Norwegian Friluftsliv as Bildung

Norwegian Friluftsliv as Bildung – a Critical Review Kirsti Pedersen Gurholt1

Edited version 3.12.2007

Accepted for publication in: Peter Becker and Jochem Schirp (eds.) (2008) Other Ways of Learning. European Perspectives on Outdoor Adventure and Experiential Learning. Marburg: BSJ Marburg. Over the past few decades Norwegian (and Nordic) friluftsliv (literarily meaning: free/open-air life) has gained recognition and appreciation among outdoor educators, researchers and environmental philosophers worldwide (see e.g. Reed and Rothenberg eds. 1993; Henderson and Vikander eds. 2007). It is recognized as a value-based life philosophy and an environmentally friendly practice in contrast to the more commercial, skill and risk oriented outdoor education of English speaking cultures. A parallel might also be found in German Erlebnis pädagogik which more recently has moved ‘out of doors’. The intention of this chapter is twofold. Firstly, to give a critical review of the relationship between friluftsliv as part of Norwegian everyday culture and as a formal subject in higher education and primary school, based on a critical reading of relevant syllabi, literature, textbooks, articles and research. Secondly, to contribute to the advancement of a comparative European perspective on the significance of ‘Nature’ in processes of ‘Bildung’. This German concept, which might be synonymous with the English notion of self-education, is applied to describe the close connections between Norwegian pedagogical thinking and German philosophy (Korsgaard and Løvlie 2003). In addition, the concept explicitly questions how culture is mediated, transformed and embodied (Gustavsson 2001). However, according to Arnold (1988), a distinction between schooling and education is needed, as schooling is concerned with more than just education. This distinction might be equivalent to the Norwegian and German division between utdannelse/Ausbildung and dannelse/Bildung, respectively. Informal Upbringing and Formal Education In Norway conscious upbringing and Bildung in and through friluftsliv became important among the bourgeoisie towards the end of the 19th century (Nedrelid 1991). Although, as early as the late 18th century, a few examples can be found of nature being used for adventure and pleasure in

I am grateful to the Research Council of Norway through the Programs for Sustainable Development (2003-2007) and Sport Research (1990-1994) for financial support of the research underpinning this article. The many dialogues with board members of the EOE over the last ten years, by which the perspectives and arguments reflected in the article has been stimulated, are sincerely appreciated. 1

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private schools for upper class boys (Christensen 1993). In addition, associations2 like Den norske turistforening (The Norwegian Trekking Association), Skiforeningen (The Association for the Promotion of Skiing) and The Norwegian Association for Boy Scouts became powerful, inspired by the ‘European wave’ of national romantic ideas but also by British mountaineers coming to the so-called virgin ‘Northern Playground’ to climb unclimbed peaks (Slingsby 1904). So the late 19th century was a pioneering time for the Norwegian bourgeoisie, during which they ‘discovered’ and learned to appreciate their mountainous homeland for its vertical and ‘wild’ beauty, however with local farmers as their pathfinders. The successful Norwegian polar explorers Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen fit well into the romantic view of nature (Christensen 1993; Macfarlane 2003). They were turned into national heroes in the newborn state (separated from Sweden in 1905), personifying qualities that were seen to express what it meant to be a real Norwegian. Throughout the 20th century, these heroes became ideals and national symbols for several generations of young, especially male, Norwegians (Repp 2001; Moland 1996). Young bourgeoisie men in particular, were expected to practise idrett (sports) in natural environments summer and winter, in order to build strong, distinctive and individual characters, and become independent and responsible citizens. However, the relationship between idrett and friluftsliv was not as distinct as it is today. Among the rural population and in the working class, the situation was usually different (Breivik 1978; Goksøyr and Solenes 2004). Due to late industrialization and urbanization, knowledge of local outlying areas and skills in cultivating and harvesting natural resources were, in many places, part of a subsistence household’s economy up until after World War II. The younger children learnt from the older through self-organized play and outdoor games, and by participation in daily life, being given responsibility according to age and maturity. Upbringing was not systematic; there was no planned progression or organised training related to theoretical or abstract categories defined by teachers, textbooks or curriculum. At school, one learnt different kinds of general knowledge such as the three Rs – writing, reading and religion. Rambling, harvesting and survival in nature were learnt at home through participation in daily tasks, requiring no specific friluftsliv equipment or clothing. Thus learning of skills, social relations, risk-management and myths related to ‘nature’ was doing-oriented and gender specific as these were transferred from mother to daughter, father to son. While the girls were trained in activities related to housework, the boys' upbringing was connected to the work outside. If there were no boys in the family, it frequently happened that one of the daughters had to take on the role of a son (Pedersen 1999). For example, in lightly urbanized areas in Northern Norway this informal transfer of knowledge, skills, values 2

These three associations were established in 1868, 1883 and 1911, respectively.

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and worldviews was dominant up until the late 20th century, both among the indigenous Sami and Norwegians (Høgmo 1989; Hoëm 1976). As late as the 1990s, formal education in friluftsliv was regarded as strange and totally unnecessary; something needed only by immigrated urban dwellers from farther south (Pedersen 1999). However, such patterns are well recognized in societies dominated by ‘life in closeness to nature’ in many parts of the world (Price ed. 1996; Dempsey 1993; Frykman and Löfgren 1979). Around the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries also, a genuine and organized (male) working class friluftsliv was founded; e.g. among a group of typographers (1891) who, under the motto ‘Fresh air brings richness’ (Frisk luft bringer rikdom), started to hike in the fields and woods around Oslo, build cabins and thus reinforce their group identity. For these, friluftsliv was mainly a matter of health, and a counterculture to high death rates e.g. in the printing houses. Members of the Communist Youth organization founded a ‘Red Scouts movement’ in several towns in the 1920s, as an alternative to the already established bourgeoisie boy scouts, based on Lord Baden-Powell’s ideology. During the interwar period, the labor movement and party became strong political forces. The workers’ life-conditions were reformed3 and friluftsliv was included as part of their leisure politics and class struggle; by fighting, for example, against landowners and politicians who wanted privatization of the land. Their main argument was that hunting was an ancient right that had been free to everyone up until 1899 when a new, restrictive law was approved. As a result, friluftsliv became important both for the upper-ruling classes, the workers’ organizations and the strengthened Labor Party already in the interwar period (Goksøyr and Solenes 2004). At the same time, visionary individuals set up an association in Oslo in 1936 (Oslo og Omland Friluftsråd) to defend the green wooden belt around the country’s main city - called Marka from being built up and urbanized. Up until the 1960s and 70s, Norway was a relatively poor country. Cars were few and most mothers were housewives working at home, mainly in small family houses and apartments. The kids were usually left alone outside the house to play and organize themselves from morning till afternoon, even in Oslo where the first suburbs ‘grew up’ on the nearby farmed land in the 1950s and 60s. While a new public transport system made it possible for nearly everyone to reach Marka within less than half an hour drive, another presupposition for the popularity of hiking in the The principle of 8 hours work, 8 hours sleep, and 8 hours leisure time was introduced, based on the life-conditions of male industrial employees in the interwar period. 3

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woods can be found in the old Nordic everyman’s right to travel, harvest and stay over night in outlying areas; in 1957, this was turned into a judicial law. The law also allows people to roam freely on another persons’ private land with only minor restrictions, including a general principle of respect of ‘nature’ and of leaving no traces. One shouldn’t forget that up until the 1960s, most families, even in urban areas, had to pick their own berries in order to get the jam, juice and Cvitamins they needed. For most people therefore, friluftsliv has traditionally implied a combination of filling up ‘one’s buckets and batteries’. It has been a way of integrating subsistent necessities, social needs and relations, bodily pleasures, and a need for contemplation and contact with nature. People might be members of one of the many friluftsliv organizations in order to support their political efforts; marking of trails, building of cabins etc.. However, the actual hiking and being in the woods, mountains etc. have, to a large extent, up until today been self-organized around family and friends, and have taken place in the neighbourhoods (cf. Vaagbø 1993). Over the past few decades, people's relationship with nature and friluftsliv has changed noticeably (Vorkinn, Vittersø and Riise 2000). The former distinctions between urban weekend- and holidaybased rambling for pleasure, adventure and challenge, and rural seasonal harvesting have broken down. Most people in rural areas all around the country no longer live directly from what nature gives and it is possible to have an urban lifestyle in most places (Pedersen 1999). Children's and adolescents’ traditional and self-organised play in natural surroundings has had strong competition from a variety of sources: indoor sports, video, TV and a globalized urban youth culture of music, dance etc.. It may also have been replaced by new, specialized, outdoor sports requiring formal training and guidance; e.g. rock climbing and off-road biking (cf. Odden 2006). Young people in the Norwegian welfare state have a freedom which earlier generations have never had. While at the same time, strong societal forces exist; both social, class structure (Skogen 1999; Vorkinn, Vittersøe and Riise 2000) and unequal gender relations (Skogen 1999; Gurholt 2003) have so far been reproduced in/through friluftsliv. However, people of all ages now seem to be thrilled by new specialized and marketed activities that require highly specific equipment in addition to being more formally organized, and with formalized training. From this perspective, modernisation partly means a loss of a multitude of ‘close to’ nature experiences, embodied knowledge and competence in travelling and survival which earlier generations traditionally mastered. This loss is seen to create a need for formal education. Thus knowledge and skills which only one or two generations back were part of (nearly) everyone’s upbringing, have become part of a national school curriculum (Ministry of Church, Education and 4

Norwegian Friluftsliv as Bildung

Research 1997). Modernization means, to some extent, new specialized activities, equipment and social relations which require formal training. However, the basis for formal education in and through friluftsliv is also to be found in other sources. History of friluftsliv in higher education As an independent academic discipline in higher education, friluftsliv was not established until the late 1960s when the former bio-engineer, climber and mountaineer Nils Faarlund (1937-) set up a private college in the mountainous valley Hemsedal, called Norges Høgfjellsskole (Norwegian Seminar of Nature-Life and Mountaineering).4 When Norges idrettshøgskole, NIH, (Norwegian University of Sport and Physical Education) was established in Oslo the following year (1968) as a scientific institution,5 friluftsliv was introduced as a subject. This was, among other things a reaction to a number of dramatic searches for missing skiers in the mountains during Easter 1967, which was seen as being a result of a general loss of people’s competence in travelling and survival in nature. Faarlund, who already had developed training of the military services in winter survival, was hired to build the new programs. In the beginning, these were organized around two separate courses; winter survival, with backcountry skiing, and canoeing; the latter approach being adopted from the scouts’ movement. In the beginning, the courses were taught along with other sports. Later they were developed into a separate but optional half-year program which, throughout the 1970s, became popular and influential. In the early 1980s, it was further developed into a oneyear program at NIH, and also adopted by one of the newly established regional colleges, Bø in Telemark. Today such undergraduate programs are to be found all over the country. According to Faarlund (1993), the ideas of friluftsliv as a subject in higher education originated within the Tindegruppen, a student mountain club set up at the Norwegian University of Technology and Natural Sciences in Trondheim in the 1960s. The student club was contrasted to Norsk Tindeklubb (Norwegian Mountain Club) which was inspired by the British way of climbing, and its conquest of the mountains. Thus the Tindegruppen approach was to explore and touch the mountains; to let the mountains speak and then listen to what they had to tell. Thus mountaineering, and to some extent climbing, was seen to be the core of the new subject but: As mountaineering was little known to Norwegians, the curriculum was broadened to a more holistic “friluftsliv seminar” with backcountry Nordic skiing as a vehicle for Originally it was named Norsk Alpincenter (1966), later Høgfjellsskolen Norsk Alpincenter, and then Norges Høgfjellsskole; all names are expressing the schools main focus on mountaineering. However, the English translation (Faarlund 1993: 165) expresses a broadened approach to friluftsliv. 5 NIH replaced the former Statens gymnastikkskole (SGS), the National College of Gymnastics, which was based on Swedish gymnastics and German Turnen. 4

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communicating the values of free nature. Through a “value clarification” process, the negative trends of the modern way of life were unveiled, and alternative ways of life – or of “moddling toward frugality” – were worked out. At first the teaching method was fairly traditional – fixed, “military” pedagogy tried to implant the discipline needed to live with nature on its own terms. Naturally, in the climate of the seventies such methods were poorly received. It was clear that something was lacking in this instruction to nature, and the missing piece was discovered after an exposure to the ways of teaching in the more traditional communities of central Nepal. There, children are taught to live with “serious” sides of nature through play. Not just a frivolous pastime, play is combined with useful tasks and with nature wisdom. But it remains play – a joyful activity, one that avoids breaking life up into tasks to be accomplished by efficient thinking. Adults were “facilitators” and guides more than teachers in the common Western sense. The role was taken as a model for instructing in the seminars. The element of joy and “playlearning” in nature was realized, and teaching method became a form of mentoring, or guiding. And since a persons’ own experience is of such importance here, often the art of guiding is the art of shutting up (Faarlund 1993: 1656). By emphasizing ‘the values of free nature’ and by giving priority to communication with mountains through mountaineering, the subject was deeply rooted in ideas of romanticism which, in Faarlund’s words (1993: 163), had ‘rediscovered free nature’. From this point of departure, a radical vision emerged: ‘to reintroduce Norwegians to the values of free nature’ by reflective Bildung in/through friluftsliv. Thus friluftsliv should not be just outdoor recreation, but ‘serious pedagogy’ that could point the way to new lifestyles and a new green society (Faarlund 1974, 1993; Reed and Rothenberg 1993; Repp 2001; Tordsson 1993, 2003). The legitimacy of this was based on a clear criticism of the destruction of nature caused by industrial growth and the mechanical view of nature in the natural sciences. Thus the subject was grounded in the growth of the modern environmental movement and the philosophy of deep ecology that was being developed by the Norwegian philosopher and climber Arne Næss (1973). However, the engagement did not happen in a vacuum. The Norwegian Government designated 1970 as National Year for Nature Preservation, and if Reed and Rothenberg (1993: 2) are right, the philosophy of deep ecology, environmentalism and friluftsliv as green politics ‘is rooted far deep in Norwegian culture’. These authors claim that this represents a shift from a ‘classical’ concern for protecting isolated natural phenomena to a broader, more inclusive notion of what environmental protection must imply. To attain the new green goals, learning by doing through mutual responsibility, dialogue and reflection were deemed to be central: But the most important “how” is a process of “guided discovery”: a participant is introduced to challenges that he or she can solve without serious risk of life. A “guide” 6

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starts with what is known and expected by the participant, and then “pulls” him or her into a stream of experiences toward the remote and the unknown. “To be pulled into the stream” means to be pulled out of the position as a spectator into the process of participation. The seminar, of course, should take place as much as possible in nature itself (Faarlund 1993: 166). These didactic principles were named vegledning which literally means ‘leading or guiding someone on their way in/through life’. The concept describes both a bodily and sensuous counterweight to an intellectually-oriented educational system, and the visions and praxis of friluftsliv as a way of green Bildung. It might be equivalent to concepts like guiding, interpretation, counselling, mentoring, apprenticeship, and supervision or coaching. However, conveying and conveyance were preferred as the most corresponding notions.6 Vegledning was meant to express a democratic, inductive and critical methodology, in contrast to the dominant positivist approach of the natural sciences, authoritarian instruction and competitiveness in sport and PE, and the traditional goal-oriented and instrumentalist teaching methods used in school. Included also, was an intention to bring forward to new generations, the embodied (intuitive) knowledge (kjennskap) and close relationships to nature that characterized the informal upbringing of earlier times; through a form of apprenticeship literarily called ‘grandfather’s pedagogy’. To summarize: vegledning was characterized by hikes in free nature within the limits of each individual’s ability and skills, by heterogeneous groups of a maximum of seven responsible persons over a lengthy period of time (long enough to be incorporated within nature’s own rhythm), by the use of nature-friendly equipment and journeying (symbolized by wool, cotton, and wooden skis), by not leaving any traces, and by value-based, reflexive dialogue and processes (Faarlund 1974; reinterpreted e.g. by Tordsson 1993; Repp 2001; Ydegaard 2005).7 The ideas and legitimacy of formal Bildung in/through friluftsliv are visionary and have been influential but draw on several inspirational sources and ideologies, in which also contradictions and paradoxes arise. On the one hand, Norwegians are considered to know little about mountaineering; on the other hand, mountaineering is considered to be at the very core of the new subject which is seen to be deeply rooted just within ‘Norway’s own cultural background’ (cf. Faarlund 1993). One reason for this gap can partly be found in the national romanticism that made mountains and mountain farmers become the core symbol of a Norwegian national identity at the end of the 19th century, although most people lived along the Emphasized by Faarlund himself on several occasions. As a consequence, it was also seen to be an interdisciplinary subject that should integrate e.g. social science and aesthetics, however, based on the premises of the principles of friluftsliv-vegledning. 6 7

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coast! (Goksøyr 1994). Another reason can be found in the narrowly defined Norwegian cultural background; as if friluftsliv starts with the polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen (see Faarlund 1993; Repp 2001). According to other research, this interpretation is deeply problematic for three reasons. Firstly, because practices and perceptions that are inherent in modern friluftsliv can be traced back to fundamental changes in European civilisation since the late Middle Ages (Hegge 1990), to how people’s relationship to nature changed from mythical consciousness to an attitude of conquest and romanticism. In Norway, these processes happened over a few decades during the mid and late 19th century and were strengthened as they coincided with the international race for the Poles, the formation of the Norwegian state, and a need to establish and proclaim a common national identity which differed from those of Denmark or Sweden (Goksøyr 1994). Secondly, the concept of friluftsliv was created long before Nansen became part of history (for a more detailed analyses, see Gurholt 2007, in press). Thirdly, because of the ways in which the hegemonic interpretation of friluftsliv and the narrowly defined notion of ‘Norway’s own cultural background’ have excluded women and children, their bodily appearances, experiences and views (Pedersen 1999; Gurholt 2007, in press). The hegemonic interpretation of friluftsliv as a historical and cultural phenomenon can thus be criticized not only for its worshipping of national romantic ideas and its male bias but for its ‘postmodern’ mixing of ideas, interpreted as historical truths. For example, the idea that Norwegians had lost their intimate relationship with nature is not based on any systematic or critical analyses. Neither has the concept of ‘free nature’ been critically addressed, i.e. how the concept can be linked to a romantic illusion whose presumption is the existence of an absolute distinction drawn between nature and culture: a distinction that was actually made up by the romantics themselves! (Løvlie 1990). There is little reason to doubt that the polar explorer, scientist, skier, statesman, humanist and Nobel prize-winner Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930) has been, and still is, an important source of inspiration in the evolution of friluftsliv as a social phenomenon, and for the personal development of the subject’s founding fathers. Not at least, from the perspective (inherited from Rousseau) that Nansen introduced into public debate by stressing and personifying the idea of friluftsliv as ‘simple life in close contact with nature’ as a counterweight to what he called a ‘sick’ development in society. The pleasures and enjoyments of friluftsliv would thus give modern (male) youth a taste of the naturalness of pre-modern time and develop their physical strength and brave characters (Nansen 1922). However, one major problem, according to the critical approach emphasized in this analysis, is how the idea and ideal of friluftsliv as a ‘simple way of life’, in its formation as a subject in higher education, was quite one-

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sided with respect to its (male) dedication to mountaineering and its idealized concept of nature. The other side of the coin - how women and feminist critique were not excluded from the reflexive and critical visions of, and discourses on, friluftsliv as, in Faarlund’s own words (Faarlund 1993), a ’way home’ to a new green society - is equally problematic. In Faarlund’s narrative, yet another source of inspiration for the development of friluftsliv as a subject becomes visible; the traditional ways of living in mountainous Nepal. However, this perspective enforces new questions such as: why Nepal and not the way of life of the indigenous Sami population of Northern Scandinavia? One reason is that the Sami were seen to be too modernized; as early as the 1960s, they had started to use snowmobiles (Faarlund 1993). Another reason might be connected to Nansen’s less than ideal experiences in taking two Sami men along on the crossing of the Greenland Ice Cap (1888). They become a burden more than a help, most likely because of a cultural clash; they did not understand Nansen’s approach to nature and the project in the Arctic. A third reason might be connected to the ways in which the subject’s founding fathers were devoted to climbing and mountaineering; the qualities at the core of the Sami homeland - the Finnmark Mountain Plateau – do not fit with the dramatic and sublime scenery of the ‘Alpine aesthetics’ which is central to Romanticism and mountaineering (Pedersen 1999). Neither should one forget the heavy influence of military traditions and training of young men to master ‘wild nature’ and harsh climate.8 Just more recently it has become publicly known how the vegledning-approach since the 1960s has been developed in close relations to military training and leadership-development (Sookermany and Eriksen eds. 2007). However, the significance of these kinds of relations, and of women’s entrance into the military services, has so far not been researched. A contemporary approach to friluftsliv in higher education This narration of how friluftsliv has evolved as a formal subject in higher education shows how friluftsliv – as any other subject in school – is tied to specific but complex and contradictory historical, social and cultural contexts, ideas, personalities, interests and power-relations (Dewar For example, how the ‘Nansen effect’ was strengthened through ‘Gutta på skauen’ (The boys in the woods) which, after World War II, became a key-symbol of the strong and courageous Norwegian male character. Despite the lack of military technology and professional training, ‘natural’ qualifications were seen to give young male Norwegians the ability, during the occupation, to frequently succeed in sabotage of the superior German military system. The notion Gutta på skauen refers to the many small groups of mostly men who were hiding in and operating illegally from ‘bush areas’ many places around the country in the years 1940-45. 8

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1987; Gundem 1990). It is a selective social construction, however powerfully interpreted as the Norwegian tradition of friluftsliv, thus excluding the knowledge, skills and values held by ‘ordinary people’, women and children. Still one reasonable interpretation might be that the main intention was both to preserve friluftsliv as a vibrant expression of popular culture, and to achieve safe and ecological journeying in and experiences of ‘free nature’. However, on a practical level, several contradictions appeared e.g. related to the ways in which vegledning were intended to be a form of teacher education (jfr. Faarlund 1974), how ‘Norway’s own cultural background’ was narrowly defined and how the visions mentioned above were transformed into praxis. A gap between theory and praxis emerged. For example, for a long time, a remote, expedition-based, challenge- and skill-oriented praxis dominated the subject. The traditional local practices of harvesting natural resources as an integrated part of people’s everyday subsistence and pleasure, did not fit into the hegemonic paradigm of (male) mountaineering, militarism and romanticism, although social criticism and ecological awareness were otherwise basic elements (Pedersen 1999). This was to a large extent also the case for coastal culture. Besides it became more and more clear that children’s play and explorations of local environments were given little or no space in friluftsliv as a separate study program. An important, but for the most part overlooked, exception is Repp (1977) who discussed the values of primarily children’s education through friluftsliv and ‘schooling in nature’ in the light of European and American pedagogical philosophy past and present. Repp’s study included an explicit analysis of the influences of reform pedagogical ideas which were obviously influential, but rarely explicitly reflected. On the contrary, within the hegemonic framework of friluftsliv as a distinct academic discipline, an understanding emerged throughout the 1980s and 90s that saw friluftsliv-vegledning as a unique way of pedagogical thinking (Tordsson 1993; Ydegaard 2005). This caused uncertainty and confusion among a new generation as to whether vegledning could be seen as a form of teaching! (cf. Bischoff ed. 1999). This confusion may also be linked to the ongoing strategy for defining friluftsliv-vegledning as a certification process, which gave priority especially to those educated at Norges Høgfjellsskole. However, it has not been an easy task to achieve a general acceptance of such an ‘expropriation’ of Norwegian culture. Besides, throughout the 1980s a children’s perspective to nature experience was kept alive and developed by (female) PE9 teacher educators in the many regional colleges of teacher education for pre- and elementary schools (Fjørtoft 1993, 2000; Braute and Bang 1994; Pedersen 1998a, b). Physical Education (PE) has been part of the national curriculum for teacher education, including friluftsliv, outdoor games, play and sport in the many colleges for teacher education all around Norway. 9

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Such dimensions were, for example, developed within the framework of interdisciplinary, but separate, half-year study programs on nature experiences and friluftsliv many places around the country; focusing children’s motor development and Bildung in/through friluftsliv by emphasizing play, experiential and discovery learning principles in various natural environments. Since the 1970s, higher education, and school in general, has been mandated by government to promote gender equality and to avoid a continuation and strengthening of stereotyped genderbiased understandings and practices. Co-education, where women and men/girls and boys are taught and trained together and get the ‘same’ education, was introduced. Up until the 1990s, showed the following predominant structure: mixed classes in PE, including friluftsliv, was in teacher education colleges (as in primary schools) mainly co-taught by male and female teachers. The socially constructed male hegemony in friluftsliv as a specialized academic subject however, has been much more resistant to change. No women on a national scale were hired as vegleders, teachers or researchers until the late 1990s, or beginning of the 21st century. Other developments have also been present. For example, at a regional college located far above the Arctic Circle, the deep changes in the local culture and in the use and understanding of nature became main perspectives when friluftsliv was developed into half-year study-program in the early 1980s (Pedersen 1998a). Through theory and practice the students were exposed to local, ‘premodern’ gatherers’ traditions of journeying and survival on land and sea, including knowledge, skills and world-views taught by Sami reindeer herders. In addition, the education included the hegemonic perspective of mountaineering as well as some of the more ‘sportified’, specialized and globalized outdoor cultures. This way one tried to give young people and becoming teachers support in their search for an identity in a rapidly modernizing society and help they build meaningful and balanced relations with nature and each other. Later these approaches, including the Sami tepee (lavvo) have been introduced, and become part of day-to-day school life all over the country. As a consequence, the current situation is characterized of a variety of programs, ideologies, frames of interpretations and options of practical implementations. Therefore, there are other narratives to be told and the many questions that these developments involve should be researched. History of friluftsliv in primary school Outdoor games, play, friluftsliv and skiing became influential in boys’ PE already at the beginning of the 20th century, inspired purely by national romanticism and polar explorations (Augestad 11

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2003). Girls’ PE took longer to start. During its initial stages, it was led by men, with content similar to male Ling-gymnastics and German ‘Turnen’. However, after Finnish-Swedish Elli Björkstén developed a unique form of what she called women’s gymnastics, this form of aesthetic movement-gymnastics to music, grew quickly. It was legitimated by modern medical science, which regarded women as being physically and psychologically different from men. So-called women’s gymnastics was however, a kind of ‘green gymnastics’. In addition, the contemporary continental expressive turn, associated with notions such as Lebensraum, Wandervögel, Ausdruckstanz, Modern Dance and improvisational teaching methods in movement education, inspired the development of (mostly girls’) PE in Norway already in the 1920s (Gurholt and Jenssen 2006, 2007). The new aesthetic gymnastics, expressive dance and aesthetic attitude to the exploration of nature, were according to Norway’s first female professor in pedagogy, Helga Eng (1918), seen to be bodily expressions important to the developing reform pedagogy and aesthetic education.10 Eng did not apply the concept friluftsliv however; it was taken into use by others. In a teacher’s handbook, titled Friluftslek (lek means play), friluftsliv was linked to outdoor sports, games and play that, with adaptations, could be made acceptable for girls’ PE (Hegna 1903).11 Friluftsliv, outdoor games and play were thus legitimated both by health, the need to build a new national identity, by aesthetic education, and by the new child-centred reform pedagogy. The PE curriculum was different for urban and rural areas but was regarded as being especially important to urban kids up until the end of the 1930s. Inspired by the reform pedagogic ideas of John Dewey, Norway received new school laws (1936) and its first national curriculum (Normalplanen 1939), which for the first time made PE compulsory for all children. This reform pedagogy represented a formidable criticism of, and challenge to, the hegemony of the authoritarian, objectifying and science-based contemporary PE programs and instruction, as the new ideas emphasized humanistic values and a holistic view of the human being. This criticism was met by a strong defence; however acceptance of reform was expressed, for example, through increased interest in children’s (free) outdoor play, outdoor games (friluftsleker), day-hikes (utflukter) and the development of temporary outdoor boarding schools (leirskoler). These initiatives explored ‘the child’s need’ for a more playful, less authoritarian and interdisciplinary type of teaching, aesthetic experiences, and discovery learning principles (Grosvold 1975; Repp 1977). For example, ‘terrenget underviser’ or the terrain is the best teacher12 became a motto for what was seen to be the best way to learn skiing, while the teacher’s role became that of facilitator. Eng (1875-1966) is explicitly inspired by the British philosopher of aesthetics and author John Ruskin (1819-1900) who became influential towards the end of the 19th century. 11 The book became very popular and was published in several editions, the latest in 1922. 10

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Through discovery learning in challenging and stimulating environments (‘terrain’), each kid would experience a direct bodily response to the qualities of the slopes and the snow-conditions. Through these corporeal experiences, the terrain was ‘absorbed’ by the skiing body and transformed into embodied knowledge of the landscape and bodily feelings for snow and flow. Thus, the skiing body and the landscape became one.13 To some degree, the reform pedagogical approach can be said to be more open to a less dualistic and sex-divided concept of humankind, and thus was more open to gender equity (Lauritzsen 1971). However, it wasn’t until the 1970s that gender equality became an explicit goal, and coeducation was introduced within PE, sports and friluftsliv in primary school as in higher education. The national curriculum of elementary schools, Mønsterplanen (1974) made friluftsliv a more explicit theme within PE. Its content was interdisciplinary and linked to nature and environmental preservation, but was still rather vague. Besides, teachers had a professional independence and freedom to choose among themes (Ministry of Church and Education 1974). However, research shows that friluftsliv in schools’ day-to-day praxis, despite its place in the national curriculum, was most often reduced to one or two day-hikes per year (Repp 1993); thus reproducing a kind of praxis that can be traced back to the first half of the 20th century. The idea of friluftsliv as a countercultural movement towards a greener society was in the mid 1980s also adopted within governmental white papers (Ministry of the Environment 1985, 1987). However, it was not until the school reforms of the 1990s that an ecologically based education in friluftsliv became an obligatory and more independent part of the national curricula from nurseries to teacher training, still within the frame of PE. It was meant to contribute to giving young people the ability to deal with growing environmental challenges, but also to secure friluftsliv as an important aspect of Norwegian everyday culture and national identity, including local and Sami traditions (the Ministry of Church, Education and Research 1997). In the late 1990s, friluftsliv seems to have attained a more relevant place in everyday school praxis, especially among the younger ages. All over the country, almost every kindergarten and all lower grade school classes, The notion might also be translated as ‘Nature teaches’ or the ‘landscape teaches’. According to unpublished interviews carried out by Gurholt and Jenssen (2004-2005) among PE teacher educators born 1920 to 1940, the concept was developed as an approach to teaching skiing to kids in the 1950s by Olav Grosvold. Then it was explicitly inspired by the new child-centred approach to PE which was inspired by the British ‘1944 Education Act’ and what throughout the 1950s was known in Norway as ‘English Gymnastics’ (Gurholt and Jenssen 2006, 2007). Today the concept is widely recognized, frequently used and taken for granted. However, the concept’s ideological roots can be traced way back in European philosophy of education. 13 My analysis here is influenced by the phenomenology of the body, developed by Merleau-Ponty (1945/1994) (see also Molander 1993). 12

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Norwegian Friluftsliv as Bildung

theoretically at least, spend whole days outdoors on a regular (weekly) basis. The topics taught are interdisciplinary and experience-based but a shift in paradigm seems to have occurred. Outdoor education (uteskole) and friluftsliv is now more and more seen as a counterweight to a variety of learning difficulties and unhealthy lifestyles connected to hyperactivity, inactivity, obesity, concentration problems, learning disability and social difficulties. So far, the empirical research of this development is to be found on the level of students’ master thesis and the theoretical bases underpinning it are fragmented. The vast changes in outdoor adventure education that, according to Bowles (1997), has occurred in the Anglo-American countries since the 1970s, has also become well known - and welcomed - in Norway. Especially in the upper grades, aspects of what Bowles calls the ‘risk-management ideology’ is about to expand. New technology, commercial interests, and globalized outdoor youth culture have caused concern among politicians and educators that young people are either turning their backs on traditional Sunday hikes on foot or skis, or, more generally, on nature; a consequence of which might be that traditional friluftsliv will no longer be passed on to the younger generations (Ministry of Environment 2000). Thus, the argument arises that in order to attract youth, the activities offered have to be ‘vertical’, adventurous, risky and extreme. The evidence is found in research that shows on a national scale that the way young people relate to nature and friluftsliv is changing in favour of new activities, attitudes and values (Odden 2006). However, qualitative analyses show that only a minority of the youth identify with the very risky (near death), ‘vertical’ and extreme approach (Gurholt 2005; Vigane 2007), indicating a complexity of contradicting processes going on at the same time. To receive a more nuanced and theoretically based understanding, and reach behind the often emotional, ideological and polarised ‘either-or’ debates, contextualized and qualitative analyses are needed. It is essential to research what notions like risk, adventure, extreme, local, global, traditional, modern, masculine, feminine etc. actually mean, and might mean, how they are changing and what kind of praxis they relate to, within different processes of Bildung in contemporary (European) societies (cf. Becker 2003a; Gustavsson 2001). Friluftsliv – closely related to European philosophical trends While friluftsliv in the mountains around the turn of the century was tourism for the well-todo, friluftsliv as mass recreation and education belongs to the modern industrialised societies. The clear limits between the urban and rural forms of friluftsliv, which could be found in early modernity, are brought down and activities and rambling that were linked to subsistence 14

Norwegian Friluftsliv as Bildung

have been transformed to recreation and sport. Informal upbringing and Bildung based on the pedagogy of the grandfathers - and most likely also of the grandmothers - in less urbanized societies accustomed people to constantly finding flexible solutions to practical challenges. The institutionalisation of friluftsliv as a discipline in the school system means however, that groups of experts are forming where people used to be autodidactic generalists. Knowledge, skills and equipment become standardised and specialized. Despite vegledning and discoverylearning principles, might one who has been through a formal training scheme be more likely to be concerned with doing things correctly. Thus the former flexible and experiential approach which was sensitive to the requirements of concrete situations and contexts may have lost its hold. Therefore research that can illuminate the interplay of informal and formal processes of Bildung – of both schooling and education - in/through friluftsliv is needed. One hypothesis might be that despite the ongoing societal change and the institutionalizing of friluftsliv within the Norwegian school system, that informal Bildung in Nature with families and friend groups still are of a specific grounding significance. The title of this chapter combines a cultural mix of concepts which intends to draw the readers’ attention to the fact that writing about one’s native culture in a different language - in English, is an interpretative and comparative endeavour that activates a multitude of possible interpretational frameworks and related options of (mis)understandings. As an author, one tries to take into account the knowledge and ideas one has about ‘the others’ – the potential readers. Thus, this approach also challenges and illuminates the author’s taken-for-granted native cultural presuppositions and may in itself be a contribution to the main ideas of the ‘European Institute’; to enhance a comparative European perspective on outdoor adventure education and experiential learning, and to establish a body of knowledge on European traditions and trends (cf. Becker 2003b). One idea underpinning this chapter has been that only by researching and bringing different ideologies, practices and contexts into words and dialogue, can one come to a deeper understanding of cultural similarities and variations, of continuity and change, and what might be seen as a good way of Bildung, for whom and for what reasons. Another understanding evolving from this and related analyses, (Gurholt in press) is that ideas and praxis that are seen to be uniquely Norwegian may very well have their origin in a different cultural space and place. Since the Enlightenment, European continental ideas of aesthetic experiences of and Bildung in/through Nature have travelled far, and thoroughly influenced Norwegian as well as other western cultures. References 15

Norwegian Friluftsliv as Bildung

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