Gender, Class and Outdoor Traditions in the UK and Norway

This paper exams the largely under-researched spheres of educational and adventurous activities occurring in 'nature' in the UK and Norway. Whilst the broad areas of outdoor adventure education, friluftsliv (Norwegian open air life/life in nature) and nature-based sports are, to varying degrees, considered to be culturally, socially and environmentally significant in these respective countries, limited analyses have been undertaken from socio-historical perspectives, and issues relating to gender largely ignored. In terms of contextual analyses, 'nature' as a special arena for gendered contradictions and conflict is omitted from much sport and educational feminist discourse. This paper highlights the interrelationships between and co-influences upon nature-based sports/educational cultures in the two countries until the early 1980s in light of gendered as well as classed outdoor traditions. The complexity of, and differences between, historical influences in the UK and Norway are illuminated. A number of material and social factors are shown to have shaped the development of the outdoor traditions in diverse ways in the two countries. A marked similarity across this period, however, was the persistent, if changing, male hegemony within and between the traditions. From the late 19th century the British aristocracy influenced outdoor education in the UK whilst playfully engaging with the Norwegian 'wilderness'. In the last quarter of the 20th century the 'deep ecology' of Norwegian (male) philosophers began to influence the British discourses within the outdoor traditions.