Secret Places: On the Management of Knowledge and Information About Landscape and Yields in Northern Norway

Abstract

This article addresses strategies of secrecy and deception in hunters’ and fishers’ appropriation of land- and seascape-based resources in northern Norway. We argue that in their management of relevant environmental knowledge and information, hunters and fishers often seek to avoid competitors and free riders by hiding their trails, and are particularly careful about who they share their knowledge with. Strategies of secrecy are also integral to individual hunter’s and fisher’s social reputation. Reputation is achieved not only by successful trips and sharing of spoils, but also through role enactments that become the subject of evaluating commentaries and information exchange guided by socially sanctioned rules of appropriate deference. In some important ways structural and economic changes in the social environment also change the generic properties of the practices investigated, while secrecy as practice shows a strong cultural continuity in spite of such changes.