the landscapes they visit through their understanding of their known landscapes. Lastly, we find that understandings of landscape change processes are embedded into wider discourses of nature and culture.Key Words: landscape changes, spontaneous reforestation, meaning, rural tourism, Norway . Landscapes Lost? Tourist Understandings of Changing Norwegian Rural Landscapes. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism,, 29-47. doi:10.1080/15022250.2015 IntroductionThe Norwegian fjord landscape topped the charts in National Geographic Travel's annual destination ranking in 2009, strengthening the national tourism industry's belief that fjords, mountains and fields are the country's most unique tourist attractions (http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/). A widespread assumption is that well-managed agricultural landscapes are central to the Norwegian tourism product (Randen & Bartnes, 1967;Stang, 2008). These landscapes are now changing. The concern is that further spontaneous reforestation of these landscapes will lead to less attractive tourist landscapes. As yet, little research has been done to investigate this concern (Fyhri, Jacobsen, & Tømmervik, 2009).This article gives an outline of tourists' understanding of and preferences for different landscape elements. A discourse analytical framework is applied to data from interviews with tourists who visited three tourist landscapes prone to spontaneous reforestation. Two research questions are investigated: 1) How do the tourists understand the Norwegian landscape and the change processes that are going on? 2) What discursive elements can be identified in these understandings? Agricultural Industrialization and Land Use ChangesThe landscapes that tourists consume have not been shaped with the tourism experience in mind; rather, this value is a positive externality o...

The once-proud graziers have begun to have doubts. They have begun to doubt whether everything they used to believe, everything that gave meaning to what they have been doing, still makes sense. This essay takes the reader home to the graziers and out into the Norwegian countryside: the mountains, forests and deep fertile valleys, the terrain the Norwegians call outfields (utmark). Based on conversations with graziers in different parts of Norway, this essay discusses the future of grazing in the outfields against the backdrop of the big, as well as the small, political and social issues that both the graziers and we as a society are facing. For the graziers are struggling with many questions today. Is it no longer ecologically sustainable to use the outfields resources for food production? Shouldn’t the outfields be a resource for the production of food and fibre anymore? Is there no place for grazing animals in the Norwegian mountains in the future? Grazing farmers are currently asking themselves these questions and more. They feel degraded and exposed in the public debate, and the feeling tears at their self-image and makes every day grey; it becomes increasingly difficult to find motivation for each day that passes. But what can be done to reverse this trend? What can the grazing farmers do themselves, and what do we others need to do for them, politically as well as socially? This chapter discusses the emergence of a new concept of outfields and how it has affected grazing in the outfields. The essay raises a number of important questions that we as a society need to address in the debate about the future role of traditional upland grazing areas in our landscape.

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Forskning viser at det er større sannsynlighet for å bli overvektig hvis man bor på bygda enn hvis man bor i byen. For å redusere denne ulikheten må vi avdekke hvordan stedsspesifikke kulturelle og sosiale miljøer har innvirkning på helseatferden vår. Dette fordrer en langt mer helhetlig forskningstilnaerming til overvektsproblematikken enn det vi hittil har sett.