Økt kunnskap om felles norsk-svensk seterkultur - vår felles immaterielle kulturarv

The summer farm culture is unique intangible cultural heritage that is in the process of disappearing. The Nordic summer farming (pastoralism systems) is still practised in Norway's and Sweden's mountain and forest areas, but the number of summer farms in operation has fallen dramatically in recent times.

The aim of this project was to strengthen and acknowledge Nordic summer farming to safeguard traditions that are today being threatened to disappear. The associations "Norsk Seterkultur" and "Förbundet svensk fäbodkultur och utmarksbruk" have worked together in this project to recognize the summer farm culture and to get it inscribed on UNESCO's representative list of intangible cultural heritage.

We have arranged dialogue meetings, workshops, and study trips in both countries in order to increase the knowledge about the summer farming. We have developed mutual and transboundary meeting places to contribute to the development of networks and knowledge exchange between summer farmers. This project with various activities was a preliminary project to a joint UNESCO application. In this process we wanted, together with the summer farm and specialist communities in both countries, to map and highlight the summer farm culture, as well as mobilize and motivate cooperation and competence development in order to preserve and further develop different types of summer farm environments. Together with the summer farm practitioners, we had to find out which measures are necessary to be able to preserve the summer farm operation in the future, and work to make it possible.

We have documented this summer farm culture in both countries in a documentary film and are developing a digital knowledgebank. Communication of the results have been done through different channels and we have increased awareness in both countries. We have prepared a nomination to UNESCO's Representative List for Intangible Cultural Heritage that has been approved by the national governments of both countries (March 2023) and is now under process by UNESCO. We have also developed course material for a summer farm course that is publicly accessible.