Coping with declining income opportunities in Norwegian rural households

Abstract

Deindustrialization as well as a dramatic decrease of the labour needed in food production characterise the development on the Norwegian countryside the recent decades. This analysis examines how rural households in danger of losing income opportunities develop new income strategies in remote Norwegian areas. The regional restructuring processes have brought rural households different possibilities of making a living. The analysis takes its principal starting points in four strategic positions of rural households. They are with and without landholdings, and close and remote from urban areas. The analysis in the article puts focus on households in the most remote areas of rural Norway. I show that the households in Norwegian rural districts have maintained their traditional way of coping with the declining economic opportunities by exploiting the specific Norwegian characteristics of rural areas: the common access to land and marine resources. This kind of income obtaining is supplied by incomes from the local labour market. These strategies have their origin in the rural system of socialising which encourages the rural people to take care of their inheritance and qualify for the rural labour market. Furthermore some households without access to land areas develop several business activities that are being shared among the household members.

Keywords

• declining income opportunities
• household strategies
• sparsely populated areas
• access to natural resources