Property and Possession: Hunting Tourism and the Morality of Landownership in Rural Norway

Abstract

As forest areas have become increasingly relevant to the public as recreational landscapes, and outdoor recreation is increasingly diverse and specialized, we explore how notions of property and issues of public access are made relevant in controversies over hunting rights in Norway. Focusing on responses of local hunters to landowners’ recent promotion of hunting tourism, one central finding is that the hunters tend to engage with the hunting grounds as part of landscapes they identify strongly with. While recognizing the principle of private ownership to hunting rights, local hunters raise moral and political objections to how the ownership is performed. We conclude that taking the contextual nature of property relations into account is important when considering controversies over access to land and resources, not least in connection with development of nature-based tourism.