Recreation and Rural Development in Norway: Nature Versus Culture

摘要

This paper explores the author's observations on the barriers, risks, and, to a greater extent, opportunities associated with natural amenity-led or recreation-led rural development in Norway, which others might term rural tourism. It seeks to establish an argument for a refocusing of rural amenity-led development away from traditional “high-amenity” areas and toward previously overlooked places, thus geographically and substantively broadening the potential for this type of development in Norway. This change in orientation seeks to avoid the tourism-dependence that has emerged and is similar to older forms of natural-resource extraction dependence. Finally, the paper presents two cultural contradictions of cuisine that constitute barriers to the proposed broader geographical and cultural development of recreation and tourism in rural Norway.