The course discusses rural issues and studies the spatial consequences - settlement structure, place, city, buildings - of the Norwegian fishing industry. We map the settlement structure today, (synchronously) and historically (diachron). We are particularly interested in how Norwegian fishing villages can be renewed with the help of technology in the modern fleet, in further processing on land and with the help of new settlements that explore a modern rural way of life.

The study has in previous courses been conducted in the central areas for winter cod fishing; Senja, Lofoten, Vesterålen. Parts of these studies are available at www.coastalmapping.no and an exhibition is shown in the AHO gallery in January, February and March 2021.

In the autumn of 2020, we started studies of fishing villages on the Finnmark coast and this study will continue in the autumn of 2021.

As in the previous courses, emphasis is placed on describing the situation today and discussing development opportunities. Available statistics and visual material are processed using GIS, map representations and other techniques.

The autumn of 2021 is the sixth specialization course that addresses the spatial consequences of the Norwegian fishing industry on land. The goal of the work is now to create a new exhibition based on the Finnmark studies and collect the material for a book publication.

If the Korona situation allows it, the course will conduct an excursion to the Finnmark coast.

Many students at AHO have participated in the work during these six semesters and we recommend contacting some of them to gain knowledge about the course.

Additional information

There are different approaches to this course:

In the autumn of 2019, Karl Otto Ellefsen together with Tarald Lundevall published the book «North Atlantic Coast - A Monography of Place» at PAX publishing house. The book discusses the consequences of the Norwegian fishing industry on land - in this case the cod fisheries - how the industry shapes and changes places and how it changes the settlement pattern.

For decades, almost all interest in architecture and urbanism has been directed towards the city. This has led to a neglect of observing changes in rural areas. AHO's work on the northern Norwegian coast can be seen as part of what is internationally called «rural studies». Another AHO project that AHO is carrying out together with CAFA (Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing) is the research project Urbanization of Rural China / Countryside Construction.

UL works to refine the use of GIS tools for both spatial discussions of settlement patterns, commercial activity and cultural conditions. At the same time, the intention is now to resume our morphological studies from the 1980s and 1990s and use GIS tools in these studies