Oslo Area - About Fairy Tale Forests

In the beginning of the current millennium, the Nature Conservation Society for the Oslo area (NOA) conducted a project of mapping the regrettably small remainders of nature-near forest in the area. A little particular about this project was, that areas were selected not only based on the occurrence of old trees and rare species. In parallel, it was attempted to explicitly define the physical correlates of what makes up our experience of a "beautiful", "picturesque", "inspiring", "exciting", "adventurous" or "fairy-tale-like" forest. For these forests, NOA coined the term "Eventyrskog". (Skog = forest; the norwegian "eventyr" can mean both "fairy tale" and "adventure".)

In the summer and fall of 2006, I was involved in this project, and during the following years, I have photographed in some of these forests.

The images shown are taken in the areas as mentioned. However, they are not (always) "typical" or "representative" for the respective area. You'll find such images on NOA's web site, in downloadable folders with maps and informative text about the single areas (in Norwegian). Furthermore, the pick of areas I have been able to cover is very limited, and biased by the geographical position of my then residence near Lillomarka.

I am happy to see that one of the areas represented here (Pershusfjellet) has been "upgraded" from "Fairy Tale Forest" to "Nature Reserve" while I was shooting there; and a second one (Gaupesteinmarka) has been protected (2011) by initiative of the owners, after decades of work by Stein Kristian Martinsen.

Go to Album

NOA, Naturvernforbundet i Oslo og Akershus: naturvernforbundet.no/noa/

Stein's site: gaupestein.no