Cultural landscape concept

1. The cultural landscape can only he understood by its antithesis: untouched, unspoilt nature. The realization of this dualism is the basis for understanding and appreciating either. (Fægri 1988)

2. Virtually all landscapes have cultural associations, because virtually all landscapes have been affected in some way by human action or perception. Cultural landscapes also reveal much about our evolving relationship with the natural world, and often derive their character from a human response to natural features and natural systems. These systems can include geology or plant and animal habitats. Cultural landscapes contain invaluable information about our history and our relationship with the landscape around us. Cultural landscapes give us a sense of place. They are part of our regional heritage, and part of each of our lives. They reveal our relationship with the land over time. Cultural landscapes are special places that reveal aspects of our origin and development through their forms, features, and history of use.

3. To Medieval man nature was hostile, forbidding. His world was the belch of friendly cultivated ground, isolated in a fearful, dangerous matrix on the whole. This sentiment also prevailed during the following centuries only to be changed by Rousseau and his romanticist followers The realization of nature as a positive factor, indeed so much so that it should be protected against the depredations of man, most remarkably did not originate in densely built-up Europe, where nature really is, endangered but in USA, which at this time had plenty of it. Nature became something to be cherished and protected. Later, the idea was also adopted in Europe. Where the Linnaean philosophic tradition home country, Rutger Sernandcr protected Swedish landscapes as memories of idyllic pastoral periods of the past.

4. The concept of cultivation landscape was born as a landscape in apparent equilibrium where mans influence was only one of several forces. But mans influence was more than originally thought. When natural successions started inside protected and fenced areas and turned them into wildernesses as cultivation was abandoned, one realized that landscape was far from being unaltered nature. In the end it was realized that even in Scandinavia virgin landscape was generally a fiction. The emphasis finally shifted from the alternative cultivated/ uncultivated concept to the idea of a gradient of human impact. The task of defining and preserving this gradient is a challenge to modern nature conservation (Fægri 1954, 1962, 1988).

5. Cultural landscape concept Exactly when the term cultural landscape was first coined one do not know, nor is it very important: it came by itself (Fægri 1988). It certainly was not common before the Second World War, but it is found in, for example, a Swedish dictionary of 1939 as a term with predominant scientific use. In post-war dictionaries it is frequent. According to information from the Norwegian language council it was first recognized as a Norwegian word in 1960.

6. The Cultural Landscape concept first appeared among geographers for whom geography was divided into physical and social geography and who needed a conceptual tool to describe land including man-made land and objects such as houses, lines of communication, and cities. Norbert Krebs (1923) used the term Oikumene (ancient Greek for the inhabited world) to denote regions that have been trans­formed by human activity i.e. cultural landscapes, and Anoikumene (a neologism) to denote natural landscapes in the sense of regions where human life is completely subordinate to nature.

7. From the early 1990th, the concept of the cultural landscape became common property, a positive word for researchers, planners, administrators and a catchword used in the media and every­day life. But as in the case of other scientific concepts, like ecology, transplanted from one field to another its conceptual content varies.

8. Cultural landscape concept Cultural landscape as a concept denoting land under human influence is not only gaining in acceptance among scientists and laymen, but is also coming into more and more common use among administrators and policy makers. Professional techniques for identifying, documenting, and managing cultural landscapes have evolved rapidly in the past 30 years, and the results have reached the general public.

9. The concept denotes a landscape where man has left his marks and altered in some way or a landscape about which man has perceptions. Cultural landscapes can be characterized both by mans activities (agriculture forestry or settlement and buildings or by its geographical place (forest, the mountain or coast). Most often, however, the term is used in relation to traditional land use.

10. Cultural landscapes are superimposed on natural ones. Seen in a horizontal dimension, human impact forms the cultural landscape upon the underlying natural base, which again, are formed by geological, climatic, and bio­logical factors. A chronological tree dimensional view implies that the cultural landscape is a total landscape in time and space including its historical dimension. Cultural landscape is thus heritage of values handed down from the generations of the past, mirrored within people and cultural traditions.

11. All landscapes are created or modified to varying degrees by humans. A difficulty therefore emerges when studying the transition from natural to cultural landscapes because humans influence both, sometimes in unknown ways. The transition between nature and culture is determined arbitrary. The cultural landscape is a pure and abstract concept. Every epoch and culture makes its own material impact on the landscape; there is, notwithstanding, a gradient of human impact that is important. If human influence were to be removed, a pseudo‑natural landscape would develop

12. Cultural landscape is a syndrome containing numerous aspects, but most of all cultural landscape highlights the life values of the people who act in it and for whom it is their homeland. To them the landscape is not only a physical entity; it also has an intellectual content. Memories, myths, and ideas relating to the land are linked both to the culture and to the land as a physical entity. Preserving the landscape within a transformed or new cultural context may be compared to artificial life-support.

13. In many modern societies, however, it has become normal to split culture and nature apart and to view each separately. When one does this, there can easily arise an adversarial attitude toward nature, which sees man’s proper role as one of conquest and control. The price of conquest and of the unwanted consequences which manifest themselves are then perceived to be environmental problems. These, in turn, must be “solved” to secure control over nature. An intensified exploitation of the potential of technology to enforce change solves only at best some problems by creating others, at worst it accumulates them. In this spiral man and his culture are on one side, nature—the environment—on the other.

14. Time becomes a key parameter and limiting factor when neither man nor nature have sufficient time to respond and adjust to the changes they induce in each other. With increasing technological capacity the speed of transformation increase and the greater the distance between those who are dependent and have the capacity to live with nature and those who have the capacity to change it. This is a fundamental process and the principles that underlie it are of importance to landscape planning as well as landscape research.

15. Cultural landscape research can be regarded as a starting point, to gain understanding of the processes of change: the forces that have formed the physical surroundings, in the past as well as today. From a historical viewpoint, cultural landscape has values important as guides to the actions that cause landscape change. Studies of landscape meanings and values lead to cultural understanding, also of the historical dimension.

16. Man, as he takes into his possession nearly all inhabitable land on the surface of the planet, seems adapted to all conceivable and nearly inconceivable conditions. The physical, practical and emotional capacity gained through this process constitutes, over time, an important part of the culture that is developed in the landscapes in question. Cultures are both formed by the forces of nature and by tradition and by the transformations induced when natural conditions change or man changes his habitat.

17. Natural conditions are never constant or stable or in any long-lasting balance, but rather are caught up in a process of continual change at varying speed. Depending on conditions the relative importance of the factors of change will vary and be interrelated. Adaptations to nature are therefore also adaptations to variation and change in culture as well as in nature. Bearing in mind the range of variation in global environments, we might reasonably expect to encounter a similar range in cultural diversity; but the diversity we actually encounter seems less than expected. In fact at deeper levels of analysis indigenous populations the world over seem to share marked cultural similarities, constants which one can assume to be part of a more general pattern in the relation between man and nature.

18. Cultures are not, then, solely formed by conditions prevailing in their physical environments. Man’s presence in and use of land over time induces changes in nature; and whether these changes are to his advantage or not, he is caught up in them and must adapt himself to them. His continued presence in the place where he finds himself at any given time is dependent upon his ability to cope with natural conditions there and their variability. In this way man becomes part of nature. Hence a dualistic view that pits man against nature is not fruitful one should rather operate with a concept of “man-in-nature” as an organic whole.

19. In the context of the interrelations between nature and culture, the human component in the cultural formation of environment consists of: • those who dwell in a particular region and for whom it constitutes their homelandand is the sole or primary foundation for their survival, •  those who dwell outside it but affect it as they pass through it, •  those who dwell outside it but exploit it in various ways. Into this last category fall those whose exploitation lays the foundation for their livelihoods, and who are thus in a sense at once both insiders and outsiders, and those whose origins lie in it and who continue to exploit it but who are in the process of becoming outsiders.

20. Of particular interest in this context are those whose cultures are so intimately adapted to a particular environment as to be sensitive to almost any environmental change as do some indigenous populations. Important too on the other hand are policy makers, planners and creators of political religious or philosophical ideas, which are propagated among or imposed on those who use and live on the land.

21. The role of subjectivity Academic researchers in ecological research are concerned in ideally objectivity. Cultural landscape defined by subjective features are for them no tool for understanding change, and cultural landscape studies becomes an area of special character containing strong subjective undertones. However, the sum of our visible surroundings, the total complex of visually forms within a given area, both natural and human can only be understood and interpreted in their historically specific social and cultural context.Within this perspective there is a need for subjectivism.

22. Moreover, both the research and the researcher are fruits of their culture; the landscape perhaps of another. Different groups with different cultural background therefore interpret landscapes differently. This may cause insurmountable obstacles to cultural landscape research as the process involves a subjective interpretation of elements in the surroundings, which give meaning for a group of people in their cultural or socioeconomic context, not necessary to the researcher. Significant in the landscape are factors such as human history, ethnic affiliation and economic interest. Rural people in a landscape experience their landscape differently from the way the outsiders does, and values change over time.

23. Disciplines are “cultures of science” Perception of the cultural landscape in the natural sciences diverges from that in the humanities. Science has its interest in the way nature has been influenced by humans, while cultural historians are interested in how culture manifests itself in the landscape and how landscape is culturally interpreted. For the former, a cultural landscape requires physical traces of human activity. For the latter, people’s “mental cultural landscapes” are important. The concept of cultural landscape can be identified either narrowly, i.e. disciplinary, or broadly, as the total interaction between humans and nature in a given area.

24. Nature and culture do not need to be seen as being in opposition to one another, but prevailing definitions within disciplines do, in fact, pit them against one another so as to serve an ideological role. Geographers, landscape architects, botanists, archaeologists, ethnologists, and representatives of other disciplines describe and study landscapes differently from one another. The cultural landscape being both a physical reality and a social or cultural construction explains why the perceptions vary within different academic disciplines.

25. Academic disciplines are not neutral. The discipline subjective values of the researchers determine what is relevant knowledge for a particular study. The subjectivity is a result of the way in which each discipline has developed, and that determines how a landscape is perceived, what is important to register, characterize and understand. In general, scientific documentation reflects; like landscape paintings, what each discipline want to see. All the various details in a landscape are reduced to what is regarded as important. For each discipline also the methods remains constant and the immediate result status quo.

26. In biology the cultural landscape concept is adopted as a term to denote biotopes modified or created by human activity. In this perspective Botany focus primarily in the culturally (pastoral and agricultural) influenced ecosystems of the landscape. In landscape ecology, a cultural landscape element, especially an agricultural or a pastoral landscape, associated with its human‑made features, is viewed as a habitat. The landscape ecologist describes a cultural landscape in terms of ecological patterns structure and composition. Such fragmentation of hole landscape are often necessary in the study of functioning ecological systems and their natural processes regarding different plant and animal species.

27. Also within ecology the biological disciplines diverge. Botanist are interested in the Cultural Landscape diversity, species composition and plant performance and zoologists are interested in a cultural landscape as environment for insects or animals. Further dived in sub disciplines they claim exclusive to right and control over parts of cultural landscape.

28. The words nature and scenery are synonyms. A landscape become in a broad sense an area perceived and observed from a certain viewpoint. Nature is countryside, the natural and genuine, in contrast to the town. The degree of understanding leads to and is related to the exercise of control over the land. The human experience of scenery is dependent on season, weather, emotion, or fantasy (Jones 1988,). In science it is dependent on discipline.

29. Viewpoints differ with time and so do the relations of the observer to the land described. Art historians relate cultural landscapes like other objects of study to particular epochs. Urbanization and later industrialization lead to a differentiation between town and surrounding nature and induce an idealized picture of natural scenery of rural surroundings. One hand, landscape become an object that could be described, and, on the other, the image of a divine nature (Jones 1988.). Aesthetic values guide the focus of, and relationship to, the environmental surroundings. However, each aesthetic experience is individual and dependent on a particular setting or is shared by a society within a particular epoch.

30. Vegetasjon- og landskapshistorie Landskapsøkologi Kulturlandskap • Vegetasjonsøkologi. • Utvikling og endring i dag og nyere tid • Biologisk mangfold, Populasjons dynamikk • Driftformer - Arealbruks endringer. • Skog suksesjoner, skogskifte, avskoging • Tregrense variasjoner kultur versus klima • Forvaltning av naturressurser • Vegetasjon og hydrologi • Utviklingsforskning • Biodiversitet og bærekraftig utvikling • Vegetasjonskartlegging. • GIS, Fjernmåling, klassifisering , endrings analyse, modellering • Flora og klima historie • Landskapshistorie • Jordsmonnsutvikling • Kultur historie Beitebruk, Jordbruk • Middelalder byer • Urbanisering og endring. • Hortikultur hage historie • Pollen i kulturkontekst. • Arkeo- (etno) botanikk. • Næringsopptak og kosthold • Fiber, ved og tekstil analyser. • Pollenspredning og representativitet • Romlig modellering.

31. Excursion to outer West coast of West Norway . Departure With Hurtigruten M/S Vesterrålen 2230 ombord 2000 ? Today 1.2 2002 To Florø. Embarking M/S Lofoten AT 0730 Saturday 2.2 at 730 Arrival Bergen at 1430