Sensing morally evocative spaces

Abstract

The Norwegian outfields make up convoluted more-than-human public spaces. Throughout its nation-building process, being an outdoor culture combining hikers, trekkers, and skiers has been inscribed into the national identity of Norway. Facilitated by allemannsretten (the right to roam), the recreational leisure use of the outfields has however increased and diversified steadily during recent decades. The contestations that have accompanied the manifold and growing use of allemannsretten have unveiled that the obligation to utilise the right ‘with consideration and due care’ implies responsibilities that are altogether unclear. In this chapter, Brynhild Granås approaches the moral practices of outdoor people through an embodied exploration of the knowing–caring nexus based on autoethnographic engagements with her own lifelong practising of a mobile outdoor life in Arctic Norway. By describing how proximity, in terms of corporeal engagements with a landscape, incites learning and energises commitment and care, the chapter suggests that landscapes grow upon us as relatable moral substances through encounters that connect to and are invigorated by the morally evocative spaces of outdoor lives. The perspective takes us beyond historical and geographical dichotomies through investigations of how care and commitment are remoulded by more-than-human relational ethical practices.