New Perspectives on People and Forests

New Perspectives on People and Forests

WORLD FORESTS Series Editors

MATTI PALO PhD, Independent Scientist, Finland, Affiliated Professor CATIE, Costa Rica

JUSSI UUSIVUORI Finnish Forest Research Institute METLA, Finland Advisory Board Janaki Alavalapati, University of Florida, USA Joseph Buongiorno, University of Wisconsin, USA Jose Campos, CATIE, Costa Rica Sashi Kant, University of Toronto, Canada Maxim Lobovikov, FAO/Forestry Department, Rome Misa Masuda, University of Tsukuba Roger Sedjo, Resources for the Future, USA Brent Sohngen, Ohio State University, USA Yaoqi Zhang, Auburn University, USA World Forests Description As forests stay high on the global political agenda, and forest-related industries diversify, cutting edge research into the issues facing forests has become more and more transdisciplinary. With this is mind, Springer’s World Forests series has been established to provide a key forum for research-based syntheses of globally relevant issues on the interrelations between forests, society and the environment. The series is intended for a wide range of readers including national and international entities concerned with forest, environmental and related policy issues; advanced students and researchers; business professionals, non-governmental ­organizations and the environmental and economic media. Volumes published in the series will include both multidisciplinary studies with a broad range of coverage, as well as more focused in-depth analyses of a particular issue in the forest and related sectors. Themes range from globalization processes and international policies to comparative analyses of regions and countries.

For other titles published in this series, go to www.springer.com/series/6679

Eva Ritter • Dainis Dauksta Editors

New Perspectives on People and Forests

Editors Eva Ritter Department of Civil Engineering Aalborg University Sohngaardsholmsvej 57 9000 Aalborg Denmark [email protected]

Dainis Dauksta Cefn Coch Builth Wells Powys Wales LD2 3PR UK [email protected]

ISSN 1566-0427 e-ISSN 1566-0427 ISBN 978-94-007-1149-5 e-ISBN 978-94-007-1150-1 DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1150-1 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2011926689 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written ­permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

Preface

The idea for this book emerged during a conference for forest policies and ­economics in Padua, Italy, where Dainis and I met for the first time in 2005. While we enjoyed the Italian hospitality, we both found the human aspect lacking in most of the conference talks. Can numbers really explain everything in the relationship between people and forests, and can forest policy help us realise our dependency on forests? We were tempted to look back to the roots of society, cultural evolution and the role which forests and trees have played in the life of people throughout history. We were wondering about ancient values that may have become part of our subconsciousness, but that still influence our relationship to forests and the landscapes they grow within. We discussed how we could collect and combine the knowledge and views from fields other than forestry in order to cast a different light on our relationship with forests. Much later, on a train journey through North Germany, I overheard the conversation of two passengers. While the sandy heathland with its light birch groves passed by the window of our compartment, the woman sighed and said how much this landscape still meant home to her, although she had been married happily in south Germany for more than 30 years. For the other passenger the rather flat topography with the poor soils, uncultivated meadows and scattered trees was obviously much less attractive, if not boring. Maybe he came from the Central German Uplands with their forested mountain ranges and fertile valleys, or he was used to the dark spruce stands in the Black Forest. What is it that makes us choose our favourite landscape – the one we feel most connected to? Apparently, the perception of landscapes is based on more than pure visual experience. It is also formed by cultural links, livelihood and spiritual and emotional bonds. Like forests, landscapes represent a variety of values that let different people perceive the same landscape differently. Many of these values are connected to or supported by the presence – or absence – of trees and forests. Understanding our relationship to forests may therefore help us reconsider our place in landscapes. In writing this book, we wished to reveal the variety of human-forest relationships from the very beginning of human impact on forests to the importance of present forest functions and values in our lives today. Forests and trees have been essential in the history of European societies. They have contributed to the v

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d­ evelopment of civilization not only by being an important natural resource, but also by challenging our understanding of the place of humans in nature. Moreover, the use of trees has had a strong influence on the development of European landscapes. When exploring our relationship to trees and forests, we should always bear in mind the landscapes which form the stage for this story. Unfortunately, the human-forest relationship has very often resulted in the destruction of forests. The loss of forests from European landscapes has not only been a problem in terms of environmental quality and the supply of resources in the course of history. It has also resulted in the loss of cultural and spiritual values and life quality bound to the presence of trees and forests. However, we will also show examples of how forest exploitation has lead to the first initiatives of forest protection. We wish to outline the role of trees and forests in human culture, a role which is both practical and symbolic. The focus of the book is on the European region, but its general idea could be transferred to many other forest region of the world. Forests have been a natural resource for many essential products in the daily life of human beings. Without wood, and the fire generated from wood, technological development would have been almost unthinkable; the axe with its wooden handle was one of the first tools to pave the way for the modern human being. Agriculture and the plough followed and marked the great step that took mankind from huntergatherer cultures to agricultural societies. With the development of social hierarchy, forests came to represent places of authority, often banned for the common man, but owned and exploited by the rich or royal. Furthermore, forests also meant power. Wood has been the material for the ships in which nations explored and conquered the world and fought great wars; those who had access to forests, hence, wood, could build ships, conduct wars and build empires. European naval powers such as the Dutch and the English were lacking enough of their own forest resources for shipbuilding very early on in their development – they had to go east to Scandinavia and Baltic States, especially for masts. The English later got timber from the east coast of America. This link has been so strong that the word for wood and forest is interchangeable in many languages. Even industrialisation, a development that seemed to have turned people away from nature, depended in the beginning on forests for fire wood and charcoal production for the many furnaces and machines. Today, modern society is built upon buried forests of another era, as coal and other fossil fuels are energy source and base material for most modern products. Most of these links are well known to us. However, there is also another strong link between people and forests. It can be found in the symbolic role that trees and forests have had through human history. Forests have a central place in our spiritual relationship with nature. Trees have been worshipped in many religions. The tree of life and the tree of knowledge are not only known in Christianity. The oak is just one example of a tree species that is central in many religions and the national symbol of different countries worldwide. Many nations identify themselves with forests and the culture and history related to them. Unfortunately, this has sometimes been exploited by extreme national romantic political movements to justify nationalistic ideas and actions. However, it illustrates the strength that these rather

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intangible forest values can have in our lives. As a symbolic place, forests represent the forbidden or the wild, and people living in forests are considered as being ­different. This perception of forests and their inhabitants is central in many legends and myths. Furthermore, forests and trees have inspired artists through history. As forest cover declined and trees became scarce through overexploitation, artists and writers increasingly turned their gaze on the natural world and expressed societal angst through the medium of Romanticism. Last but not least, our fascination of trees may be related to their size, age and form: their upright position with branches that reach out like arms. The multiple links between people and forests may have changed through time, but there is also a continuous validity of certain values. Some of the mentioned subjects have already been described in depth in other books, while others are little represented in literature or not discussed from the point of view which is our major concern. While forest resources are typically managed under scientific, economic, political and ecological regimes, in this book forests are also viewed within cultural contexts; through spiritual, philosophical, metaphorical and national “filters”. We do not claim to come anywhere near covering all perceptions of the forest, and we cannot describe the whole range of links that exist between people, forest and landscapes. However, we hope to reveal some new aspects and help our readers think in a different manner about forests and rediscover the fundamental values and ­functions that forests have in our lives. The book is divided into four parts that are dealing with the introduction to the topic (Chaps. 1–3), forest use and forest ownership (Chaps. 4–7), forest perception and symbolic values of forests and trees (Chaps. 8–12) and the development of forest landscapes (Chaps. 13 and 14). The last part (Chap. 15) is the conclusion of the book. The Chapter 1 provides examples of the early significance of wood and trees in human culture and religion, the use of forest symbols for national identification and the exploitation and alteration of forests in Europe. It gives an introduction to the influence of philosophical views, e.g., during the Age of Enlightenment and Romanticism, on our attitude towards forests. The Chapter 2 describes the changing impact of human activity on forests. The interactions between people and forests can be traced back to early human settlements. First mimicking natural processes, human impact gradually changed towards the management and even destruction of forests. From being interwoven with the rhythm of nature, people became more and more a disturbing factor, profoundly changing natural forest ecosystems and the landscapes in which they are located. Against a common understanding of forests as the last wild places and sites of untouched nature, almost all forests in Europe have at some point been subject to human activities. They may even be human creations using introduced tree species, e.g., strategic or industrial timber plantations, parklands and arboreta. In Chap. 3, people’s affinity towards forests and nature is discussed from a philosophical point of view. During the Age of Enlightenment, the dominating attitude was to bring order in nature, with forests being considered as the last realms of chaos and disorder. This was criticised by later philosophers who wanted to strengthen the emotional and spiritual link

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between forests and human beings. The chapter looks at the view of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Nietzsche as two critics of the ideas of modernity. The second part of the book deals with forest use and forest functions in the daily life of people. This is closely linked to the question of ownership which determines many rules and rights of forest use. Examples given in the four chapters reach from medieval times to recent developments in forest planning and management. They illustrate how people have made or make use of forests as a natural resource and how this affects the development of forests, for example by leading to overexploitation or protection. This development can be seen in the history of hunting, as shown for Medieval England in Chap. 4. The recreational activity of the aristocratic class contributed in many countries to the protection of forest areas which elsewhere suffered from overexploitation. This chapter also illustrates how closely the use of forests is bound to the question of ownership. While Royal forests were forbidden terrain for the simple peasant, other woodlands were open for common use; indeed, the English word “forest” historically implied aristocratic ownership. Today, different rules can be found in private compared to state-owned forests. However, ownership does not only affect the activities that are allowed for people in a forest. It also affects the values and attitudes that people have to forests. This may result in different management strategies and finally affect the development of a landscape, for example increasing forest fragmentation. The history of forests as commons and the modern development in forest ownership towards small-scale forestry and private forest owners with often urban background are discussed in Chaps. 5 and 6, respectively. Today, the recreational function of forests is experiencing a renaissance, but now for the whole population rather than the aristocratic few. With the development of multifunctional forestry, new forest functions have been introduced. In Chap. 7, the example of Denmark is used to illustrate how the recreational use has become a major economic and health aspect in the planning of new forests. The third part of the book is focussed on more intangible values, theories and philosophies, in other words on non-productive forest values. It illustrates the symbolic function of forests and trees and how trees influence our sense of belonging and identity. The development of the role of wooden posts, from utilitarian objects to symbolic pillars, and even to their petrified forms of the Classical column (a symbol of power), is described in Chap. 8. It also elaborates the meaning of the thunder gods and their link to oak trees and the sacred pillar as a metaphor, using archaeological, iconographic, etymological and written evidence. Another good example for the use of trees and forests as metaphors can be found in the art of painting. Landscape painting emerged relatively late in history. Although the first recorded description of a painting as a “landscape” can be dated back to the sixteenth century, trees and forests placed in symbolic landscapes could already be found in earlier pieces, often in connection with classical mythology or religious motives. In Chap. 9, different aspects of landscape paintings, including factual and symbolic landscapes, are described by giving examples from various times. The symbolism of trees and forests in paintings and their interpretation is analysed and contextualised. In the following two chapters, the role of forests as place for the

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identity of people is explored. Chapter 10 deals with changing historical and ­geographical perceptions of forests as space and the understanding of forests as places apart and different from our everyday lives. Forests may be regarded as magical places or places of danger. Their inhabitants have often developed a different way of life and cultural system than their neighbouring agricultural societies. It is shown how the cultural understanding of forest has changed relatively little over time, in contrast to many production-oriented forest values. The contribution of forests and their rich materiality to the development of identities is elaborated in Chap. 11. This includes aspects of sounds, light and smells. The discussion reaches from global identity, considering Earth as our home planet, to regional and individual senses of identity and their cultural and political role. Chapter 12 gives a theoretical approach to the terms landscape and forest. The terms are multi-layered, and their meaning has changed through time, almost like the development of landscapes that can be observed in the physical world. Essentially, the use of these terms is still highly dependent on the individual context. A short introduction to their etymology is given together with examples of their use in a present context. Finally, in the fourth part of the book, changes of forest landscapes are described and related to the use of forests and trees. In the history of agricultural societies, forests occupy a central role in many European countries. Chapter 13 is about the development of a landscape related to changes in land-use, population density, and the use of tree resources in a rural area in south-east Sweden. It illustrates how the presence and form of trees and forests in landscapes are highly dependent on the value and benefit which they have in the life of people. In Chap. 14, visual characteristics of forests landscapes in Europe are identified in order to give the reader an idea of the diversity of forest landscapes, but also their general similarities. From densely forested landscapes to open agricultural lands with few wooded landscape elements, the importance of tree-related land use as a landscape forming factor is discussed. Based on landscape attributes such as complexity, contrast, and the degree of openness, different forest landscape types are described. The aim is to illustrate how the cultural use of forests has formed the visual appearance of landscapes; a knowledge that should be used in future ­landscape actions. The book ends on a concluding note, summarizing the major points of the ­different chapters with focus on the changes that have occurred in the relationships between people and forests through time and the contrasts and contradictions that can be found in the definition and understanding of forest and landscapes. It gives perspectives on future developments regarding our use of forests and the role of non-productive functions in our relationship with forests. Aalborg, December 2010

Eva Ritter



Contents

Part I   1 Introduction – The Crooked Timber of Humanity............................... Dainis Dauksta

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  2 Forests in Landscapes – The Myth of Untouched Wilderness............. Eva Ritter

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  3 Overcoming Physicophobia – Forests as the Sacred Source of Our Human Origins............................................................................ Roy Jackson

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Part II   4 Royal Forests – Hunting and Other Forest Use in Medieval England................................................................................ Della Hooke

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  5 Forests as Commons – Changing Traditions and Governance in Europe...................................................................... Christopher Short

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  6 New Forest Owners – Small-Scale Forestry and Changes in Forest Ownership................................................................................. Áine Ní Dhubháin

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  7 Forests and Recreation – New Functions of Afforestation as Seen in Denmark................................................................................. Carla K. Smink

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Contents

Part III   8 From Post to Pillar – The Development and Persistence of an Arboreal Metaphor........................................................................ Dainis Dauksta

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  9 Landscape Painting and the Forest – The Influence of Cultural Factors in the Depiction of Trees and Forests................... 119 Dainis Dauksta 10 Space and Place – Popular Perceptions of Forests................................ 139 Carl J. Griffin 11 Materiality and Identity – Forests, Trees and Senses of Belonging.......................................................................... 159 Owain Jones 12 Definitions and Concepts – The Etymology and Use of the Terms Forest and Landscape....................................................... 179 Kirsten Krogh Hansen and Hanna Byskov Ovesen Part IV 13 Tree Use and Landscape Changes – Development of a Woodland Area in Sweden............................................................... 193 Mårten Aronsson and Eva Ritter 14 Forest Landscapes in Europe – Visual Characteristics and the Role of Arboriculture................................................................. 211 Eva Ritter Part V 15 Conclusion – Towards a Symbiotic Relationship.................................. 233 Eva Ritter and Dainis Dauksta Index.................................................................................................................. 241

About the Authors

Mårten Aronsson is Expert in Ecology at the Swedish Forest Agency. His work includes topics like plant ecology, landscape history and ecology, the management of natural and cultural values in agriculture and forest landscapes. He has published two books, a number of articles and has written a television manuscript. Mårten has worked at the Universities of Lund and Uppsala, the Swedish Board of Agriculture, the National Heritage Board, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the Swedish Farmers Union and the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC). During his spare time, he works with the use of natural and cultural values of landscape as a tool for rural development. Dainis Dauksta first trained as a sculptor, completing commissions for the National Museum of Wales and various churches throughout Britain. Simultaneously he worked as freelance forester and gained his MSc in Forest Industries Technology at Bangor University. He specialises in wood science and the use of UK grown softwoods in the built environment. Project work has included the design of laminating processes for window manufacture using radio frequency curing, design and manufacture of prototype stress-laminated panels with Welsh School of Architecture, and he has worked on many historical building restoration projects. He lectures occasionally at the City & Guilds London Art School and sometimes writes for the Forestry Journal. Carl J. Griffin is a Lecturer in Human Geography at Queen’s University, Belfast. He trained as a historical geographer at the University of Bristol and held post-doctoral positions at the universities of Bristol, Southampton and Oxford. His research embraces studies of popular protest as well as labour regulation and cultures of unemployment (funded by the British Academy), human-environment interactions and the history of political economy. He has published papers in, amongst other places, Cultural Geographies, Rural History, International Review of Social History, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, and Past and Present. His examination of the Swing quasi-insurrection of the early 1830s (The Rural War: Captain Swing and the Politics of Protest) will be published by Manchester University Press in 2011.

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About the Authors

Kirsten Krogh Hansen obtained her MSc in Integrative Geography from the Department of Development and Planning at Aalborg University. Her research is multidisciplinary with focus on landscape ecology and the management of nature and landscape. She is particularly interested in the sustainable balance between recreation and landscape protection. Kirsten has worked with the implementation of the first national park in Denmark. She is currently employed as a part-time lecturer at Aalborg University and teaches at the Department of Development and Planning as well as the Department of Health Science and Technology. Della Hooke (PhD, FSA) is a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social sciences at the University of Birmingham. She was formerly a Research Fellow at Birmingham and subsequently a Senior Lecturer at Cheltenham College of Higher Education (now the University of Gloucestershire). She has also worked as a free-lance consultant in Historical Landscapes for many years. Della has published numerous books on early medieval landscape history and on pre-Conquest charters as sources of landscape evidence; her most recent book is Trees in AngloSaxon England (Boydell Press 2010). Her interests cover all periods, however, and she was commissioned by English Heritage to write the West Midlands volume of their England’s Landscape series (HarperCollins/English Heritage 2006). Roy Jackson is currently Senior Lecturer in Religion, Philosophy and Ethics at the University of Gloucestershire. He has previously lectured in Philosophy and Religion at various universities, including Kent, Durham, and King’s College London. He has a doctorate from the University of Kent and a PGCE from Roehampton University. He specialises in Philosophy of Religion, Nietzsche, and contemporary Islamic thought in relation to ethics, philosophy and politics, and he has written a number of books on Nietzsche, Plato, Philosophy of Religion and on Islam. More recently he has published Fifty Key Figures in Islam (Routledge 2006), Nietzsche and Islam (Routledge 2007), Mawdudi and Political Islam (Routledge 2010) and Nietzsche: Key Ideas (Hodder 2010). Owain Jones has a MA, MSc and PhD in geography. Since completing his PhD at the University of Bristol, he has worked as a post-doctoral researcher on various projects funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council while, working at the University of Bristol, the University of Exeter and the University of the West of England. His research interests include landscape, nature, place, memory and nature-society relations. He has published numerous academic articles in peer-reviewed journals, edited books and other ­outlets. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the University of the West of England, Dept. of Geography, Countryside and Community Research Institute. Áine Ní Dhubháin is a Senior Lecturer in Forestry in the School of Agriculture, Food Science and Veterinary Medicine at University College Dublin, Ireland. She has been involved in a wide range of international and national research projects over the last 20 years, covering topics such as forestry and rural development; the socio-economic impacts of forestry; characteristics of Irish farm forest owners as well as research into low-impact silvicultural systems. She has recently been appointed to the editorial board of Small Scale Forestry.

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Hanna Byskov Ovesen obtained her MSc in Integrativ Geography from the Department of Development and Planning at Aalborg University. Her research is multidisciplinary working with land use and landscape planning. She is particularly interested in landscape analysis and planning and has also previously worked with the Danish National Parks. Since finishing her degree, Hanna has developed her project management skills, and she now counts this as one of her major research interests. Eva Ritter has lived, studied and worked in several European countries. Her research interests comprise biogeochemistry of forest ecosystems, landscape ecology and human-landscape relationships. Trained as a geoecologist (MSc) at Bayreuth University, Germany, Eva received her PhD in Forest Ecology from Forest & Landscape, Denmark (now part of the University of Copenhagen). She had a Lecturer position at the Agricultural University of Iceland, followed by a Leverhulme Fellowship at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. Today, she is a Lecturer in Physical Geography at Aalborg University, Denmark. In addition to papers in international journals, her publications include contributions to scientific books. Christopher Short is a Senior Research Fellow in the Countryside & Community Research Institute at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. His background is in geography and natural resource management which combines a social and ecological approach, especially in the areas of collaborative and multi-objective land management. He is a recognised researcher in the areas of common property and collective action, most especially within a UK context concerning common land. Over the past decade, he has informed the governance of these legally complex and diverse areas through new legislation and wider discussions. He has hosted over ten national and international conferences, mainly to inform and encourage discussions between academics, policy makers and local resource managers. He has published over 20 research reports and articles in this area. Carla K. Smink (MBA, PhD) is Senior Lecturer at Aalborg University, Department of Development and Planning, Section for Technology, Environment and Society. Carla is educated as an Environmental Geographer from Nijmegen University in the Netherlands and has a MBA in Environmental Business Administration from Twente University in the Netherlands. As an environmental geographer, Carla’s main interests are concerned with the interaction between nature and human activities.



Contributors

Mårten Aronsson Swedish Forest Agency, 55183 Jönköping, Sweden [email protected] Dainis Dauksta Cefn Coch, Builth Wells, Powys, Wales LD2 3PR, UK [email protected] Carl J. Griffin School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, UK [email protected] Kirsten Krogh Hansen Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University, Fibigerstraede 13, 9220 Aalborg East, Denmark [email protected] Della Hooke University of Birmingham, 91 Oakfield Road, Selly Park, B29 7HL Birmingham, UK [email protected] Roy Jackson Department of Humanities, University of Gloucestershire, Swindon Road, GL50 4AZ, Cheltenham, UK [email protected] Owain Jones Countryside and Community Research Institute, University of Gloucestershire, Oxstalls Campus, Oxstalls Lane, Langlevens, Gloucester, UK [email protected]

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Contributors

Áine Ní Dhubháin Agriculture and Food Science Centre, School of Agriculture, Food Science and Veterinary Medicine, UCD Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland [email protected] Hanna Byskov Ovesen Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University, Fibigerstraede 13, 9220 Aalborg East, Denmark [email protected] Eva Ritter Department of Civil Engineering, Aalborg University, Sohngaardsholmsvej 57, 9000 Aalborg, Denmark [email protected] Christopher Short Countryside and Community Research Institute, University of Gloucestershire, Oxstalls Campus, Oxstalls Lane, Longlevens, Gloucester, UK [email protected] Carla K. Smink Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University, Fibigerstraede 13, 9220 Aalborg East, Denmark [email protected]

Part I

Chapter 1

Introduction – The Crooked Timber of Humanity Dainis Dauksta

A Russian proverb tells us: He who looks backwards to history is blind in one eye but he who looks only forward is blind in both eyes (Anon)

It is impossible to look objectively at European society’s relationship to the ­forest without first examining the history of ideas which have influenced our perception of nature, landscape and the forest. Some of those ideas are somewhat discomforting because, of course, the history of our interaction with the forest reflects human nature. The instinct to kill drives our intimacy with nature according to art historian Kenneth Clark (Clark 1949). The hunter-gatherer closely observes nature and her cycles; he sees nature as saturated with moral, mystical and mythical significance (Green 2007). The hunter is focused upon the flora, fauna and condition of his native environment and is acutely aware of changes caused by wind and fire in the forest; sunlit openings promote fresh growth and regeneration thus attracting the browsing animals he hunts. One word sums up man’s own action on the forest. That word is disturbance, and man employed fire as his principal agent of disturbance in three great phases; as hunter-gatherer, as agriculturalist and ultimately as industrialist (Williams 2003). Fire, especially at forest-grassland edges, created favourable environments for maximising rewards (Williams 2003). What is more, utilising fire in the cooking of food increased metabolic efficiency allowing man to develop with smaller digestive organs and larger brains than his primate cousins (Wrangham 2009). Did early man first encounter cooked food by chance whilst foraging in the wake of forest fires? If so, then that moment changed the course of human history. Fire, the stone axe and language were the main catalysts for man’s evolutionary progress (Williams 2003). According to German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder language, self-awareness and capacity for reflection ­separated us from D. Dauksta (*) Cefn Coch, Builth Wells, Powys, Wales LD2 3PR, UK e-mail: [email protected] E. Ritter and D. Dauksta (eds.), New Perspectives on People and Forests, World Forests 9, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1150-1_1, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

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a­ nimals; man can explore possibilities and decide between alternatives. Herder placed the use of metaphor as central to language and human consciousness (Barnard 2003), and metaphorical imagery has embedded fire and axe deep within mythology. Painter Piero Di Cosimo’s The Forest Fire c. 1500 symbolically describes man’s discovery of fire through the accidental rubbing together of branches (Clark 1949). He also suggests the dawn of agriculture by juxtaposing images of fleeing wild animals, burning forest, domesticated animals and man. Agriculture emerged through observation, mimicry and modification of nature’s processes with the simple act of burning wood at the heart of change. Fire is sacred, whether terrestrial or celestial, and plays a major role in many rituals and religions. Even the domestic hearth fire has been venerated and especially so by the Indians, Slavs, Ossetes, Balts and Germans (West 2007). Perpetual sacred fires were kept burning at shrines in Italy, Lithuania and Russia (Frazer 1922). The hand-axe is a beautiful, fundamental, iconic object. As a tool for cutting wood and meat it was manufactured throughout the 1.5 million years of the Acheulian period. Until the industrial age the hand-axe was the most geographically scattered object in the world (MacGregor 2010b). The axe was also one of man’s most important symbolic ritual objects, connected with sun worship, the oak, sky deities and the European thunder gods such as Thor, Donar, Jupiter (Gelling and Ellis-Davidson 1969) and also Perkons, Perun and Taranis. Fire was said to be lodged within oaks by Perkons/Perun (West 2007). The axe as thunderweapon was itself an object of worship and veneration. Stone axes were sometimes called “thunderstones” and highly decorated axes in silver, bronze and amber have been used as religious ornaments (Gelling and Ellis-Davidson 1969). Highly polished axes made of jade from a particular mountain top in Northern Italy have been found all across Europe. These precious, elegant objects are charged with metaphor, power and status; one example was placed as an offering underneath a wooden trackway in Somerset, Britain which has been dated to around 4,000 BC (MacGregor 2010a). Axe marks found on felled timbers from this area show that trees were felled by cutting chips from around the base of the trunk progressively tapering it like sharpening a pencil (Bradley 1978). Early man almost certainly learnt this technique by observing expert woodcutters in nature, namely beavers; they employ an identical technique. The burning of wood has played a central role in man’s progress from hunter to farmer and then to industrialist, but the full ramifications of this simple act are rarely acknowledged in historical narratives. In seventeenth-century Britain, John Evelyn, author of Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees (1664) was already warning of the destruction of forests due to the appetites of “voracious iron-works” (Percy 1864). The shortage of wood available for charcoal production led iron makers to experiment with coal, and by 1735 Abraham Derby at Coalbrookdale had succeeded in producing coke suitable for iron smelting by emulating the process of charcoal making. He heated coal on a fireproof hearth whilst limiting oxygen availability (Percy 1864). Thus, fire brought about the conditions necessary for massive industrial change. Concurrently, the Age of Enlightenment had brought reason and scientific method with a sceptical approach to the study of nature. This rational

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scientific culture gave society the tools for increased mechanisation and accelerated change; unleashing the Industrial Revolution and bringing factory-based mass production with its associated mass urbanisation and mass consumption. In England and Wales, the enclosure acts between 1760 and 1800 alone brought 100,000 ha of common or “waste” land into a more intensive agricultural regime (Hoskins 1981). The resultant Agrarian Revolution was accompanied by a near doubling in population (7.48 to 13.9 million from 1770 to 1831) with concomitant population movement to the industrial towns (Prickett 1981). The articulate “peasant poet” John Clare bemoaned the loss of his native Northamptonshire landscape: The spoiler’s axe their shade devours, And cuts down every tree. Not trees alone have owned their force, Whole woods beneath them bowed, They turned the winding rivulet’s course, And all thy pastures ploughed. (Hoskins 1981)

The impact of industrial, agricultural and economic development wrought ­ assive changes on the physical landscape of Europe. Meanwhile the monistic m Christian and Cartesian Enlightenment conception of a Newtonian universalist reality wrought massive changes on the intellectual landscape of Europe, precipitating a vociferous backlash (Mali 2003). British and German thinkers reacted passionately against this largely French Enlightenment thinking. English painter and visionary William Blake wrote: I turn my eyes to the Schools & Universities of Europe And there behold the Loom of Locke whose woof rages dire Washd by the Water-wheels of Newton. black the cloth in heavy wreathes folds over every nation; cruel Works Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, cogs tyrannic Moving by compulsion each other. (Blake 1804)

Blake cried out against the rationalists of the eighteenth century: Art is the tree of life…….Science is the tree of death. (Berlin 1999)

German philosopher Johann Georg Hamann defended the intuitive, the concrete and the personal and attacked the opposing attributes of the Enlightenment thus forging the principles of modern anti-rationalist and Romantic movements (Wokler 2003). This “Magus of the North” preached a mystical, vitalist doctrine whereby the voice of God speaks to us through nature. But for Hamann ordinary words were too rational and taxonomic to express God’s mysteries; myth and symbolism were for him nature’s messengers (Berlin 1999). Turning against the grey uniformity of mechanistic total solutions offered by universalism and deductive reasoning, he denounced Descartes’ mathematical process. Hamann’s doctrines presage modern environmentalist ideas in protesting against the Neoclassical ­scientific-philosophical establishment.

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He declared nature to be our “old grandmother” and promoted an existence rooted in local life. He had spent time in Riga learning Lettish folk poetry and encountering a rich mythology with the “mother earth” figure of Māra as a leading player. Hamann saw the phenomena of the natural world as divine energies and ideas; the world is God’s language and God thinks in trees, rocks and seas. On the loom of human history, nature is the weft and the human agent is the warp (Berlin 1994). Prophet-like, Hamann led a variety of disgruntled German thinkers, artists and writers into a vortex of irrational passion; the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) movement. His ideas later resurfaced in the works of Nietzsche and the existentialists (Berlin 1994). Isaiah Berlin suggested Romanticism was born largely out of Hamann’s pathological hatred of and reaction to his own time (Berlin 1994). Anticipating William Blake by a generation, Hamann wrote; The Tree of Knowledge has robbed us of The Tree of Life. (Berlin 2003)

Goethe claimed that he and Schiller first used the term “Romantic” as the opposite of “Classical”. The former suggests wild, natural and spontaneous qualities described by Nietzsche as “Dionysian”; the latter suggests control, order, reality and “Apollonian” qualities, but; Nature has her revenge. The instincts that find their right and proper outlet in religion must come out in some other way. You don’t believe in a God, so you begin to believe that man is a God. You don’t believe in Heaven, so you begin to believe in a heaven on earth. In other words you get romanticism. (Prickett 1981)

Religious mysteries were transplanted from church to the natural world, and during the late eighteenth century artists started seeking sites where wild nature elicited overwhelming awe and divine revelation; the “sublime” (Rosenblum 1975). Kenneth Clark argued that Romanticism is an expression of fear, quoting Edmund Burke’s proposition regarding the role of pain, danger, darkness, solitude and destructive power as sources of the sublime (Clark 1976). Goethe’s somewhat overwrought Werther exclaimed: Must it ever be thus, that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our ­misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming­ me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a demon which perpetually pursues and harasses me (Biese 1905)

German Romantics believed that France and her influential culture of universalism, reason, scientific enquiry and obsession with the Latin classics had damaged the native German character; although ironically it was the classical writings of Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus in his Germania that had recorded the early history of the Germans in their “land of bristling forests and foul bogs”. The Romans’ hatred of untamed nature was embodied in this territory inhabited by oak-worshipping ­barbarians who performed human sacrifice in their sacred groves, hanging the corpses from great oaks; recalling Wotan’s self-sacrifice on the cosmic ash tree Yggdrasil

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(Schama 1995). Punishment for harming oaks sacred to German thunder god Donar was a ­horrific ritualized, slow death by disembowelment (Frazer 1922). Johann Gottfried Herder, following the path of his mentor Hamann, repudiated deductive reasoning and uniformity (“it maims and kills”); he defended deeply rooted regionalism (the local) against scientific advance of the universalist machine. The savage singing in his hut was preferable to the empty cosmopolitan. This recurrent theme at the heart of Romanticism would be taken up by (amongst many others) William Blake, John Ruskin and William Morris (Berlin 1976) and much later by the hippy movement of the 1960–1970s. More disturbingly, Herderian Romantic notions were utilized by Alfred Rosenburg and Richard Walther Darré, German National Socialist idealogues. Anna Bramwell in Blood and Soil even suggests that Darré, largely responsible for the Nazi Blut und Boden doctrine, is the father of the green movement (Brüggemeier et  al. 2005). Herder is considered the father of nationalism and the notion of Volksgeist, believing that to be fully human and creative, you must belong somewhere. You need to be at home in a free society generated by natural forces, moulded by its environment, climate and history with exile bringing the noble pain of nostalgia. (Berlin 1976). Nostalgia is an essential ingredient of ethnicity and embodies the desire to return to a mythic, simple “golden age” (Smith 1986). The modern German Romantic social construction Heimat is inspired by Herder, and the notion is underpinned by sentimental language of a Golden Age: Heimat is first of all the mother earth who has given birth to our folk and race, who is the holy soil, who gulps down God’s clouds, sun and storms…..the landscape we have experienced…. that has been fought over, menaced….the Heimat of knights and heroes, of battles and victories, legends and fairy tales…..land fruitful through the sweat of our ancestors….. (Morley 2000)

Twentieth-century völkisch writers portrayed ancient Germans emerging from ­forests east of the Elbe, reinforcing the notion of Drang nach Ost (Smith 1986), and echoing the meaning in the fifteenth-century spelling of Heimat as Heinmut; Hein meaning grove and Mut courage (Bickle 2002). Romantic nationalist constructions of “organic” history portray societies as subject to natural laws of birth, growth, flowering, decay and rebirth; like plants and trees (Smith 1986). The National Socialist propaganda film Ewiger Wald of 1936 used “organic history”, Heimat and metaphor in the context of the forest to powerful and sinister effect. While the camera dwells on an ancient oak, the narrator solemnly says “ewiger Wald, ewiges Volk” or “eternal forest, eternal people”. German foresters were amongst the first to use scientific forestry to systematise the planting of fast-growing species in planned, even-aged single-species management blocks. These areas could be periodically felled in order to create a Normalwald or “normal forest” consisting of graduated age classes providing a calculable, sustainable yield of industrial timber. This system was at first considered ideal for the restocking of war-ravaged, overexploited forests, but by 1850 problems with wind-throw, snow and pest damage led German foresters to explore silvicultural theories incorporating use of local or “native” species in “back to nature” uneven-aged, mixed forests. By 1920, Professor Alfred Möller was proposing his system of Dauerwald or “perpetual forest” which utilised continual selective felling and natural regeneration to grow multi-storeyed,

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mixed, native species forests. In other words, Dauerwald was the Romantic, “organic” silvicultural backlash against the scientific, mechanistic, monotonous monoculture of the Normalwald. In 1934, Dauerwald was mandated as the official silvicultural doctrine for the Reich, and self-appointed Reichsforstmeister or Reich master of forestry Herman Göring (Brüggemeier et al. 2005) was ready to exploit the vision of the eternal forest to capture the hearts of the eternal Volk with manipulated metaphors drawn from forest mythology. The Kulturfilm “Ewiger Wald” ruthlessly exploited Romantic images of the heroic German Volk living idyllic lives in the primeval forest, dancing around a wheeled-cross to honour the solar deity, using the forest to nourish their eternal, sustainable, culture. Roman invaders are repelled by the brave deep-rooted forest Volk in a Classical versus Romantic battle. Juxtaposed images previously used by the painter Caspar David Friedrich of vaulted forest and vaulted Gothic interior symbolises German architectural achievement. The forest is destroyed by war, restored by Frederick the Great, and destroyed again after the First World War by the hateful French (Richards 1973). Herder and Hamann had originally spoken out against the French as Romanticism emerged to counter the Age of Enlightenment. The film shows the forest rising again with the National Socialist nation, rooted deep in Blut und Boden; blood and soil (Richards 1973). Men think in symbols; myth, ritual, worship and poetry, their nation is expressed through their language (Berlin 1976). Herder stressed the spirit of metaphor or Metapherngeist as the humanising influence in language; without metaphors language would be robbed of its precious cultural cargo (Barnard 2003). National Socialist metaphors drew clear pernicious parallels between Dauerwald forestry and human society, pointing to future evil intentions embedded in Ewiger Wald: “eradication of stands of poor race….cast out the unwanted foreigners and bastards that have as little right to be in the German forest as they have to be in the German Volk.” (Brüggemeier et al. 2005)

Romantic metaphors retain their currency; in James Cameron’s contemporary populist film Avatar a forest-dwelling hunter-gatherer culture clashes with a greedy, scientific-militaristic corporate culture. The hunters’ society is centred within an immense tree, eerily echoing ewiger Wald, ewiges Volk. The enduring attraction and influence of this “noble savage” theme on the urban masses is reflected in the fact that Avatar is now the top-grossing film ever (Serjeant 2010). From Germany to Russia, Herder is seen as the father of nationalism. His focus on the “local”, revival of folk tradition, literature, song and indigenous languages, is exemplified in the Slavic revival (Barnard 2003) although this folk idealism is tempered somewhat by the accompanying nationalist resentments (Berlin 2003). The German homeland concept Heimat is called dòmovina by Serbs, Slovenes and Croatians, Russians say rodina, which translates into English as “motherland” or “Mother Russia” (Bickle 2002). Peter the Great started the process of modernising Mother Russia by bringing European art and architecture to St. Petersburg and in doing so opening Russian culture to Classical and Enlightenment themes

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(Schmidt 1989). For a century from the inception of the Russian Academy in 1764, Classical rather than Russian themes abounded in paintings (Jackson 2006). It was the influence of Herder and Romanticism through a radical group of anti-academy artists calling themselves Peredvizhniki or “The Wanderers” who brought the Slavic revival to Russian art; presenting the Russian landscape as the sacred foundation for Russian nationalism, Ivan Shishkin and Isaac Levitan’s exact representations of rivers, oak trees, birch trees and Russia’s vast forests became sacred icons of Mother Russia (Barnard 2003). Romantic notions of untrammelled wilderness, myths of Golden Ages and noble savages have coloured peoples’ understanding of forest history, but one simple fact remains; man has altered landscapes, sometimes radically, since he first used the hand-axe on a tree. The actions of fire, agriculture, industrialisation and domestication have marked the forests of Europe for at least 6,000 years. George Perkins Marsh said: Man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords. (Williams 2003)

Society is moulded by very few, sometimes obscure, individuals whose ideas may be espoused without conscious knowledge of their names (Bernays 2005). Although Hamann and Herder are hardly obscure, they are not exactly household names either. However, their ideas have rippled through the centuries and counterbalance rationalist thought to this day. Even if Romantic notions of a spiritual sublime found in nature were necessary in order to fight scientific reason in their time perhaps we need another approach now. Furthermore, Romantic philosophy was generated by a reaction born out of urban culture. Poet John Clare was an exception in being a rural worker, but Hamann, Herder, Friedrich, Blake, Ruskin and their ilk were essentially city dwellers self-consciously gazing back at nature. In order to find a pragmatic, fully-rounded reading of the interface between urban/industrial culture and nature we need a holistic analysis of that relationship. The full spectrum of our views is necessary bearing in mind Kant’s dictum “out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made” (Hitchens 2002).

References Anon “If you have one eye on the past, you are blind in one eye. If you forget the past, you are blind in both eyes” Barnard FM (2003) Herder on nationality, humanity, and history. McGill-Queens University Press, Montreal Berlin I (1976) Vico and Herder two studies in the history of ideas. The Viking Press, New York Berlin I (1994) The magus of the north J.G. Hamann and the origins of modern irrationalism, vol. Fontana Press, London Berlin I (1999) The roots of romanticism. Pimlico, London Berlin I (2003) The crooked timber of humanity. Pimlico, London Bernays EL (2005) Propaganda, vol. Ig Publishing, New York

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Bickle P (2002) Heimat; a critical theory of the German idea of homeland. Boydell & Brewer Ltd, New York Biese A (1905) The development of the feeling for nature in the middle ages and modern times. Routledge, London Blake W (1804) Jerusalem the emanation of the giant albion. William Blake, London Bradley R (1978) The prehistoric settlement of Britain. Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd, London Brüggemeier F, Cioc M, Zeller T (2005) How green were the Nazis?: nature, environment, and nation in the third Reich. Ohio University Press, Athens Clark K (1949) Landscape into art, vol. John Murray Ltd, Edinburgh Clark K (1976) The romantic rebellion romantic versus classic art. Futura Publications Ltd, London Frazer JG (1922) The golden bough. MacMillan and Co, London Gelling P, Ellis-Davidson H (1969) The chariot of the sun and other rites and symbols of the northern bronze age. J. M. Dent & Son Ltd, London Green CMC (2007) Roman religion and the cult of Diana at Aricia. Cambridge University Press, New York Hitchens C (2002) Unacknowledged legislation: writers in the public sphere. Verso, London Hoskins WG (1981) The making of the English landscape. Penguin, Harmondsworth Jackson DL (2006) The wanderers and critical realism in nineteenth-century Russian painting. Manchester University Press, Manchester MacGregor N (2010a) Jade axe a history of the world. BBC, London MacGregor N (2010b) Olduvai handaxe. BBC, London Mali J (2003) Isiah Berlin’s enlightenment and counter-enlightenment. American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia Morley D (2000) Home territories; media, mobility, and identity. Routledge, London Percy J (1864) Metallurgy. John Murray, London Prickett S (1981) The romantics. Methuen & Co, London Richards J (1973) Visions of yesterday. Routledge and Keegan Paul Ltd, London Rosenblum R (1975) Modern painting and the northern romantic tradition: friedrich to rothko. Harper & Row Publishers Inc, New York Schama S (1995) Landscape and memory. HarperCollins, London Schmidt AJ (1989) The architecture and planning of classical Moscow: a cultural history. American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia Serjeant J (2010) “Avatar” becomes highest-grossing movie. Reuters, New York Smith AD (1986) The ethnic origins of nations. Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford West ML (2007) Indo-European Poetry and Myth. Oxford University Press, Oxford Williams M (2003) Deforesting the earth; from prehistory to global crisis. University of Chicago Press, Chicago Wokler R (2003) Isiah Berlin’s enlightenment and counter-enlightenment. American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia Wrangham R (2009) Catching fire how cooking made us human. Profile Books Ltd, London

Chapter 2

Forests in Landscapes – The Myth of Untouched Wilderness Eva Ritter

Landscapes can be considered as the cradle of culture, but culture has also formed these landscapes (Nassauer 1995)

In the cultural landscapes of Europe, forests are often regarded as the last wild places and vestiges of untouched nature. However, forests have been affected by human activity from the early beginning of human settlement. In fact, the availability of forests and their products has been an essential precondition for the development of human culture and civilization. One of the most important transitions in human history is the change from hunter-gatherer cultures to the early agricultural ­activities of Neolithic people (Edwards 1988). This change in human culture is closely related to an increasing exploitation of forests, and while agriculture marks the rise of modern civilization, it was often the overuse of forests that contributed to the downfall of cultures (e.g., Thirgood 1981). Hence, many regions of Europe have repeatedly been subject to deforestation, abandonment and afforestation (Behre 1988). Russell (1997) divides the history of forest use into three stages: • hunting, gathering and shifting cultivation • primarily agricultural uses • commercial intensive use for industrial products and processes In the following, human impact on forest ecosystems in Europe is described from the Upper Palaeolithic period to the introduction of agriculture in the Neolithic period and during early historic times. Consequences for forest distribution and species composition are discussed along with the growing awareness of people of the protection of this natural resource.

E. Ritter (*) Department of Civil Engineering, Aalborg University, Sohngaardsholmsvej 57, 9000 Aalborg, Denmark e-mail: [email protected]

E. Ritter and D. Dauksta (eds.), New Perspectives on People and Forests, World Forests 9, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1150-1_2, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

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2.1 People and Forests in Prehistoric Times Early hunter-gatherer societies have altered the flora and fauna of natural ecosystems all over the world, but today it is hard to judge how great their impact has been. Indirect and direct effects were most likely restrained until the dawn of agriculture about 10 millennia ago. With the development of civilizations based on agriculture, the exploitation of the forests was intensified and expanded. This development started in the Near East and spread from the Mediterranean region across Europe. The use of forests became soon an integrated part of the agricultural economy, and exploitation and clearances contributed to the change in European vegetation and a reduction in forest cover. Mather et al. (1998) have estimated that up to one third of the global land surface has been deforested.

2.1.1 Hunter-Gatherers in Europe The first settlements in Europe are known from the Mediterranean region about 800,000  years ago. These early settlers were presumably not able to adapt to environmental conditions above 41°–42° North (Hoffecker 2004). A second stage of human colonisation took place about half a million years ago and can be traced as far north as 50° in Britain and as far east as the Danube Basin (Hoffecker 2004). Modern humans first appear in continental Europe about 40,000 years ago (Fagan 2001). Living conditions and the diet of the first settlers were affected by changing climatic and environmental conditions. The extinction of larger carnivore animals about 500,000 years ago may have reduced the competition for prey, leaving more carcasses for scavenging (Turner 1992). However, it is difficult to reconstruct how much of the meat consumed by hominids was hunted or scavenged. During warmer climatic intervals (interglacials), many parts of Western Europe were covered with temperate oak woodland. Vegetation flourished and more plant food was available. During glacial periods, living conditions declined, and humans adjusted to the change in the environmental conditions by having a higher proportion of meat as part of their diet (Hoffecker 2004). However, in the early hunter-gatherer societies, gathering was often still more important than hunting. Plants contributed with up to 80% of weight to the consumed food, especially in the southern regions of Europe, while the consumption of plants compared to the amount of meat decreased with increasing latitude (Boyden 1975, cited in Russell 1997, p 114). The role of plants as natural resource was closely related to the spreading of forests in Europe at the end of the Pleistocene. Forests were important for many necessities in the life of forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers. In addition to being a source for food, forest plants were used for shelter, medicine, arts and dyes and other products; and although possibly feared, as places of wild animals or spirits, forests were generally less regarded as a hindrance than in later periods of human culture (Russell 1997). Palaeolithic and Mesolithic cultures were still very much

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dominated by nature, and their way of living was strongly connected to spiritual belief. In their dependence on plants and animals for subsistence, the life of the people was closely interwoven with the cycles and seasonal rhythm of nature (Russell 1997). Between 11,500 and 9,000  years ago, after the retreat of the glaciers, trees occupied most of the land suitable for forest growth (Pott 1993). However, already in the early stage of forest expansion, humans may have modified the natural vegetation by preventing trees from colonising certain sites, by gathering plants, setting fires and hunting animals. Today, it is difficult to prove how much this actually resulted in a change in ecosystems, but against the romantic view on preagricultural societies, recent research indicates that setting fires and eliminating species by overhunting may well have modified the environment in major ways (Goudie 2006). Hunting seems to have aggravated the negative impact of changes in climate and habitat for megafauna species and thereby have contributed to their extinction. This could have altered the vegetation that was less disturbed by grazing or trampling but also less dispersed in the landscape (Martin 1984). However, human use of forest resources was still characterized by being locally restricted with little active management. Changes in the nutrient cycle of the ecosystem remained limited in contrast to the impact of later agricultural societies (Emanuelsson 1988). Human impact on nature may therefore have been similar to that of other big omnivores. From the late Mesolithic Period, traces of human impact throughout Europe become more numerous. On the British Isles, charcoal and pollen data give evidence for recurring fire disturbance of forests both in the uplands and the lowlands (Innes et al. 2003). The manipulation of vegetation and the opening of forests by settlers affected growth conditions and created space for new plants which could be used as food (Zvelebil 1994, cited in Innes et al. 2003). Generally, abrupt changes in pollen frequencies and especially the increase in pollen from species such as hazel (Corylus avellana) or birch (Betula sp.) on formerly densely forested sites are taken as signs for human impact. While birch is extremely light demanding and hence grows best on open areas, hazel is more shade tolerant and can also be found at forest edges and as undergrowth in open forests. Therefore, the abundance of pollen from these species indicates that clearance or at least the opening or thinning of forests had taken place; a possible result of the change in human culture from hunting-gathering to a more settled way of life.

2.1.2 The Mid-Holocene Elm Decline One of the greatest changes in arboreal vegetation during prehistoric times was the decline of the population of elm trees (Ulmus sp.) about 5,000 14C years BP. It has been recorded for most parts of northern and northwest Europe by the analysis of pollen frequencies (e.g., Smith and Pilcher (1973)), stretching from Scandinavia, Ireland and the British Isles to the Netherlands, the northern part of Germany and

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the Baltic countries. Some cases have also been recorded from France, Austria and the Czech Republic (Berglund et al. 1996). In southeast Europe, evidence of elm decline has been traced earlier in time (Huntley and Birks 1983). Interestingly, the decline seems to have taken place almost synchronously throughout this part of Europe. A review of pollen data from 138 sites in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland showed that the mean dates of these four areas were lying within just 104 years of each other, on sites located from 2 m below sea level to altitudes of 500  m above sea level. According to these data the elm decline occurred on the British Isles around 5,036 14C year BP (±247 years) (Parker et al. 2002). Up until this period, the lowland forest cover of at least Scotland and Ireland was presumably still complete (Rackham 1988). The relative synchronicity of the event has been reason for many discussions and hypotheses of the actual cause of the dying back of the tree species. Human beings are generally not considered as the only factor, as this would have meant a synchronous cultural development throughout northwest Europe. However, it is assumed that human utilization of the environment has aggravated other natural factors that contributed to the reduction of the elm population, such as climate, soil changes and especially the influence of the elm bark beetle (Scolytus scolytus F.). The beetle is carrier for a fungus (Ceratocystis ulmi (Buis.) Moreau) which causes Dutch elm disease. Fossil records of the beetle from just before the beginning of the elm-decline were made at West Heath Spa near London (Girling and Greig 1977). As the beetle thrives best in clearings, hedges and on isolated trees rather than in dense forests, its distribution may be related to the presence of human communities. Practices such as foliage or bark-stripping from elm trees and the creation of clearings may have weakened trees and opened up the forest. In western Ireland, the disease was found to have had a lower impact on the elm populations than in other places of Europe, despite the presence of human disturbances. Lamb and Thompson (2005) attributed this partly to the absence of the most diseasesusceptible ecotypes of elm on the island and the limit of the range of the distribution of the pathogen. They emphasize that presumably a combination of human impact and the disease was necessary for a permanent decline in local elm populations. Hence, the mid-Holocene elm decline may be seen as the first record of how human activities can aggravate negative environmental effects on vegetation. Interestingly, also the latest wave of elm disease seemed to have reached Ireland later than mainland Britain. Long after elm trees had disappeared from Britain, British timber merchants travelled to Ireland to purchase the last elm trees in the 1990s (Keith Curtis 1994, personal communication). Apparently, elm trees have again been more resistant on that island than in the rest of the disease affected regions of Europe. The boundary of the elm decline is also considered as marking the line of the advance of agricultural societies, i.e. the change from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic Period. However, records of cereal pollen have actually been recorded at settlements already prior to the elm decline (Edwards 1988). The alteration of vegetation, indicated by a consistent rise in alder (Alnus) pollen in sediment dated about 7500 BP, has been associated with forest disturbances by Mesolithic people through

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much of the British Isles (Chambers and Elliott 1989). The recovery from the elm decline occurred at different times in Europe, but at some places never. In Ireland, elm trees seem to have recovered on fertile soils already around 4,500 14C years BP (O’Connell 1980), while in areas like the Upper Thames and Norfolk the elm population never came back to its original strength (Peglar and Birks 1993).

2.1.3 The Great Transition The Great Transition describes the change from hunter-gatherer societies towards peasant farming societies. It started in the Near East about 8,000–6,000 BC and is one of the most important developments in human civilization and of great significance for food procurement, land use and settlement (Edwards 1988). The development of agriculture had a great impact on the natural vegetation. The composition of plant communities was changed in favour of those species that were considered suitable for nutrition. Furthermore, land had to be cleared to enable the cultivation of the favoured crops. This started forest clearances and the development of cultural landscapes that form most of Europe today. In the temperate zone, the shift from hunting to farming and the first significant impacts on forests by human beings can be traced back to the Stone Age (Probst 1991). However, it is difficult to draw a clear line that shows the advance of agricultural societies though Europe. There seems to have been a co-existence of hunter-gatherer societies and agricultural societies in many regions, for example in Denmark (Iversen 1941). The arrival of forest farming techniques and early agricultural cultivation in the British Isles and north-west Europe may well have occurred within a period of 200–300  years at the beginning of or soon after 6,000 years BP (Innes et al. 2003). Other records from ca. 4,000 to 6,000 BP indicate that there was a co-existence of the two lifestyles within Britain and Ireland. Presumably hunter-gatherer activities continued on marginal soils while good soils supported the development of agricultural societies (Edwards 1988). Especially the fertile loess soils of central Germany have a very early cereal pollen date (Pott 1992). However, the first settlements were not necessarily placed on good soils, but rather on soils that were easy to clear from forest cover. These were typically dry and sandy places or calcareous soils. It is therefore possible that on these spots, no natural vegetation has ever been able to develop after the last ice age owing to the very early human activity (Remmert 1985). Records from the British Isles indicate that no major tree removal occurred before or during the cereal pollen phase. Low intensity forest exploitation and farming characterized the earliest agricultural activity in northwest Europe rather than the higher intensity of woodland clearings, slash-and-burn practices and fields in the fully developed Neolithic times and later (Innes et al. 2003). The development of agriculture changed human attitudes towards forests. While still necessary for many products in daily life, forest became partly a hindrance, and trees had to be destroyed in order to create space for crops.

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2.1.4 Early Agricultural Impacts on Forests The Great Transition was only the beginning of an increasing impact on and manipulation of vegetation by human beings. Although 70–80% of the land area was still covered with forests in the last century BC, hardly any forest had escaped human impact (Huttl et  al. 2000). Agricultural land use and husbandry became essential for the food procurement of Neolithic societies. Life conditions improved and subsequently the human population grew. Forests were removed to obtain more arable land, and the remaining forests were often heavily exploited; much more than by pre-agricultural societies. Hence, the development of agriculture must be seen in the context of two major processes: • the reduction in forest cover • the increase in and intensification of forest use The immediate consequence of the expansion of agricultural land use in Europe was a massive deforestation. In England, the destruction of forests in order to create farmland can be traced back to about 4500 BC. While forest cover may still have been about 50% during the Iron Age, early documents indicate that it had decreased furthermore to 15% in 1086. With time, forests became more integrated in the agricultural economy, providing a variety of products in the daily life of human beings. They were used as a source of materials such as firewood, fencing, and lumber (Innes et al. 2003). Domestic animals were brought into the forests for grazing, a practice which has been known since the later Stone Age. In the oceanically influenced area of the temperate zone, initial deforestation started in the coastal areas where food supply was covered by fishing, intensive agricultural and silvo-pastoral management (Ellenberg 1990). As wood-pasture, litter raking and burning continued over long time periods, natural forest regeneration occurred only locally. In many areas of Europe, woodland was eventually replaced by heath and moorland, for example in western France, England, Ireland and Scotland (Walter and Breckle 1994). Much of this was related to the overuse of forests for wood and charcoal production and the impact of grazing animals. Hence, overexploitation of forests resulted often in their destruction. Thereby, forest use contributed to the deforestation of the land. In most countries, woodland survived only on steep or poor land. Only during times when cultivation decreased and ecological control was lost, secondary woodlands could develop on a local scale. The impact of people on the landscape changed in parallel with the development of tools and an increase in population. There are different theories whether technological inventions led to larger human populations or the invention of tools occurred independent of increases in population. One result of better technology was that more people could be supported by less land area. With the development of the iron-tipped plough, farmers were able to cultivate larger fields and less favourable soils (Ellenberg 1996). Emanuelsson (1988) suggests four main steps between five technological levels. These had a marked effect in changing the natural ­environment into a cultural landscape. The different levels are characterised by an increasing number of persons

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who can be supported per square kilometre and a change in the net balance of nutrients. He proposed, based upon different studies, that in the fertile parts of Scania, southern Sweden, 0.5–2 persons of a hunter-gatherer society could survive on 1  km2. With the development of agriculture and the introduction of shifting cultivation or pastoralism, this number increased to about 20 persons per km2. At the same time, a net loss of nutrients from the cultivated area occurred, and restoration was only possible during periods of non-exploitation. Farming in permanent fields during early agricultural use with manure application allowed about 50 persons to survive on 1 km2. For Sweden, this type of agricultural use is assumed to have existed already 2,000 years ago and may have continued in some regions until the eighteenth century. Despite the overall net loss, nutrients were already better used than during the state of shifting cultivation and pastoralism (Emanuelsson 1988). A distinct change in the nutrient balance was first achieved during the Agricultural Revolution, eventually resulting in a nutrient excess after the introduction of artificial fertilizers in the twentieth century.

2.2 Forest Development in Historical Times The process of deforestation accelerated during the time of Charlemagne (about AD 800) with concomitant pressure on natural ecosystems. While culture was related to the cultivation of land, forests were considered as a synonym for wilderness; a myth that somehow has survived until today (see also Chap. 10). However, much more than agriculture, the demand for timber as building material and in armed conflicts became an increasingly important factor in the deforestation process. The consequences of this hunger for timber were most disastrous in arid regions. A well known example is the great deforestation that took place in the Mediterranean region during Greek-Roman times, but a similar development occurred later in Central and Northern Europe. At the time of the Industrial Revolution (c. 1790–1900 in Europe), forests in many European countries had been subject to clearances (Kaplan et  al. 2009). The recovery of forests from the massive human impact was only possible after periods of pests or great wars that resulted in a significant reduction of the human population, or to a minor extent when new technologies helped replace the need for timber. However, human population is not the only factor that has an effect on the change in forest cover. Cultural and political factors, e.g., forest laws and regulations for land use and landscape management, play an important role as well.

2.2.1 The Great Deforestation of the Ancient World The Mediterranean Region has a long history of manipulation of trees, forests and landscapes, and the exploitation of forests reached its first remarkable peak during Greek-Roman times. The long-term consequences of the overuse of the forests

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that once covered the Mediterranean region are still present today. Human settlers and their herds of domestic animals caused the virtual disappearance of most climax forests. Development of agricultural innovations such as the iron ploughshare increased food production, hence, population, and thus the need for more forest clearances. Wars and especially the demand of timber for shipbuilding had a major impact on the Mediterranean forest (Thirgood 1981). Like in other parts of Europe, Greek-Roman civilizations used timber for energy production and construction. Timber was also an important subject of inter-regional trading. To meet the high demand of timber, the exploitation of forests was not restricted to the easily accessible lowland forests, but stretched even to upland forests, for example in the Apennines with their vulnerable site conditions (Meiggs 1982). Especially during the Roman times, intensive settlements caused large-scale transformation of forest into arable land (Huttl et al. 2000). With the cultivation of land, human impact also included the introduction of new species for nonwood products. The consequences of ruthless forest exploitation were dramatic. Erosion reduced agricultural productivity, resulting in further forest clearance to make new areas of fertile land available for agriculture. Industries depending on timber supply developed, such as iron smelting, pottery and shipbuilding, only to be hit hard later by an increasing shortage of wood. Already by about 400 BC, Plato noted the damage to soil resources resulting from the deforestation of Attica (Hamilton and Cairns 1961). In his description, he compares the treeless hills of Greece with skeletons. The overuse and loss of forest cover resulted in severe soil erosion, especially in steep mountain regions. Today, shrub landscapes dominate where forests used to cover the hills and lowlands. The remaining forest stands are altered and more or less intensively managed. Although it is sure that forest cover was more extensive in the Mediterranean regions 2,000 years ago, Thirgood (1981) points out that it is not clear to what extent and of which type the forests were; what was described as forest by classical writers may very likely have been close to today’s marquis, i.e. a resistant type of dense scrub formation. On the other hand, in his book Folklore and the Old Testament (Vol. III), Frazer (1918) quotes several descriptions of the landscape of the Mediterranean region from Palestine to Syria during the nineteenth century. The abundance of different, partly very old, oak (Quercus) species forming park-like landscapes to “impressive oak forests” has been recorded by the writers, like W.M. Thomson who travelled the plain of Sharon and published his observations in 1881: It is conducting us through a grand avenue of magnificent oaks, whose grateful shade is refreshing to the weary traveller. They are part of an extensive [oak] forest which covers most of the hills southward to the plain of Esdraelon. (W.M. Thomson 1881, in Frazer 1918, p 32–35).

Apparently, there may have been more forests present than we may assume when looking at the Mediterranean landscapes today. In general, only a few forests escaped intensive use through time. In Ancient Greece, sacred groves were protected from felling. These forests could be considered

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as precursors to “national parks”; vestiges of pristine wilderness. However, already by the fifth century BC wood shortages had become so acute that religious sanctions were no longer enough to protect these forests from human impact. Instead, secular regulations were introduced with the aim of protecting the groves, like a decree in Athens that prohibited even the removal of twigs (Farrell et  al. 2000). Timber became a symbol of power. Macedonia overtook Attica while it still had great resources of unexploited timber, just until it was in turn overpowered by the Roman Empire. However, with Roman civilization, over-exploitation of the forests continued. The later collapse of the Roman Empire resulted in profound changes in land use. Cultivated land was abandoned owing to the reduction in human population and consequent loss of available manpower, and forest regenerated in the areas where agricultural production ceased (Darby 1956). However, during the postclassical era, exploitation continued and even increased. Shipbuilding remained the greatest consumer of timber and later became a political factor from the midseventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries when appropriate timber became scarce in many regions (Thirgood 1981). First forest laws limiting or prohibiting the use of forest products by local people were introduced with varying success. The destiny of forests often depended on whether a nation needed material for war. In addition, increasing architectural demands and the progressing use of wood for fuel and charcoal production contributed to the degradation and extinction of forests. Mediterranean vegetation has never recovered completely from the impact of long-term deforestation, and unfortunately much of the knowledge of the severe environmental consequences got lost during the following generations (Meiggs 1982). Hence, the evolution of the interaction between people and forest landscapes that occurred in the Ancient World was later paralleled by developments in Central and Northern Europe.

2.2.2 Impacts on Forests in Northern and Central Europe The expansion of agriculture in Northern and Central Europe contributed to a growth in population and the need of timber for construction, production and energy. The impact on forests and trees was intensified, and more and more forests were removed or modified by human use. By the beginning of the Middle Ages, forests in Central Europe were already under the control of human activities. Only in remote areas some primary forests may have survived. Cultural landscapes developed and formed a mosaic of fields, pastures and wooded areas, characterised by a higher degree of fragmentation. During the Late Middle Ages, forest cover in Central Europe had been reduced to less than 30% owing to energy demand and the need for construction wood (Grossmann 1934; Hammel 1982, cited in Huttl et al. 2000). For the reduction of forest cover, duration of human settlement seems to be less important than the vulnerability of the forest ecosystems against human impact.

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In the Central European Chernozem (black earth) areas of the lowlands, first ­farmers settled during the early Neolithic periods in the second half of the sixth millennium BC (Kreuz 2008). Despite this long-term intensive agricultural use, there is still a considerable forest cover of about 25% providing a relatively high timber production. In contrast, in the north-western regions of Scandinavia, the British Isles, Iceland and the Faroe Islands, overuse of the natural tree vegetation quickly reduced the original forest cover. Iceland was one of the last places in Europe settled by human population, about AD 874, and yet this country has one of the least forested landscapes in Europe (UNEP 2000). It took the first settlers less than 200 years to reduce the natural forest cover from c. 25% to less than 1% of the land area (Anonymous 2001). Something similar is seen in the history of the Scottish Highlands when people with pastoral life style occupied the uplands from the eleventh century onwards. They practised the shielding system, a regional form of the seasonal movement of livestock used in other places in Western Europe, and hardly any woodland has been left unaffected by the influence of this grazing management (Holl and Smith 2007). The Faroe Islands are one of the places where deforestation was basically already complete 1,000 years ago (Hannon et al. 2001). In these regions, natural regeneration of trees is strongly hampered due to short vegetation periods and difficult environmental conditions, poor soils and grazing of domestic animals. Consequently, wide areas are nowadays marked by soil erosion and the loss of valuable fertile land. The impact on forest ecosystems was not only caused by agricultural land use. Natural tree species composition was modified by the preferential use of certain species and the avoidance of natural disturbances. In villages, lime (Tilia) and especially oak trees were planted to prevent the spreading of fires between the thatched roofed houses. In addition, the acorns were used as fodder for domestic animals, while the honey of lime trees was an important sugar source (Remmert 1985). Many new tree species have been introduced throughout the centuries because of their aesthetic values, independent of their timber value. Thus, exotic species came to play an important role in the development of parks and gardens in Europe. Other trees came as invasive species introduced through human activities, e.g., trading and travelling. In northern Scandinavia, Norway spruce (Picea abies) competed better against Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) when human beings started to control wild fires. The Scandinavian spruce forests that nowadays may be considered as “natural” are therefore actually a plant community that, although not introduced or planted, was caused by human control of natural ecosystem processes. In Central Europe, the major impact of human activity can today be seen in a change in tree species. Natural beech (Fagus sylvatica) forests have converted to mixed oak-hornbeam (Quercus-Carpinus) forests or replaced with spruce (Picea sp.) and Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga sp.) (FAO 2000). Today, coniferous trees account for 68–88% of the temperate forest area that naturally would be dominated by deciduous species (Ellenberg 1996). The natural vegetation of deciduous broadleaved tree species has been substituted with coniferous forests in production-oriented forest management that started with industrialization in the eighteenth century. However, the

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quality of these stands is often very variable as the trees do not grow on their natural site conditions. This has resulted in major losses of timber during storm events like the ones in December 1999 when 165 million m3 of timber were windblown in Europe (mainly France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Poland), which was about 43% of the annual average harvest (European Forestry Commission 2000). Another important function of forests through history was energy production. Close to settlements, forests were managed for firewood. As a well functioning saw was not known before modern times, trees had to be felled with the axe. Therefore, thin stems and branches were preferred. People thereby made use of the ability of most native tree species to grow shoots from the cut stumps or the root system, either by coppice or suckers. For the practice of coppicing, young trees were cut at their base and recovered by developing multi-stems that could be cut again after a few years. Typical tree species suitable for this practice are ash (Fraxinus excelsior), wych-elm (Ulmus glabra) and beech (Fagus sylvatica). Today, old coppice forests (in German: Niederwald) can still be recognised by their multi-stemmed trees. In the vernacular, their bizarre forms are often associated with witches, spirits or fairytales. When trees are cut higher up, the practice is called pollarding. Pollarding can increase the life time and health of trees. It also made it possible to combine woodpasture with wood production because grazing livestock could not reach the young shoots of the trees as opposed to the coppice. Burnham Beeches west of London is a good example of this type of forest use. Coppicing and pollarding were not only used to obtain firewood and wood for charcoal production but also material for hop vines and fences. Ash was typically used for hop poles, while hazel was preferred for weaving into fences. In many European countries, coppicing was still practised during the nineteenth century (Austad 1988). In England, some former coppiced forests can still be traced back to medieval times by their names. When forests became part of husbandry practices, in addition to the already well known and widely practised habit of using forests for grazing, this resulted in major impacts on the ecosystems. In regions with difficult climate like in northern Europe, livestock was kept in stables during the long and cold winter period. Farmers started to collect leaves and twigs and used them for winter fodder. Leaves and needles were furthermore used for fillings of mattresses and beddings (Roth and Bürgi 2006). The removal of litter from forests had a profound effect on the nutrient status of forest ecosystem. It could change the plant community, result in substantial soil impoverishment and reduce the neutralization capacity of the soils. Dzwonko and Gawronski (2002) showed that current vegetation composition in mixed oak-pine woodland in Poland can still be related to past biomass removal by people. The collection of litter was very popular during the Agricultural Revolution, at the end of the eighteenth century (Bürgi 1999). Different studies have estimated a removal of 0.5–3 t litter per hectare from forests stands in different regions of Switzerland (Bürgi and Gimmi 2007). However, the actual extent of this practice is debatable owing to ­missing written records. An important role in the fattening of pigs was played by the acorns of oak trees. Since oaks do not have acorns every year when growing in

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closed forest, they were often grown as solitary or scattered trees within wood-­ pastures (in German: Hütewald). This enabled the fattening of pigs every year. The improvement of food production contributed to an increase of the population in central Europe. Towns developed and crafts improved. More wood was needed for fuel, production and as building material. In the Auverge in France, forests in the lowland areas were so much depleted that people had to use straw for fuel already by the seventh and eighth century. Only in the mountains, forests survived because they were protected for hunting. This protection continued with the settlement of German immigrants, in contrast to the south of France where deforestation was almost complete. The settlers in the south of France, coming from the Mediterranean regions, did not establish hunting preserves (Devèze 1864/1965, cited in Russell 1997, p 119). The anthropogenic influence has locally changed environmental conditions for tree growth and is often stronger than the natural effect of the bedrock or the local soils (Pott 1993). Many land sites have lost their original fertile conditions through erosion, drifting sand or podsolization after the removal of a closed forest cover or the introduction of new tree species. Reforestation with exotic tree species has affected soil conditions through the impact of litter quality, nutrient cycling or the filter effect of the canopy. Furthermore, forests have an effect on the local microclimate of landscapes (Brown and Gillespie 1995). If forest management was stopped, it would still take a long time for the original site conditions to be re-established and for potential natural vegetation to regenerate. As a recent development, it can be observed that human induced climate change may have an effect on the distribution and spreading of tree species in Europe (e.g., Bradshaw et al. 2000).

2.2.3 Forest Protection and Forest Expansion It was the overuse and the loss of many necessary forest functions that resulted in the first approaches to the protection of forests in Europe (Farrell et al. 2000). The oldest protective regulations are recorded from Switzerland in 1339 (Muotathal) and 1387 (Altdorv) (Anonymous 1983, cited in Farrell et al. 2000). In these mountainous areas, forest protection was driven by the fear of avalanches and landslides. Simultaneously, authorities in England tried to counteract the local lack of timber by enclosing forests and preserving them for firewood production (Glasscock 1976). Timber shortages also stimulated the first reforestation activities on felled sites, such as the planting of the state forest at Nurnberg (Nürnberger Staatswald) in south Germany in the fourteenth century. However, it was less the human initiative to protect shrinking forest resources but rather natural factors that resulted in the last great expansion of forests in Europe. This was when the human population declined significantly during the time of the Black Death and then after the 30 Years’ War. Agricultural land could no longer be cultivated by the reduced population, and the exploitation of forests diminished. Hence, forests could recover from human impact, and natural regeneration started to

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occupy the abandoned land. Also during the Germanic migration, ­secondary forests developed on former cultivated land (Farrell et al. 2000). Many of the forests that today are considered as old growth forests or “natural forests” are actually secondary forests that had developed on the fields that people left uncultivated during the Early Middle Ages (Peterken 1996). However, this break in human impact on the European forest vegetation did not last long. With exploration of the world’s seas and the expansion of shipbuilding, the hunger for timber grew and then outpaced former fellings. From the seventeenth century onwards, when the Industrial Revolution spread from England, the demand for timber to fire the many furnaces increased further. Industrial centres, such as Ironbridge near Telford in England, were therefore often sited close to forests which were managed for firewood production, mostly utilising the practice of coppicing. By the early nineteenth century, forest cover had reached its lowest point in historic times in many Western European countries. For example, the minimum forest cover in Denmark (in the 1800s) and Portugal (in the 1870s) was 4% and 7%, respectively, and even Switzerland had only 18% forest cover left (in the 1860s) (Mather et al. 1998). Kaplan et al. (2009) have used a preindustrial anthropogenic deforestation model to generate historical land clearance maps of Europe. It illustrates clearly the increasing loss of forest cover in many European countries from 1000 BC to AD 1850. Since the mid-nineteenth century, forest cover started to increase again and, for the first time in forest history, this happened despite a continuing population growth (Mather et al. 1998). In 2005, forest cover in Denmark, Portugal and Switzerland was back at 11.8%, 41.3%, and 30.9%, respectively (FAO 2006). The total forest cover of Europe (without the Russian Federation) is today 32.6% of the land area (without inland water) (FAO 2006). This change in the interaction between population and forest cover can be explained by several factors, among others a decline in the proportion of rural population, but also a change in the perception of forests and a development of new philosophies and political thoughts which led to new (scientific) approaches to forest management (Mather et  al. 1998). In many European countries, this development started with the time of Enlightenment and the rise of Romanticism: “Belief in the power of rationality and science to solve problems led to silvicultural advances; romantic notions provided a lens through which forests could be viewed positively by urban élites” (Mather et  al. 1998). Furthermore, the development of technology helped increase processing yields during the twentieth century. Hence, forests can be used more efficiently now when it comes to the consumption of wood products in society. For many decades, afforestation efforts aimed primarily at increased forest productivity. Plantation establishment often involved the replacement of deciduous with coniferous tree species, especially Norway spruce. While native in the boreal region, Norway spruce grows outside its natural range in most other European regions. It is therefore sometimes not sufficiently adapted to the local climatic and edaphic features, and as a result management difficulties can occur (Huttl et  al. 2000). Trees are more often weakened by drought stress and forest damage which makes them susceptible to insect attacks and windblow. Windblow accounts for 53%

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of the total damage to forests in Europe (Schelhaas et al. 2003), and the frequency of windblow damage has increased during the last decades of the twentieth century. However, no increase in storm frequency could be observed for Europe; storm frequency has on the contrary been remarkably stable for the last 200 years (Carretero et al. 1998; Heino et al. 1999; Bärring and von Storch 2004). Increased windblow damage may therefore probably not be attributed to stronger and more frequent storm events. For Norway spruce, it is suggested that higher losses occur because a larger proportion of trees has reached the age class when they become susceptive to windblow damages, and because trees are grown in monocultures instead of mixed stands (Schlyter et  al. 2006). However, the negative experiences of the past have changed this trend. Today, more native tree species and those adapted to the actual growth conditions at the forest sites are increasingly used in forestry.

2.3 Conclusion The intensity of human impact has varied temporally and spatially, and the exploitation of forests has not passed without leaving a mark on forest ecosystems. Human use of forests may have started as the mimicking of natural processes, but it soon became more distinctive. In contrast to most natural processes, except natural wild fires, many human activities are characterised by removing forest products from their source. With the development of agriculture, forest cover was reduced over larger areas which only partly reconverted to secondary forests, and deforestation became a dominant action in most European countries throughout their history. Furthermore, human beings contributed to the extension of species ranges by introducing new tree species to regions where they are not indigenous. The removal of forest products, the introduction of new tree species and the selective use of existing species resulted in the modification of species composition and forest structures and affected processes in the forest ecosystems such as nutrient recycling and soil retention. Hence, human activities have left traces on trees and forests in European landscapes in three major ways: • extent and distribution of tree cover • species composition • local site conditions relevant for tree growth Intensive and extensive forest use in much of Europe has affected forest ecosystems so much that today’s forests have to be understood in the context of past and present patterns of forest use. Even ecosystems that may have escaped direct impact by human use are nowadays threatened by man-made influences such as increased nutrient input through atmospheric deposition or acidification. Hence, “natural” ecosystems untouched by human beings can hardly be found in Europe. With few exceptions, forests in Europe do not represent the wilderness that they are often assumed to be. Rather, they are a part of landscapes with long historical dimensions and as such influenced and controlled by human culture.

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References Anonymous (1983) Il bosco svizzero. Dono svizzero della festa nazionale, Federal Bureau of Forestry, Bern, 48 pp Anonymous (2001) Biological diversity in Iceland: national report to the convention on biological diversity. Ministry of the Environment and Icelandic Institute of Natural History, Reykjavík, p 58 Austad I (1988) Tree pollarding in Western Norway. In: Birks HH, Birks HJB, Kaland PE, Moe D (eds) The cultural landscape – past, present and future. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 11–29 Bärring L, von Storch H (2004) Scandinavian storminess since about 1800. Geophys Res Lett 31:L20202. doi:10.1029/2004GL020441 Behre KE (1988) The role of man in European vegetation history. In: Huntley B, Webb T (eds) Vegetation history. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 633–372 Berglund BE, Birks HJB, Ralska-Jasiewiczowa M, Wright HE (1996) Palaeoecological events during the last 15 000 years: regional synthesis of palaeoecological studies of lakes and mires in Europe. Wiley, Chichester Boyden (1975) Western civilization, 81n26, data taken from: Clarke R, Hindley G (eds) The challenge of the primitives. Jonathan Cape, London, pp 30–31 Bradshaw RHW, Holmquist BH, Cowlilng AS, Sykes M (2000) The effect of climate change on the distribution and management of Picea abies in southern Scandinavia. J Can For Res 30:1992–1998 Brown R, Gillespie TJ (1995) Microclimatic landscape design – creating thermal comfort and energy efficiency, 3rd edn. Wiley, Berkeley Bürgi M (1999) A case study of forest change in the Swiss lowlands. Landscape Ecol 14:567–575 Bürgi M, Gimmi U (2007) Three objectives of historical ecology: the case of litter collecting in Central European forests. Landscape Ecol 22:77–87 Carretero JC, Gomez M, Lozanom I et  al (1998) Changing waves and storms in the Northeast Atlantic? Bull Am Meteorol Soc 79:741–760 Chambers FM, Elliott L (1989) Spread and expansion of Alnus mill. in the British Isles: timing, agencies and possible vectors. J Biogeogr 16:541–550 Darby HC (1956) The clearing of woodland in Europe. In: Thomas WL (ed) Man’s role in changing the face of the earth. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 183–216 Devèze Forêts françaises. Duby (1965) The Early Growth of the European Economy, 20; Marsh GP Man and Nature 1864; reprint Harvard University Press, Cambridge, pp 240–244 Dzwonko A, Gawronski S (2002) Effect of litter removal on species richness and acidification of a mixed oak-pine woodland. Biol Conserv 106:389–398 Edwards KJ (1988) The hunter-gatherer/agricultural transition and the pollen record in the British Isles. In: Birks HH, Birks HJB, Kaland PE, Moe D (eds) The cultural landscape – past, present and future. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 255–266 Ellenberg H (1990) Bauernhaus und Landschaft in ökologischer und historischer Sicht. Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart Ellenberg H (1996) Vegetation Mitteleuropas mit den Alpen. Ulmer, Stuttgart Emanuelsson U (1988) A model for describing the development of the cultural landscape. In: Birks HH, Birks HJB, Kaland PE, Moe D (eds) The cultural landscape – past, present and future. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 111–121 European Forestry Commission (2000) Storm damage 1999/2000 overview available online http:// www.unece.org/timber/storm/storm2000.htm. Accessed 17 July 2009 Fagan BM (2001) The great diaspora: the spread of modern humans. In: People of the Earth. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, p 126 FAO (2000) Global forest resources assessment 2000. Food and Agricultural Organisation, Forestry Department. FAO Forestry Paper 150. Chapter 27: Europe: ecologcial zones. Available online http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/004/Y1997E/y1997e00.htm. Accessed 1 March 2011

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Peterken G (1996) Natural woodland. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Pott R (1992) The impact of early Neolithic agriculture on the vegetation of Northwestern Germany. In: Frenzel B (ed) Evaluation of land surfaces cleared from forests by prehistoric man in early Neolithic times and the time of migrating Germanic tribes. European Science Foundation, Strasbourg, pp 57–72 Pott R (1993) Die natürliche Waldentwicklung in der Nacheiszeit und unter dem Einflub des prähistorischen und historischen Menschen. In: Pott R (ed) Farbatlas Waldlandschaften. Ulmer, Stuttgart, pp 11–68 Probst E (1991) Deutschland in der Steinzeit. Jäger, Fischer und Bauern zwischen Nordseeküste und Alpenraum. Bertelsmann Rackham O (1988) Trees and woodland in a crowded landscape – the cultural landscape of the British Isles. In: Birks HH, Birks HJB, Kaland PE, Moe D (eds) The cultural landscape – past, present and future. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 53–77 Remmert H (1985) Der vorindustrielle Mensch in den Ökosystemen der Erde. Naturwissenschaften 172:627–632 Roth L, Bürgi M (2006) Bettlaubsammeln als Streunutzung im St. Galler Rheintal (collecting leaves for beddings – a traditional forest use in the St. Galler Rheintal). Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Forstwesen 8:348–356 Russell EWB (1997) People and the land through time: linking ecology and history, 1st edn. Yale University Press, New Haven/London Schelhaas JM, Nabuurs GJ, Schuck A (2003) Natural disturbances in the European forests in the 19th and 20th centuries. Glob Change Biol 9:1620–1633 Schlyter P, Stjernquist I, Bärring L et al (2006) Assessment of the impacts of climate change and weather extremes on boreal forests in Northern Europe, focusing on Norway spruce. Clim Res 31:75–84 Smith AG, Pilcher JR (1973) Radiocarbon dates and the vegetational history of the British Isles. New Phytol 72:903–914 Thirgood JV (1981) Man and the Mediterranean forest. A history of resource depletion. Academic Press, London Thomson WM (1881) The land and the book, Central Palestine and Phoenicia, London, p 302 Turner A (1992) Large carnivores and earliest European hominids: changing determinants of resource availability during the lower and middle Pleistocene. J Hum Evol 22:109–126 UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (2000) European forests and protected areas: Gap analysis. Smith G, Gillet H (eds) Technical report, Cambridge, UK, p 62 Walter H, Breckle SW (1994) Ökologie der Erde, Band 3: Spezielle Ökologie der gemässigten und arktischen Zonen Euro-Nordasiens. Gustav-Fischer-Verlag, Stuttgart/Jena Zvelebil M (1994) Plant use in the Mesolithic and its role in the transition to framing. Proc Prehist Soc 60:35–74

Chapter 3

Overcoming Physicophobia – Forests as the Sacred Source of Our Human Origins Roy Jackson

In Augustin Berque’s fascinating book, Le sauvage et l’artifice – Les japonais devant la nature1 (Berque 1986), the French scholar argues that at one time in ancient Europe, before the coming of Christianity, there existed the religion of the forest but, with the spread of Christianity, a new perspective was formed: both ­natural environments and human beings exist in the world as evil objects. Berque uses the term “physicophobia” to describe this alienated, hostile reaction to the natural world. What has been lost to the Western European mind, Berque argues, is “physicophily”; an affinity towards the forest and nature in general. Throughout history the forest is seen as the antithesis of what it means to be human. The forests are primeval and pre-historical; they were there before humans ever were. The mythic forests stand opposed to the city; the latter representing order and civilisation. With the coming of the Age of Enlightenment, of the start of what is commonly referred to as modernity, the European attitude towards the forest was one of a desire to bring order to nature, to make it useful for the benefit of mankind. Descartes, the philosophical father of the Enlightenment, sees the forests, by analogy, as a place of chaos and disorder which lacks firm and resolute rational method. His contemporary, Hobbes, is equally condemning of nature. Mankind has alienated itself from the forest, from the animal kingdom; first by fearing it, then by “conquering” it, but rarely by appreciating its sacredness and its importance in an understanding of what it means to be human. However, there have been philosophers who, although themselves products of the Enlightenment, questioned its ideals and called for a return to nature. This chapter looks at Rousseau and Nietzsche. They are two such enemies of the Enlightenment Project, which they saw as encompassing alienation and a misguided faith in the supposed benefits of scientific progress. Instead, they looked to nature for authenticity.

The Wild and Artifice – The Japanese Before Nature. The reason for the title is that Berque argues that Japanese traditional culture stills shows a tendency for “physicophily”.

1 

R. Jackson (*) Department of Humanities, University of Gloucestershire, Swindon Road, GL50 4AZ Cheltenham, UK e-mail: [email protected] E. Ritter and D. Dauksta (eds.), New Perspectives on People and Forests, World Forests 9, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1150-1_3, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

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3.1 The Forest as Nothing More than Useful The French philosopher, mathematician, writer and scientist René Descartes (1596– 1650) presents his method when confronted with the seeming chaos of the forest: In this I would imitate travellers who, finding themselves lost in a forest, ought not to wander this way or that, or, what is worse, remain in one place, but ought always walk as straight a line as they can in one direction and not change course for feeble reasons, even if at the outset it was perhaps only chance that made them choose it; for by this means, if they are not going where they wish, they will finally arrive at least somewhere where they will probably be better off than in the middle of the forest. (Descartes 1968, p 46, 47)

Cartesian method follows a straight path through the dark forest, thus avoiding the possibility of abandon and error. The forest is not only a place of anarchy, but of false beliefs and the irrational, the animal. For animals, Descartes believed, have no souls and only those with souls can be truly human and in touch with the divine. The forests are there to be appropriated by man, a utility to be used for the service of mankind, who are able to make themselves the masters and possessors of nature. This reference to walking in a straight line is symbolic of Descartes’ confidence in logical deductive reasoning over the uncertainty of mere probabilities. Such isomorphic method, with its reliance on the supposed a priori analytic certainty of mathematics, is contrary to the presumed falsehoods of past tradition. The forest, for Descartes, represents this falsehood, compared to the order and rational ­planning that goes into the city. A contemporary of Descartes, the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), was another who saw human beings’ primordial past as one of chaos and disorder. Hobbes thought that the state of nature is something we ought, morally speaking, to try to avoid. In the natural condition, human beings lack government, for the only authority that exists naturally among human beings is that of a mother over her child, as the child is so much weaker than the mother and indebted to her for its survival. This is not the case, however, amongst adults, and every human being is quite capable of killing any other; even the weakest might persuade others to help him kill another (Hobbes 1981, Chapter 13). In the state of nature, the only judge as to what is right or wrong is the individual for the sake of his or her own ­self-preservation. Hobbes does not suppose that we are all selfish, that we are all ­cowards, or that we are all desperately concerned with how others see us. However, he does think that some of us are selfish, some of us cowardly, and some of us conceited. It is these latter individuals who are prepared to use violence to attain their ends, especially if there is no government or police to stop them.

3.2 Rousseau: Friend of the Forest Given such arguments, mankind secures itself in the city, away from the evils of nature. Alternatively, nature is tamed so that there is nothing left to fear. The sophisticated urban setting, however, was eschewed by that “neurotic and solitary genius” (Solomon

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1988) Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), who humbles himself before the mastery of the forest. For Rousseau, “alienation from nature – the splitting of the human subject from the natural object, necessary for labour or for the conscious transformation of the environment – is the defining characteristic of human existence” (Biro 2005, p 76).

3.2.1 The Demystification of the Forest Curiously, Rousseau may seem a man of contradiction: both a founding member of the French Enlightenment and yet an enemy of much of its values. However, Enlightenment thought is itself something of a variety of contrary philosophical views, not to mention differences of opinion of when the Enlightenment period actually started. Here it is placed with Descartes because at its core is the emphasis on reason and its criticism of past traditions; two features that are at the forefront of Descartes’ writings. Rousseau’s rejection of reason, in favour of romanticism, goes against this central characteristic of Enlightenment2 (Garrard 2003). Importantly in the context of the attitude towards forests, the utility value is now emphasised. For example: It seems that in all ages one has sensed the importance of preserving forests; they have always been regarded as the property of the state and administered in its name: Religion itself had consecrated forests, doubtlessly to protect, through veneration, that which had to be conserved for the public interest.3

This concept of “public interest”, or utilité publique, may well be lacking in h­ istorical accuracy, but nonetheless the demystifying of the forests is indicative of Enlightenment ideals. The Age of Enlightenment is a coming of age: humanity has now grown up and can see the world as it really is through his or her faculty of ­reason.4 Forests may no longer be seen as magical, sacred places but rather places to be preserved, utilised and managed. The forests themselves become projects; part of long- and short-term economic planning and exploitation to satisfy the material (as opposed to the spiritual) needs of the present and future generations. Nature is thus possessed and mastered through forest science using algebra, geometry, stereometry, and mensuration. This way one can literally walk in a straight line through a forest! Rousseau is critical of Hobbes because the latter provided the most comprehensive and influential effort to achieve in the social and political realms what Copernicus, Galileo and Newton had achieved in the scientific arena. It is also no

The case for Rousseau as an enemy of the Enlightenment is made in Garrard (2003). This is from the entry of the one of the major documents of the Age of Enlightenment (Rousseau was also a contributor), ‘Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers’, edited by Diderot. This entry is under ‘forêt’ in the Encyclopédie by the warden of the Park of Versailles, Monsieur Le Roy. The translation is from Harrison (1992, p 115). 4  Although I cite Descartes’ deductive reasoning as the foundation of Enlightenment thought, “reason” here need not, and was not, confined to the deductive process, bearing in mind its obvious limitations. The empirical quest for knowledge highlighted by Locke and, especially, David Hume is just as important, if not more so, in the management of forests and the Enlightenment project as a whole. 2  3 

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small reason why people refer to Descartes as achieving a Copernican revolution in philosophy. The newly discovered scientific method of the Enlightenment unlocked the secrets of nonhuman nature; its reduction to the physical. As nature was being mastered by science, so it was believed that human nature too could be mastered. In terms of Rousseau’s writings on social and political themes, it is his Second Discourse, the brilliant Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (hereafter the Second Discourse, published in 1755) that he deals most clearly with people’s alienation from nature. Rousseau presents us with a hypothetical history of human beings in a pre-social condition: I see an animal less strong than some, and less active than others, but, upon the whole, the most advantageously organised of any; I see him satisfying the calls of hunger under the first oak, and those of thirst at the first rivulet; I see him laying himself down to sleep at the foot of the same tree that afforded him his meal; and behold, this done, all his wants are completely supplied. (Rousseau 2004, p 4)

It is the image of the forest that Rousseau portrays human beings inhabiting those “immense woods” in which they are “obliged to defend, naked and without arms, their life and their prey against the other wild inhabitants of the forest” (Rousseau 2004, p 4).

3.2.2 The “Savage Man” Unlike Hobbes’ view of natural man, Rousseau’s Savage Man, taken further back in history than Hobbes’, does not live in fear and anxiety, being in a position to fight or flee from other creatures. It is only as human beings move out of their natural condition that death is feared (Rousseau 2004, p 5). What is more, “In proportion as he becomes sociable and a slave to others, he becomes weak, fearful, meanspirited, and his soft and effeminate way of living at once completes the enervation of his strength and his courage” (Rousseau 2004, p 8). What human beings possess that animals do not is the ability to choose and to refuse their instincts. In addition, there is “another principle that has escaped Hobbes” and that is man’s compassion for his fellow man (Rousseau 2004, p 20). Whilst Rousseau argues that human beings, by seeing the forest as mere utility, have alienated themselves from the forest and thus from their very being, he is not arguing for human beings to return to the forest and live the life of Savage Man once more. In fact, a real return to nature would, Rousseau argues, result in the destruction of the human species. What Rousseau sets out to do, from the Second Discourse onwards, is to resolve the problem of people’s alienation from nature whilst also remaining in a social setting. This is perhaps why readers of Rousseau have perceived an ambiguity here: on the one hand Rousseau’s romantic conception of human beings in the forest roaming carefree and happy and, on the other, the need for people to live in human society. A clue to how this seeming dilemma can be resolved can be found in Rousseau’s other writings, especially his autobiographical work Confessions which he wrote while

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also writing his Second Discourse. In his Confessions, Rousseau gives an account of a trip to Saint-Germain in 1753. Whilst there he would take a walk in the forest: All the rest of the day wandering in the forest, I sought for and found there the image of the primitive ages of which I boldly traced the history. I confounded the pitiful lies of men; I dared to unveil their nature; to follow the progress of time, and the things by which it has been disfigured; and comparing the man of art with the natural man, to show them, in their pretended improvement, the real source of all their misery. My mind, elevated by these contemplations, ascended to the Divinity, and thence, seeing my fellow creatures follow in the blind track of their prejudices that of their errors and misfortunes, I cried out to them, in a feeble voice, which they could not hear: “Madmen! Know that all your evils proceed from yourselves!” (Rousseau 2005)

Upon his return to Paris, Rousseau would from then on take regular walks in a wooded park on the margins of the city: The manner of living in Paris amidst people of pretensions was so little to my liking; the cabals of men of letters, their little candor in their writings, and the air of importance they gave themselves in the world, were so odious to me; I found so little mildness, openness of heart and frankness in the intercourse even of my friends; that, disgusted with this life of tumult, I began ardently to wish to reside in the country, and not perceiving that my occupation permitted me to do it, I went to pass there all the time I had to spare. For several months I went after dinner to walk alone in the Bois de Boulogne, meditating on subjects for future works, and not returning until evening. (Rousseau 2005)

Why are these insights so significant? Previous to Rousseau’s own Confessions, the two greatest autobiographical works were undoubtedly St. Augustine’s Confessions and St Teresa of Avila’s Life of Herself. What both these works have in common is their focus on the religious experiences of the authors. Whilst this cannot be said on the whole for Rousseau’s autobiography, these references to walks in the woods ­certainly suggest a quasi-religious experience with such ­references as “ascended to the Divinity”; but these forests that Rousseau speaks of are not the wild, savage places that Rousseau envisions in his Second Discourse. Here we do not have a human being in savage form, seeking food and fending off other creatures. Rather we have a leisurely walk in well-groomed forests and municipal parks! However, in his wanderings he “sought for and found there the image of the primitive ages of which I boldly traced the history”; that is, he ­established a natural affinity between the forest of his Confessions and the primeval forests of his Second Discourse. Rather than calling for a return to Savage Man, Rousseau finds succour, indeed much more than this, spiritual enlightenment, in walking amongst the trees of his contemporary world: …in the forest’s recesses the solitary wanderer wanders through the recesses of time itself. The forest of Saint-Germain becomes, quite literally, the phenomenon of origins. (Harrison 1992, p 121)

In this sense, the forest or municipal park is not a place of utilité publique but mankind’s spiritual home. The forest is to be neither feared nor managed but,

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rather, to be a place for detachment from social ills, a communion with our nature and, therefore, good for our health and happiness. A return to the primeval forest is neither desirable nor possible, given Rousseau’s own hypothetical conception of this natural world. It is not possible to return to this natural state because we are talking of a prehistoric time: The faculties and characteristics that were not present in the pure state of nature but that, rather, were acquired over the many centuries that have elapsed since the close of that epoch are not natural. Among these acquired and therefore unnatural phenomena are nearly all the distinctive marks of humanity, including reason, language, sociality, self-consciousness, love, shame, envy, pride, vanity, and virtue. The wholly natural man, the inhabitant of the pure state of nature, was a veritable brute. (Cooper 1999, p 39)

3.3 Nietzsche and the Sacredness of Nature For Rousseau the forest is not a state in which to return, but a place for guidance; as providing an understanding of what it is to be human. This form of spiritual guidance is also moral: how are we to lead the good life? The forest as a place for communion with our human origins as well as providing moral guidance is a theme recurrent in the work of another philosopher and critic of the Enlightenment, the German Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Like Rousseau, Nietzsche is quite prepared to present a hypothetical history rather than a factual one. In the first essay of Untimely Meditations (1873), for example, Nietzsche is critical of the Hegelian David Strauss for writing a deconstructive Life of Jesus in 1835–1836. History, as Nietzsche points out in his second Untimely Meditation, is not to be understood as events in the past, but rather as representations of the past. Whilst history of the right sort is essential for life, history of the wrong sort kills life. By “life”, Nietzsche means the growth of a people, a community, a culture. The mistake Strauss made, Nietzsche argues, was to write the wrong kind of history, to deconstruct a monumental figure. Strauss, by attempting to present an objective, scientific history, kills history and kills religion by presenting it as false, crude, irrational and absurd. Life, for Nietzsche, is only possible if we have illusion; religion is only alive if we have illusion.

3.3.1 Nietzsche’s Criticism of Modernity If we are looking for recurrent themes in Nietzsche, then undoubtedly a key theme is his criticism of modernity, of the way we are now. This criticism rests upon two key features of modernity. Firstly, we have lost what he calls our “metaphysical solace” when faced with the certainty of death (Nietzsche 1999, section 23). Secondly, we have killed myth. In this sense, Nietzsche does not comes across at all as a postmodern existentialist, but more of a traditionalist calling out for traditional, indeed, ancient values. Nietzsche says that the modern man is a myth-less man; when, for

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example, we go to the theatre we can no longer experience the miracle which, for children, is a matter of course (Nietzsche 1999, section 23). We have lost the magic – in particular of art – because we have become critical-historical and deconstructive. History as it now serves in the world of modernity atomises. Historical events are merely historical facts, a vast encyclopaedia or, in more modern terms, a Wikipedia. Modernity lacks culture, it is a “fairground motley”, a “chaotic jumble” of confused and different styles (Nietzsche 1997, p 6). In Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra both loves and scorns the town known as “Motley Cow” because its citizens are cow (herd-) like and yet live in a chaotic jumble of different lifestyles. This is reminiscent of Plato’s criticism of democracy; lots of bright colours but nothing solid. Culture, therefore, represents a unity of the people, a Volk. What is wrong with modernism, with post-modernism? Why should being critical be seen in such a destructive light? Nietzsche argues that presenting us with a smorgasbord of lifestyle options that have no evaluative ranking of them produces a mood of confusion and cynicism. Rather than taking part in life we become spectators. The figure of the prophet Zarathustra is really Nietzsche. Like Rousseau, Nietzsche shunned the city and sought solace amongst the mountains and the woods. It is during Nietzsche’s own solitary walks that we encounter his religiosity. It is here that he finds communion with human beings’ true nature. An interesting experience occurred whilst Nietzsche was staying at Sils-Maria in the Upper Engadine mountains of Switzerland, which Nietzsche himself described: I shall now tell the story of Zarathustra. The basic conception of the work, the idea of eternal recurrence, the highest formula of affirmation that can possibly be attained – belong to the August of the year 1881: it was jotted down on a piece of paper with the inscription: ‘6,000 feet beyond man and time’. I was that day walking through the woods beside the lake of Silvaplana; I stopped beside a mighty pyramidal block of stone which reared itself up not far from Surlei. Then this idea came to me. (Nietzsche 1997, p 99)

3.3.2 Nietzsche’s “Religious” Experience This idea of eternal recurrence is described in a way that suggests an almost religious experience that Nietzsche had. For example, Alistair Kee pinpoints Nietzsche’s religiosity in his musings on the nature of “inspiration” (Kee 1999, p 118–123). He quotes a passage from Ecce Homo, which is worth quoting in full here: If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces. The concept of revelation, in the sense that something suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightning, with necessity, unfalteringly formed – I have never had any choice. An ecstasy whose tremendous tension sometimes discharges itself in a flood of tears, while one’s steps now involuntarily rush along, now involuntarily lag; a complete being outside oneself with the distinct consciousness of a multitude of subtle shudders and trickling down

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This “inspiration” is not conceived of in terms of ideas that Nietzsche himself invented, but rather it comes across as a mystical feeling “of power, of divinity” which is reminiscent of Rousseau’s reference to ascending “to the Divinity” during his solitary sojourn in the forest of Saint-Germain. When Nietzsche talks of his “conception” of Zarathustra he says, “It was on these two walks that the whole of the first Zarathustra came to me, above all Zarathustra himself, as a type: more accurately, he stole up on me…” (Nietzsche 1979, p 101). Nietzsche described this experience in a letter to his friend Peter Gast written in August 1881. He described his elation and his tears; “Not sentimental tears, mind you, but tears of joy, to the accompaniment of which I sang and talked nonsense, filled with a new vision far superior to that of other men.”5 In explaining the ­experience, Kee pre-empts one possible criticism: The description of the rock, “a mighty pyramidal block of stone which reared itself up”, suggests that Nietzsche had what would now be described, following Rudolf Otto, as a “numinous” experience. It sounds like a mystical experience in the sense of seeing into the heart of reality. There have been those who have “explained” the experience as the first symptoms of Nietzsche’s final illness. How convenient! How reductionist! And does that mean that we should discount all of his works written after Daybreak? (Kee 1999, p 121).

This leads Kee to conclude that “The significance of the incident at Surlei is that the idea of the eternal recurrence came to Nietzsche as a religious or metaphysical revelation, not as a scientific hypothesis” (Kee 1999, p 122). The character of Zarathustra tells us much about Nietzsche and his attitude to nature. Zarathustra spent ten years in the wilderness, a life of solitude apart from the company of wild beasts. However, solitude is not considered to be the natural state, but a necessary precondition, hence Zarathustra’s going down to the people below and his teaching of the Superman: The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman shall be the meaning of the earth! I entreat you, my brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of superterrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not. (Nietzsche 1961, p 42)

Nietzsche is a prime example of a product of the post-Christian era, yet also a critic of Cartesian Enlightenment ideals. Nietzsche’s case against Christianity follows in the footsteps of Feuerbach in arguing that human beings fail to recognise the real forces of nature at work by proposing a supernatural scheme. It’s Christianity’s rejection of nature, its perception of the natural appetites as sinful, that Nietzsche particularly scorns. Nietzsche is not against religion as such. In fact, you could say that he is more religious than most of his contemporaries. In The Gay Science, when From Sils-Maria, 14th August, 1881, cited in Klossowski (1985).

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Nietzsche recounts the tale of the madman who appears in the marketplace at noon and cries, “God is dead”, he is mocked by the crowd for they consider themselves too modern to be concerned with the existence of God. But the so-called madman is a deeply spiritual individual – not unlike Nietzsche himself – who considers religion to be of vital importance. The people of the town, the products of modernity, place their faith instead in science, in Enlightenment Cartesian rationalism. But this faith in science is, for Nietzsche, just as bad if not worse than religious faith, for now there is nothing at all to believe in, not even human dignity. Nietzsche does not reject religion, but hopes for a renewal of spirituality through an appreciation of the sacredness of nature. The Christian view of nature as evil, of the forest as a place of darkness, is seen by Nietzsche as the reason why human beings have become divorced from their own nature; their passions and appetites. It is Christianity’s repudiation of nature, particularly but not exclusively human nature, that Nietzsche attacks. Contact with nature puts us in touch with our natural appetites, our instincts. One of the most unfortunate legacies of the Christian approach to nature, of its physicophobia, is that we have become dis-integrated, atomised beings. “When will we complete our de-deification of nature? When may we begin to “naturalise” humanity in terms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature?” (Nietzsche 1974, p 169). We need, therefore, to re-examine our inner lives and get back in touch with nature if we are to avoid seeing our natures as sinful. Christian physicophobia is expressed through sins that are seen as deadly: pride, envy, greed, gluttony, sloth, lust, and anger. Yet Nietzsche sees these as all expressions of our natural instincts and, as such, we should develop techniques for developing self-control in the expression of these urges, rather than the suppression or attempted obliteration of them. To attempt to destroy one’s instincts is to destroy oneself and, by vilifying these essential urges that underlie our physical and mental health we become dissatisfied with ourselves, even hate ourselves. We then are driven to take revenge on ourselves and the world because of what we see as our own inadequacies. Whereas Augustin Berque looks to Japanese religious beliefs for physicophily, Nietzsche looks to the ancient Greeks, in particular to the god Dionysus. Also known as Bacchus, he is the patron deity of agriculture and the theatre, and is the Liberator (eleutherios) who, for Nietzsche, symbolises the fundamental and unrestrained force of music and intoxication over the Apollonian, or, indeed, Cartesian, emphasis on form and order. The Athenians’ worship of Dionysus is a recognition of the importance of the wild, passionate, and instinctive side of nature. Euripides’ The Bacchantes describes Dionysus as a wild, luxurious god with flowing locks who dresses and looks effeminate. The women who worship Dionysus, known as the Bacchants or Maenads, leave their husbands and children to honour the wine god during festivals by frolicking in the forests. The most common stories of Dionysus say that he was reared by nymphs in the mountains and forests. Nietzsche sees Dionysus as the opposite, also, of Pauline Christianity, of its physicophobia that finds the human body objectionable and full of sin. By contrast, Dionysus rejoices in nature, warts and all. As Nietzsche says in his autobiography, Ecce Homo, “Have I been understood? Dionysus versus the

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Crucified” (Nietzsche 1979, IV 9). Dionysus, like Christ, was a suffering god, for he was torn to shreds by the Titans, but suffering only takes place because we fail to acknowledge that we are part of a whole, whereas the Pauline Christ celebrates the individual soul at the expense of the physical. When Zarathustra says, “I counsel the innocence of the senses”, he preaches delighting in experiences in all natural things, rather than feeling an inadequate when confronted by it. It is not just Christianity that Nietzsche criticises for this attitude to nature, but it is the scientific materialism that replaces it that makes the world of nature lose its enchantment.

3.4 Conclusion Rousseau and Nietzsche provide us with two examples, and there are many more, of philosophers who have confronted the symptoms of modernity and presented a cure. What they had to say in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is as relevant today, as mankind continues with its hubristic enterprise of “conquering” nature by destroying it and making it a thing that has utility. The forests are more than just things to be used; they have a wonder and enchantment of their own. Poetry, awe, and wonder deserve a place in the modern world, and this need not imply ignorance.

References Berque A (1986) Le sauvage et l’artifice -Les japonais devant la nature. Editions Gallimard, Paris Cooper LD (1999) Rousseau, nature, and the problem of the goof life. Pennsylvania State University Press, Pennsylvania Biro A (2005) Denaturalizing ecological politics: alienation from nature from Rousseau to the Frankfurt school and beyond. University of Toronto Press, Toronto Descartes R (1968) Discourse on method. Penguin, London Garrard G (2003) Rousseau’s counter-enlightenment: a republican critique of the philosophers. SUNY, Albany Harrison R (1992) Forests: the shadow of civilization. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago Hobbes T (1981) Leviathan. Penguin, London Kee A (1999) Nietzsche against the crucified. SCM, London Klossowski P (1985) Nietzsche’s experience of the eternal return. In: Allison DB (ed) The new Nietzsche: contemporary styles of interpretation. MIT, Cambridge Nietzsche F (1961) Thus spoke Xarathustra. Penguin, London Nietzsche F (1974) The gay science. Vintage Books, New York Nietzsche F (1997) Untimely meditations, 2nd edn. CUP, Cambridge Nietzsche F (1979) Ecce homo. Penguin, London Nietzsche F (1999) The birth of tragedy. CUP, Cambridge Rousseau J-J (2004) Discourse on the origin of inequality. Dover Publications, New York Rousseau J-J (2005) The confessions of J. J. Rousseau. Penguin, London Solomon R (1988) Continental philosophy since 1750. OUP, Oxford, p 16

Part II

Chapter 4

Royal Forests – Hunting and Other Forest Use in Medieval England Della Hooke

Forests have always been an important resource for hunting and livestock in human culture, along with the use of timber and wood for fuel, building material and, later on, for industrial production. However, the use of forests as game reserves, typically for the Royal court, is first known in Europe after Roman times. Under Roman law, game had been regarded as res nullius, belonging to whoever killed it, regardless of where or on whose land it had been killed. Royal forests had been introduced into the Frankish kingdoms of continental Europe by the seventh century, thus limiting the idea of game as res nullius, and Anglo-Saxon kings were ever ready to follow suit. Hunting had become a pastime of the king and nobility in England certainly by the ninth century. It was, however, the Norman kings, after the conquest of England by William I (the Conqueror), who extended forest law and reserved game for the king and his followers.

4.1 Forests as Game Reserves “Forest” is derived from Old French forest, an adaptation of medieval Latin foresta/-is “land outside the area open to common easement”, with royal forest hunting-ground reserved to the king (Niermeyer 1976). It was in use in this sense by at least the seventh century. The adverb forus meant “out/side”, perhaps implying “land outside the manor”, the “outside” wood (but interpreted by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as land outside enclosure, i.e. “not fenced in” (OED 1979) (compare Chap. 12). It was, however, the Normans who introduced their own version of forest law into England. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle claims that immediately after the conquest of 1066, William I (the Conqueror). set up great game-reserves (dēorfrið ‘beast-woodlands’) and he laid down laws for them, that whosoever killed hart or hind he was to be blinded. He forbade [hunting] the harts, so also the boars; D. Hooke (*) University of Birmingham, 91 Oakfield Road, Selly Park, B29 7HL Birmingham, UK e-mail: [email protected] E. Ritter and D. Dauksta (eds.), New Perspectives on People and Forests, World Forests 9, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1150-1_4, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

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D. Hooke He loved the stags so very much, As if he were their father; Also he decreed for the hares that they might go free. His powerful men lamented it, and the wretched men complained of it But he was so severe that he did not care about the enmity of all of them; But they must wholly follow the king’s will (Peterborough Manuscript E 1086[1087]: Swanton 1996, p 221)

Thus began centuries of conflict.

4.1.1 The Location of Forests The earliest Norman forests are recorded in Domesday Book, the survey of lands and landowners compiled by William I (the Conqueror) soon after the conquest of 1066 (Williams and Martin 1992). This source also claims that Edward (who reigned 1042–1066) had granted three of his thegns exemption from tax for “guarding the forest” attached to Moorcroft, English Bicknor and Mitcheldean in the Forest of Dean before the conquest, seemingly implying that Dean had already been recognised as a forest, as had Kintbury in southern Berkshire (Darby 1977, p 195; DBk: fos 167 V, 61 V). His huntsmen had also previously held certain estates in areas that later became the forests of Chippenham, Savernake and Clarendon (VCH Wiltshire IV, 1959, p 392) and his “foresters” estates in what was to become the forests of Exmoor (Withypool in Somerset), Windsor (Woking in Surrey), on the edge of Wychwood, and Bampton in Oxfordshire (D Bk: fos 30, 98b, 154 V). However, while this may indicate some continuity of land use, it does not imply the prior existence of the stringent law and exclusivity that was put in place by the Norman kings. Worcestershire and Hampshire have the greatest number of references to forest in Domesday Book, although this record is not necessarily a comprehensive one (Darby 1977, p 195–207, Fig.  65) (Fig.  4.1). These were also the most heavily wooded counties of central and southern England, with woodland covering approximately 40% of their area (Rackham 1996). In Hampshire, only the south-eastern section of the county remained outside the various forests, and in Worcestershire only the north-western part of the county and the Vale of Evesham. These areas were not necessarily open intensively cultivated regions. In western Worcestershire, Weorgorena leah had been a woodland region in the hands of the powerful Church of Worcester, and the Hampshire Meon area was likewise largely in the hands of the Church. Forest law was never established over the south-eastern Weald, perhaps because again of ecclesiastical ownership by the powerful abbeys of Canterbury and Rochester. It is significant that many Norman forests in southern and central England were established where there was already a concentration of haga features – areas already noted for hunting (Hooke 1998a) – and the forests were generally located in areas of unfavourable terrain. By the twelfth century, the Norman kings had, however, greatly extended the area under forest law across the length and breadth of England, covering approximately

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Fig. 4.1  Forests and hays recorded in Domesday Book and later (based upon Cantor 1982 and Darby 1977)

one-fifth of the country. Predominantly moorland regions such as Exmoor, Dartmoor and the High Peak were now also confirmed as royal forests (Cantor 1982, p 60, Fig. 3.1; Cantor 1987, p 100) (Fig. 4.1). Although all forest areas had incorporated settlements and fields, they now took in far more heavily settled areas with widespread cultivation, including many areas bounding the forest cores where deer might seek food, extending forest law far beyond their own demesnes. Another related feature in Domesday Book is the haia (Fig. 4.1). These are found in vast numbers in the Welsh borderland extending from Cheshire south-wards

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into western Gloucestershire (Darby 1977, p 197, Fig. 65). These were sometimes described as enclosures for the capture of game, but may have varied enormously in size from simple temporary enclosures to “fixed” hays, sometimes several in one vill. At Hanley Castle in Worcestershire, an Anglo-Saxon haga bounded a manor with a Domesday haia; a medieval castle was to be built here beside the River Severn in the thirteenth century as the centre of the forest administration, suggesting a link not only between the haga and haia but also the later deer-park. However, “hay” was often later also used to describe an administrative division of a forest, and its meaning may have varied over time. By medieval times, especially during the reign of Henry I, the forests had been greatly expanded. Although the Hampshire forests were probably still the most ­extensive, Essex, too, had a vast area under forest law, largely on the clay soils of the southern part of the county. Other extensive forests were found in the Huntingdonshire-Northamptonshire region and NW Lancashire. The bounds of the forests were ­constantly fluctuating under baronial pressure, and by the fourteenth century, only remnants of the forests – usually the ancient forest cores – survived (Cantor 1982, p 60, 68, Figs. 3.1 and 3.4). The Forests of Hampshire, Pickering in east Yorkshire, Sherwood in Nottinghamshire and Inglewood in Cumberland stand out on Cantor’s maps. Only the Forest of the High Peak, “part of the patrimony of the Anglo-Saxon kings” (VCH Derbyshire I, 1905, p 397), appears to have remained anything like constant in its boundaries. Some forests passed in and out of royal ownership. The forests of the Welsh borderland, reserved to the Marcher lords, might be classed as forests, but usually when a forest passed into private hands it became classified as a chase.

4.1.2 Forest Rights and Administration Forests were administered by groups of officials whose duty it was to preserve the vert (the timber trees) and the game, notably the venison. At the head of administration of each royal forest was the warden or keeper overseeing other officers or ­foresters, with, below them, woodwards responsible for looking after the timber and the fallen wood (incidentally guarding the venison); below these were the unpaid officers: the verderers, regarders and agisters who by the thirteenth century were usually elected from among the knights of a county and had the duty of enforcing the system locally. Jurisdiction was carried out through a hierarchy of forest courts ranging from local attachment and swanimote courts and special Inquisitions to the great Forest Eyres, the supreme forest court that was held irregularly depending upon political circumstances (West 1964; Grant 1991, pp 35–71). Local offences included offences of waste, assart and purpresture – the felling of large trees, the removal of trees for cultivation and encroachment of any sort on the forest covert, respectively. Both the latter usually entailed illegal enclosure of land, often by the construction of a hedge and ditch around the parcel.

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Hunting in the forest was reserved for the king or those of his nobles to whom such rights had been granted. It was assuredly an aristocratic privilege. In spite of the threatened penalties for poaching, however, many attempted to illegally take game. Those presented at court were often members of the local landed gentry or even churchmen. In the Worcestershire forest of Feckenham, the Venison Rolls for the late thirteenth century show that offenders came from a wide cross-section of society but were predominantly local men. Many were country landowners of some standing, or their household servants and retainers, others from the lesser gentry, the prosperous peasantry or the Church – whether abbots or priors, monks or parish priests (West 1964, pp 95–108). This hunting in small groups or even in bands of a dozen or more was done, presumably, for pleasure and sport, but occasionally illegal hunting took place on a grand scale that may have been motivated by political aims, like a deliberate show of contempt towards the Crown in the High Peak of Derbyshire in the mid-thirteenth century (VCH Derbyshire I, 1905, p 405). There were others, however, from the lower ranks of the peasantry, ordinary freemen and villeins of the forest vills, some entirely without goods or chattels, who were genuinely seeking food. It is estimated that these formed a quarter or less of those accused (or were stealthier hunters, often using snares and traps rather than dogs). Some of these claimed to have merely “stumbled upon” a wounded deer in the forest or in their own fields; if hunting, they were usually alone or in pairs. Women were often presented for having received a stolen carcase or for having acted as accessories to their menfolk. In the Peak Forest, the poor were rarely punished. In Feckenham, there was also a surprising discrepancy between the numbers accused and those recorded as punished: in 1270 West (1964, pp 99–100) records that of 258 accused, 220 “did not come” when first called to court, and of the 82 of these who came later only 54 were fined and 28 remained in prison. Thus, only one-third of known offenders were brought to justice. Fines, too, varied according to the status of the accused; from an average half a mark for the ordinary peasant to as much as £1–50 marks for richer individuals, while paupers were often pardoned. Even if offenders against the vert were not always apprehended, and fines for assarting became increasingly seen as a form of rent collection rather than seeing this as a practice to be totally forbidden, the imposition of forest law did go towards protecting and even regenerating woodland in medieval England. Illegal clearance for cultivation or the establishment of habitations was readily fined, even if not actually banned. Alongside the granting of actual licences to assart, it provided the treasury with a source of income and also must have discouraged heedless clearance to some degree. The depredations of industry were also noted: it was claimed in 1270 that the Gloucestershire Forest of Dean was suffering from the removal of wood by charcoal burners and itinerant forgers, and pitprops were later being taken elsewhere as supports in coal mines (VCH Gloucestershire II, 1907, pp 268–269). The woodland, as in any private woodland, was managed, primarily providing timber for repairing castles and houses, fitting ships and making weapons for the army. It might be coppiced for charcoal

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and heating fuel: in medieval times royal forges were working iron in Dean and lead smelting was being carried out in the forest of the High Peak, the ore burnt on open-air hearths called boles, both requiring the kind of wood produced by coppicing. Other industries carried out in forests in the medieval period tended to be small scale, usually satisfying local demand and often seasonally carried out. Glassmakers, potters and lime-burners used wood and bracken for fuel, dyers wood ashes to dye their cloth, and rope-makers required bark (Birrell 1980). Management was often as coppice with standards (frequently oak), providing both timber and pole wood.

4.2 Medieval Hunting 4.2.1 Anglo-Saxon Hunting and Game Reserves The concept of forests as royal game reserves was established by Frankish kings within their kingdom at an early date. One early example occurs in a charter of Sigbert in AD 634–656 in the Ardennes region that clearly states that royal game was to be preserved in royal forests ([MGH, Capitularia, i. 86, Capitulare de Villis, c 36:] Gilbert 1979). The date at which this concept was introduced into England remains uncertain for it does not figure in Anglo-Saxon law until the eleventh century, in the (unreliable) laws of Cnut, which state that every man was free to hunt on his own land but not on royal reserves (Robertson 1925). There can, however, be little doubt about the Anglo-Saxon kings’ interest in hunting: Asser tells how King Alfred excelled in the art of hunting (Stevenson 1904) and Edward is said to have indulged in the sports of hunting and hawking every day after his devotions (William of Malmesbury: De gestis regum Anglorum 1.271). The pre-Conquest charter evidence for England provides evidence of hunting rights being granted as an appurtenance of some estates, usually in wooded regions, from the mid-eighth century, sometimes noted merely as uenationibus “hunting”, sometimes as uenationibus aucupationibus “hunting and fowling”, but such rights are much more rarely specified than those in fields, woods, pastures, etc. (Hooke 1989, 1998b, pp 154–160). The kings’ interest in hunting is also shown in three ninth-century Mercian charters which freed estates at Pangbourne in Berkshire, Upper Stratford in Warwickshire (a less reliable document), and Blockley in Gloucestershire: the first of these freed a pastu principum ‫ך‬a difficultate illa quot nos Saxonice dicimus festigmen nec hominess illuc mittant qui osceptros uel falcones portant aut canes aut cabellos ducunt ‘from the entertainment of ealdormen and from the burden which we call in Saxon fæstingmen; neither are to be sent there men who bear hawks or falcons, or lead dogs or horses’ (Sawyer 1968, S 1271; Birch 1885–99, B 443; trans. Whitelock 1955)

There is other evidence in charters for the location of game reserves – references to enclosures termed hagan on the boundaries of certain estates, usually those

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i­nitially under royal ownership. The term implies enclosure and protection and, as such, the word was also used to refer to defended enclosures within the newly defended burhs. In Europe, it was applied to defended settlements and enclosures, but its application to woodland enclosures, perhaps in the sense of “private enclosure”, is already apparent at an early date. By the tenth century, such enclosures formed part of the boundaries of, among others, the forests of Bramforst and Zunderhart (Metz 1954), invariably indicating a substantial boundary feature (Hooke 1981). Nineteenth-century German dictionaries note the term as meaning “the enclosure of a wood in which game is preserved” (Heyne 1877). The deer, especially, could have been enticed into such enclosures which may have offered protection to the does and fawns and ensured a supply of animals for hunting, the gates being closed off as necessary. The term is not uncommon in the charters of Anglo-Saxon England. At Tisted in Hampshire the bounds ran along the haga to the “old deer gate” (S 488, B 786) and other such gates are frequently mentioned. One feature in Longdon, Worcestershire, was described as a “wolf haga” (S 786, B 1282; Hooke 1990, pp 199–203), as if to keep out these predatory animals, and several others were associated with swine (e.g. South Hams, Devon: S 298, B 451; Pendock, Worcestershire: S 1314, B 1208; Hooke 1994; Hooke 1990, pp 264–268) (Fig. 4.2); others were termed “boundary” hagan. Many were clearly associated with woods and þone boc hagan of Meon, Hampshire (S 283, B 377), was clearly associated with beech-trees. Such enclosures may have been bounded by substantial wood banks, and the þone hwitan hagan “the white haga” along the southern boundary of Faccombe Netherton in Hampshire (S 689, B 1080) can still be identified today as a bank whitened by the flints in the surface soil. To the east, a haga ran for over 4 km along the boundary between of Crux Easton (an estate held by a huntsman in Domesday Book, with a later deer-park) and St Mary Bourne, often represented today by a clearly defined, if abraded, bank and ditch. Other woodbanks, similar to those noted in northern Hampshire, and described as hagan in charter-bounds, can still be identified along the boundaries of several southern Berkshire estates (Hooke 1989, 1998b, p 155, Fig. 52a). As haga also refers to the “haw” of the hawthorn, a hedge may have formed part of the feature, although a dead hedge of gathered thorns may have been more of an obstacle than one of living shrubs: the haganheies of Hatherton in Staffordshire (S 1380; Hooke 1983) may have been just such a hedge, but the haga invariably indicated a strong and well-marked boundary feature. The term shows marked concentrations only in woodland regions. In medieval times, deer-parks were sometimes licensed on the same sites as earlier hagan, as at Hanley Castle in the Worcestershire Forest of Malvern/Corse and probably at Grimley some kilometres to the north within Weogorena leah before the tenth century (S 1370, B 1139; Hooke 1990, pp 286–288). However, the bequest of a derhage at Ongar in Essex by Thurstan in the eleventh century may be the earliest specific mention of the haga as an actual deer-park (Thorpe 1865). On royal estates, too, it was the duty of the geneat to deorhege heawan “cut deerfences” (Liebermann 1903).

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Fig.  4.2  Pre-Conquest haga features in the area of Malvern Forest, Worcestershire (from Hooke 1989)

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4.2.2 Medieval Hunting Methods By medieval times, hunting had acquired a role that combined function with ideology. Queen Mary’s Psalter, which gives a reliable picture of English hunting c. 1,300 illustrates three techniques: • hunting on horseback with hounds, the trail initially picked up by a small hound • hunting “with bows and stable”, i.e. by means of stands where huntsmen waited with cross-bows or long-bows, the game being driven from cover by mounted beaters accompanied by a few hounds • the use of artificial hedges termed “hays” set up with nets or snares concealed in openings in the hedges, towards which the quarry would be driven by the hounds. Undoubtedly the first of these was regarded as the highest kind of sport. The skills need in the chase fostered those needed for the defence of the realm, and hunting developed a complicated iconography and symbolism. Huntsmen also continued to use hawks, especially the native peregrine falcon and the goshawk (Cummins 1988). Sources such as the Livre de Chasse by Gaston de Foix (Gaston Phoebus 1387–89), who ruled over two principalities in southern France and northern Spain in the fourteenth century, illustrate the animals of the hunt: deer, including the reindeer, ibex and roe buck, wild goat, hare and rabbit, wild boar, bear, wolf, fox, badger, wildcat and otter (C14: 1998; Bise 1984). The main beasts of the English forest were the red deer, the fallow deer, to a lesser extent the roe deer (all termed “venison”), and the wild boar. The fallow deer was re-introduced by the Normans, as it was suitable for keeping within restricted reserves (Fairbrother 1984). The hart (the mature male red deer) was the favourite animal to hunt although it could be very dangerous, especially during the rut (Baillie-Grohman and Baillie-Grohman 1909, pp 23–25). Being less strong, the chase of hinds was considered an inferior sport to that of the hart. Roebuck made good hunting all year, but the females should be left until after they had reared their kids. The wild boar was a desirable but dangerous target, able to slay a man “with one stroke as with a knife” (ibid., p 46). It was common in England in medieval times (now present again, from escaped stock, in some regions), and wolves survived in Scotland until about 1600. Foxes and hares were taken, but rabbits at first were carefully reared in warrens for their meat and fur. Wildfowl also continued to be taken, often with falcons (Abeele 1994). Deer were not only a source of sport. The venison was a major food in royal households, especially at banquets, but far more were taken in order to be used for royal gift or reward. It is interesting to note that while continental sources such as that of Gaston Phoebus detail hunting methods, English writings of the period appear to be more concerned with the rules for maintaining the etiquette of the hunt. These ensured that hunting remained the preserve of the elite (Rooney 1993).

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4.2.3 Hunting Iconography in Medieval Literature Hunting symbolism began to play a strong role in literature at an early date, but this was to be greatly embellished in medieval literature. It appears in Irish, Welsh and English literary sources. In Celtic Welsh mythology, in a late eleventhcentury tale contained in The Mabinogian, Pwyll, the prince of Dyfed, was out hunting in a place called Glyn Cuch when he suddenly found himself in the otherworldy realm of Annwn, the Celtic Hades. Here he came across a pack of snowwhite hounds (with red ears) running down a stag. He drove them off in favour of his own pack, but was confronted by Arawn, the grey-clad lord of Annwn, who perhaps symbolised the lord of winter. Apparently, the white hounds had been his, and he asked Pwyll as recompense to exchange places with him for a year. This Pwyll agreed to, and at the end of the year he won the annual dual with one Hafgan, whose name means “Summer Song”. This tale appears in the “Four Branches”, the oldest tales in the Mabinogian, rooted in pre-Christian Celtic mythology (Jones and Jones 1949). Hunting reappears as a theme again in the later tale of Gereint and Enid when Arthur and his retinue seek out the white hart sighted in the Forest of Dean. This tale recounts how the hunting stations were apportioned and the dogs loosed, the last of them Cafall, Arthur’s favourite dog, and how Arthur then cut off the head of the deer. White harts are relatively rare and have unsurprisingly attracted attention in both legendary and historical accounts of deer hunting. In the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight (Barron 1998), strongly influenced by French sources which were at their peak in the middle of the twelfth century, and overlaid with Arthurian imagery, hunting and forests again play a major role. Gawain was to visit the castle of Sir Bertilak in a northern Peakland forest before seeking out the green chapel where he would make amends for slaying the Green Knight at Camelot. He found the castle in “a forest that was wonderfully wild” where he was invited to stay and to take part in a number of hunting forays, each described in some detail (the curée, the “unmaking” or “breaking” of the beast, is described as in contemporary accounts: Baillie-Grohman and BaillieGrohman 1909, pp 174–180; Danielsson 1977), and the prey included both deer, wild boar and fox. Eventually, Gawain had to seek out the green chapel, which may have been a natural ravine near the Staffordshire/Cheshire border not far from The Roaches, where his fate would be decided. Hunting in some form actually appears in several saints’ lives. Baring-Gould (1872) recounts the legend, once inscribed beneath the cloister windows of Peterborough, recording the conversion of the unbaptised sons of King Wulfhere, Wulfade and Rufine, by St Chad. It was said to be a hart pursued by Wulfade that fled to St Chad for protection, “with quivering limbs and panting breath” it “leaped into the cooling stream” while Chad was praying by a fountain near his cell. He placed a rope around its neck and hid the hart beneath boughs of greenery. Upon the arrival of Wulfade the saint told him how this foreshadowed his own baptism: “As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so

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panteth my soul after thee, O God” (Psalm 42). Wulfade replied that he might believe this if the hart should reappear – at which point it burst from the thicket, convincing Wulfade and leading him to accept baptism. The procedure was repeated by his brother Rufine who likewise followed the hart to Chad and accepted the faith. Many other saints are accredited with safeguarding hunted animals: among the best known, St Giles, who was said to have been wounded by an arrow while protecting a hind being chased by the king near Nimes in the seventh century. Throughout many of the medieval legends runs the thread of the “wild hunt”, part of the mythology encountered in the Mabinogian story and in Sir Gawain. This is first recorded in the Peterborough Chronicle as early as the twelfth century (1127). In this tradition, a group of demonic huntsmen are accompanied by phantom hounds: Ða huntes wæron swarte and micele and ladlice, and here hundes ealle swarte and bradegede and ladlice, and hi ridone on swarte hors and on swarte bucces: ‘The huntsmen were black and huge and loathsome, and they rode on black horses and black he-goats, and their hounds were all black and broad-eyed and loathsome’ (Peterborough Chronicle 1127: Bennett and Smithers 1968)

Such demonic huntsmen accompanied by phantom hounds would be heard g­ alloping across the sky by night, either in pursuit of dead sinners or as the damned souls themselves, but they were always an omen of disaster – to hear them predicted plague, death or other calamity (Simpson and Roud 2000). This legend may owe much to the legends associated with Odin, brought to England by the Scandinavians. Space does not permit a thorough review of the literature and this section ends with a poem recorded in the late sixteenth century but much older, expressing the joyous side of hunting and forests: In summer time, when leaves grow greene, And blossoms bedecke the tree, King Edward wolde a hunting ryde, Some pastime for to see. With hawke and hounde he made him bowne, With horne, and eke with bowe; To Drayton Basset he tooke his waye, With all his lords a rowe (Percy 1996)

4.3 The Use of Other Forest Resources If forests prevented the common man from catching game, they did normally ensure the continuation of an ancient and essential tradition: the use of woodlands for seasonal pasture. Forest law protected the forest, but the commoners’ herds kept

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the woods open enough, by grazing, for the pursuit of game. Cattle, horses, even sheep, might be “agisted” or pastured in the woods, but it was pigs that were the main kind of domestic stock, taken, especially, to gorge upon acorns and beechmast at the end of the summer. The way that they rooted up the soil actually helped tree regeneration. Anglo-Saxon law protected timber trees, but specifically noted the value of woods for the support of swine: Gif mon þonne aceorfe an treow, þæt mæge XXX swina undergestandan, ‫ך‬wyrð undierne, geselle LX scill. If, however, anyone cuts down a tree that can shelter 30 swine, and it becomes known, he shall pay 60 shillings. (Ine, c.44: Attenborough 1922)

4.3.1 Forest Pasture Swine were so important that in some circuits of Domesday Book woodland was assessed by how many pigs it could support. Wood-pasture was often referred to as silva pastilis and this probably constituted the greater part of the Domesday woodland. In place-names, such woodland is likely to have been indicated by the common place-name lēah: the Weald was known as Andredesleah, a region that was said to extend 120 miles from east to west and 30 miles from north to south (AngloSaxon Chronicle 893: Swanton 1996, pp 84–85; Hooke 2008). Wooded areas were often linked in some regions to intensively cultivated zones by series of parallel roads and tracks, suggesting that the animals were actually driven considerable distances to their seasonal pastures (Everitt 1986; Hooke 1985). The early charter evidence shows this most clearly in the Kentish Weald. Here the woods, with their seasonal dens, may have been in common ownership within folk regions before being allotted to particular estates (Hooke 2011). The Anglo-Saxon Tiberius Calendar (BL BV) depicts, under the month of July, swine being taken into a wood by two men (Fig. 4.3). Some have queried whether the men, with spear, horn and dogs, might not have been huntsmen, but it was common practice in the Oxfordshire forest of Wychwood to carry a horn to summon the pigs, who had been trained at its call to return to their night-time sty for food (Kibble 1928). Again, in the Anglo-Saxon estate memoranda, it was the duty of the forester to “drive his herd to the mast-pasture” (Liebermann 1903). The practices of utilising wood-pasture within the forests can be reconstructed in considerable detail from medieval forest accounts. Under Norman forest law the owners of swine paid pannage dues for “agisting” or pasturing their swine in the forests while herbage dues covered the pasturing of horses and cattle, especially in the king’s parks and hays. In the Oxfordshire forest of Wychwood, such rights were enjoyed by the surrounding vills, a right even upheld in the nineteenth century when some woods had become privately owned. Sheep, cattle, horses and pigs were pastured, but goats were forbidden in later times, presumably because of the destruction they might cause (Schumer 1984).

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Fig.  4.3  Scene from the Cotton Tiberius Calendar for September (redrawn from the British Library manuscript)

4.3.2 Other Forest Products In Wychwood, in common with other forests, wood could usually be taken by surrounding vills in return for a payment made to the forester. This usually consisted of dead wood, although the tenants of one vill, Hordley, who were responsible for maintaining a bridge over the River Glyme, were also entitled to take timber (fully grown trees) for that specific purpose (Schumer 1984, p 41). In other forests, the gathering of nuts or honey by the foresters might be permitted. Studs for horses and vaccaries for cattle were also maintained in many forests, also making use of seasonal wood-pasture (temporary booths were set up for the herdsmen in the northern forests), while sheep were kept in the Derbyshire Peak for their milk as well as for their wool and meat. Some of the forest officers made a steady income from the dues they collected for pannage and common of pasture, forestage (the taking of wood, bracken, grass, reeds and heath from the forest) or chimenage, a toll exacted for passage through a forest from those not living there. These might be rendered as a money payment or in kind – like the wheat, goose and hen due from every house every year, given in return for permission to take housebote (wood for repair and building of houses) or paling for their corn and for collecting dead wood for fuel taken by the forester of fee of Wakefield in Northamptonshire in the reign of Henry III (Grant 1991, p 115). With such a lucrative source of income, fines were readily given out for offences – like allowing dogs to go unlawed. Many religious houses also enjoyed specific privileges, generally allowing them timber for building purposes, the collection of dead wood and undergrowth for fuel and, of course, grazing rights. The collection of leaves for fodder was an important right enjoyed by commoners – holly, elm, twigs, gorse and broom all provided fodder when grass was scarce or covered with snow. The northern forests, in particular, such as the south Pennines and the High Furness in Lancashire, provided such resources.

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4.4 The Decline of the Forests Forest law was universally hated because of the penalties and restrictions it imposed upon those who lived in a forest, and even the commoners’ privileges became seen as dependent on the king’s grace rather than an unquestioned right, requiring payments in the form of money, produce or labour, sometimes claimed as extortionate (Grant 1991). Once the forests had been extended, during the reign of Henry II, this became too much, and when his successors required funds for the Crusades, barons and knights took the opportunity to enforce a degree of disafforestation and the granting of rights and concessions. Opposition to the forest system increased in the mid-thirteenth century and, although Edward I attempted to enforce forest law with greater severity, new bounds were agreed in 1299 that effectively pushed most of the forests back to their original cores. Although in some areas this was not final, forest underwent decline after 1377 with the weakness of the Crown, and subsequent Tudor and Stuart kings were unable to reinstate the earlier situation in spite of their ambitions. By this time, the royal forests were not seen so much as hunting preserves, but as sources of timber, especially for ship-building. Several surveys were instituted which attempted to assess the timber remaining, and enquiries were made into the loss of land by assarting and through the felling of timber (Cantor 1987, pp 100– 107), but by this time the character of the forest as a hunting preserve had weakened beyond recovery. The importance of the collection of income from the remaining forests (through both licences and amercements) increased as their hunting role diminished. Growing populations and a demand for land led to many forests being cleared and ultimately disafforested (i.e. they were released from forest law) in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ironically, it was the demands of developing industry that helped to preserve some of the forest woodlands, when charcoal was needed for the growing iron industry. Prodigious amounts of wood were needed to fuel the charcoal-fired furnaces that had replaced bloomeries by the seventeenth century, especially in the forests of Dean and Wyre, and new woods were being planted for coppicing in Coalbrookdale, on the bounds of the old forests of Shirlett and Wrekin (Hooke 1999). Some other forests or former forests, like Needwood in Staffordshire, survived until the period of agricultural improvers in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century. Some, indeed, escaped the pressures of “agricultural improvement”, and Cannock Chase, an area of poor infertile soils in the same county, remained a region of heathland and trees until it succumbed to the new plantations of conifers established by the newly founded Forestry Commission after the First World War. Few forests, however, survive in anything resembling their former state although the moorland forests, by their very nature, have changed little. Of the former wooded forests much less remains. Dean and Wyre are still wooded, but again much of the area of each has been planted with conifers, and most consist of nothing more than scattered woods and plantations on private land (such as Hatfield – now owned by the National Trust – and Wychwood); Epping is but another fragment, like Hatfield, of the once extensive forests of Essex. The New Forest in Hampshire (Figs.  4.4 and 4.5) perhaps preserves the early forest character more

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Fig. 4.4  Scene in the New Forest, Hampshire (photo: D. Hooke)

Fig.  4.5  Ponies in the New Forest, Hampshire, helping to maintain a wood-pasture landscape (photo: D. Hooke)

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than most: its wood-pasture habitat has been kept open by the grazing of hundreds of forest ponies, together with more limited numbers of cattle and pigs, and it ­preserves the mosaic of open woods, veteran trees, grassy lawns and open heaths that would have been found in a medieval woodland forest.

4.5 Hunting in Post-medieval Times Reduction of the area under forest continued from late medieval times, and the ­forest became less of a hunting reserve than a source of timber. Of those forests remaining, most were to be disafforested under the Enclosure Acts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and especially under the final Enclosure Act of 1857. Only a few retained anything like their medieval aspect, as in the New Forest of Hampshire, a wood-pasture habitat indeed. Here, the woods and commons still ­provide pasture for domestic stock, especially ponies. Hunting itself did not die – it was to continue in the rural countryside. The English love of hunting as a sport was perpetuated among the landed gentry in the rural countryside, many of them newcomers to such a position, but anxious to absorb all that accompanied such a role. Indeed, the archaic property qualifications that gave the right to hunt were not abolished until 1831. “Hunts” were set up across the country, a few like the Bilsdale in Yorkshire as early as the sixteenth century, but increased in popularity in the eighteenth century, especially in the “shire” counties of the east midlands where large estates still existed. Again, these hunts had their own rules of etiquette and costume. By this time, the normal quarry was the fox, formerly regarded as mere ­“vermin”, but now the only prey left in much of England for hunting on horseback with hounds; deer hunting was confined to certain parts of the country such as Somerset (hares were also taken by various methods). Deer stalking was to gain a new prominence, however, in Scotland. The shooting of deliberately raised birds – mainly partridges and pheasants – became an additional focus on Victorian landed estates, reared within the woods that had mostly by now passed into private ownership. New features appearing in the landscape included game coverts – patches of woodland, often of conifers, scattered across open ground to provide places in which game birds could be reared and also provide cover for fox earths etc. (some of which were deliberately constructed); from these beaters would force out the animals for the actual hunt. Huge house parties would gather at weekends, and many country houses were extended to allow for the visits of fellow gentle families and their numerous retainers. Riding across fields etc. obviously caused much social resentment, especially as commoners were still being heavily fined or transported for poaching. The First World War brought about major social change: the deference of the master-servant relationship was destroyed, and increasing taxes led to the breakup of large estates and the destruction of many country houses (Hooke 2006). Today (since 2004), the hunting of animals with hounds is no longer legally permitted in England.

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On the Continent, hunting often remains a normal part of rural life, and specialist huntsmen remain part of the rural community. Greater areas of woodland and heathland survive in many countries, and pressure upon the land has often been less intensive than in England. The wild animals of the chase have also survived, and there have been controversial attempts to reintroduce others, such as bears and wolves, into some countries where they had become extinct (wolves in Sweden, for instance, or bears in Poland). It is still possible in some regions to imagine what the medieval hunting forest would have looked like, and the memories – or the realities – of the hunting culture have not been entirely erased by modern progress.

4.6 Conclusion As the early forests were lost, and as timber production became the main asset, new plantations began to be made on country estates, with rapidly growing softwoods replacing much of the earlier hardwoods. Such planting gained new momentum once the Forestry Commission had been founded in 1919, after the First World War, with swathes of conifers blanketing hillsides and valleys, aimed at meeting timber needs for the foreseeable future. The role of forests as hunting areas had long since gone, and deer were not conducive to the preservation of timber. Today, the word “forest” has quite lost its early legal meaning and conveys, rather, the image of an extensive area of land covered with trees. Plantations are usually under special management, often in the care of the Forestry Commission, private landowners or local district councils, managed primarily for timber but also often offering facilities for recreation. They do, however, continue to provide valuable habitats for wildlife.

Relevant Manuscripts Cotton Tiberius Calendar, British Library, London, BV, part 1 Livre de la Chasse, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, MS. fr. 616 (Gaston Phoebus, 1387–89: see facsimile edition 1998) Master of Game, British Library, London, Cotton MS. Vespasian B. XII (c. 1420) Peterborough Chronicle, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Laud Misc. 636 (C12) ­(published version below: Bennett and Smithers 1968) Queen Mary’s Psalter, British Library, London, MS. 2B VII (early C14)

References Attenborough FL (1922) The laws of the earliest English kings. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 50–51 Baillie-Grohman WA, Baillie-Grohman F (eds) (1909) The master of game: the oldest English book on hunting, 2nd edn. Chatto and Windus, London

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Baring-Gould, Revd S (1872) Lives of the saints, vol 3. John Hodges, London, pp 33–35 Barron WR (ed and trans) (1998) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 2nd edn. Manchester University Press, Manchester Bennett AW, Smithers GV (eds) (1968) Early Middle English verse and prose. Clarendon, Oxford, 204 Birch W, De Gray (1885–1899) Cartularium saxonicum. Whiting & Co, London Birrell JR (1980) The medieval English forest. J Forest Hist 24(2):78–85 Bise G (1984) The hunting book by Gaston Phoebus, trans: Tallon JB. Regent Books, London Cantor L (1982) Forests, chases, parks and warrens. In: Cantor L (ed) The English medieval landscape. Croom Helm, London Cantor L (1987) The changing English countryside 1400–1700. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London Cummins J (1988) The hound and the hawk. St Martin’s, New York, pp 187–194 Danielsson B (1977) William Twiti, The art of hunting. Stockholm studies in English XXXVII. Almqvuist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, pp 17–20 Darby HC (1977) Domesday England. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Derbyshire VCH I (1905) The Victoria History of the county of Derby, Vol I. In: Page W (ed), Constable & Co, London Everitt A (1986) Continuity and colonization: the evolution of Kentish settlement. Leicester University Press, Leicester Fairbrother JR (1984) Faccombe Netherton. Archaeological and historical research I. City of London Society, London Gilbert JM (1979) Hunting and hunting reserves in medieval Scotland. John Donald, Edinburgh, pp 10–11 Gloucestershire VCH II (1907) The Victoria History of the county of Gloucestershire, Vol II. In: Page W (ed), Constable & Co, London Grant R (1991) The royal forests of England. Alan Sutton, Stroud Heyne M (ed) (1877) Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm. Vierten Bandes, zweite Abteilung. S Hirzel, Leipzig, p 151 Hooke D (1981) Anglo-Saxon landscapes of the West Midlands: the charter evidence, Br Archaeol Rep, British series 95. British Archaeological Report, Oxford, pp 234–235 Hooke D (1983) The landscape of Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire: the charter evidence. Department of Adult Education, the University of Keele, Keele, Staffs: 78–82, fig 2vi Hooke D (1985) The Anglo-Saxon landscape. The kingdom of the Hwicce. Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp 75–93 Hooke D (1989) Pre-conquest woodland: its distribution and usage. Agric Hist Rev 38:113–129 Hooke D (1990) Worcestershire Anglo-Saxon charter-bounds. Boydell, Woodbridge Hooke D (1994) Pre-conquest charter-bounds of Devon and Cornwall. Boydell, Woodbridge, pp 105–112 Hooke D (1998a) Medieval forests and parks in southern and central England. In: Watkins C (ed) European woods and forests. Studies in cultural history. CAB International, New York, pp 19–32 Hooke D (1998b) The landscape of Anglo-Saxon England. Leicester University Press, London Hooke D (1999) The role of the historical geographer today. Norsk Geogr Tidsskr 53(2):61–70 Hooke D (2006) England’s landscape. The West Midlands: English Heritage. HarperCollins, London, pp 145–149 Hooke D (2008) Early medieval woodland and the place-name term leah. In: Padel OJ, Parsons DN (eds) A commodity of good names. Essays in honour of Margaret Gelling. Saun Tyas, Donington, pp 365–376 Hooke D (2011) The woodland landscape of early medieval England. In: Higham NJ, Ryan, MJ (eds) Place-names, language and the Anglo-Saxon landscape. Boydell, Woodbridge, pp 143–176 Jones G, Jones T (eds) (1949) The Mabinogion. Dent, London Kibble J (1928, repr. 1999) Wychwood Forest and its border places. Wychwood, Charlbury: 10

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Liebermann F (1903) Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, Vol I. Max Niemeyer, Halle, pp 444–455 Metz W (1954) Das ‘gehagio regis’ der Langobarden und die deutschen Hagenortsnamen. Beitrage zur Namenforschung in Verbindung mit Ernst Dickenmann, herausgegeben von Hans Krahe, Band 5. Carl Winter, Heidelberg, pp 39–51 MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica. i. 86, Captula de Villis, c 36 Niermeyer JF (1976) Mediae latinitatis Lexica minus. EJ Brill, Leiden, pp 443–444 OED (ed) (1979) The compact edition of the Oxford English dictionary, vol 1. Book Club Associates, London, p 442 Percy T (1996) Reliques of Ancient Poetry, vil. Ii. Routledge, London, p 76 Phoebus Gaston (1387–89) Livre de la chasse. Facsimile edition: The hunting book of Gaston Pebus, with comment and trans by Thomas M, Avril F, Schlag W (1998). Harvey Miller, London. Rackham O (1996) Trees and woodland in the British landscape, revised edition. Phoenix, London, pp 50–51 Robertson AJ (ed and trans) (1925) The laws of the kings of England to Henry I. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 215, c.80 Rooney A (1993) Hunting in medieval English literature. Boydell, Woodbridge, pp 8–11, 18–20 Sawyer PH (1968) Anglo-Saxon charters: an annotated list and bibliography. Royal Historical Society, London Schumer B (1984) The evolution of Wychwood to 1400: pioneers, frontiers and forests. Department Engl Local Hist Occas Pap No 6. Leicester University Press, Leicester, pp 41–44 Simpson J, Roud S (eds) (2000) A dictionary of English folklore. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p 390 Stevenson WH (ed) (1904) De rebus gestis Aelfredi: Asser’s life of King Alfred. Clarendon, Oxford, p 20, 59: De rebus gestis Aelfredi c.22, 76 Swanton M (ed and trans) (1996) The Anglo-Saxon chronicle. Dent, London Thorpe B (1865) Diplomatarium Anglicum AEvi Saxonici. Macmilland and Co., London, p 574 von den Abeele B (1994) La fauconnerie au moyen age: connaissance, affaitage et medicine des oiseaux de chasse. Klincksieck, Paris West J (1964) The forest offenders of medieval Worcestershire. Folk Life 2:80–115 Whitelock D (1955) English historical documents, I, c. 500–1042. Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, p 5 William of Malmebury (c. 1090–1143) (1964) De gestis regum, edited from manuscripts by William Stubbs, Kraus repr. Millwood, NY 271 Williams A, Martin GH (eds) (1992) Domesday book. A complete translation (Alecto Historical Editions). Penguin, London Wiltshire VCH IV (1959) The Victoria History of the county of Wiltshire, Vol IV. In: Crittall E (ed), Constable & Co, London

Chapter 5

Forests as Commons – Changing Traditions and Governance in Europe Christopher Short

Forests and commons have had a close relationship in Europe for at least a ­millennium and maybe much longer. As shown in the other chapters of this book, the relationship between humans and forests and forest landscapes is ­complex and involves many inter-related factors. Similarly, commons are also complex institutions and exist across the world in a wide range of situations regarding locally developed governance and management systems of many different natural resources. For many people commons remain associated with Hardin’s theory concerning the “Tragedy of the Commons” (1968), in which he assumed that local users of a natural resource are unable to formulate governance and management structures concerning their own choices that took into account the long-term sustainability of the resource itself. As a result, Hardin articulated that the tragedy was that the resource would inevitably become degraded in such situations and that the solution was private or public ownership. However, across Europe many forests have for a very long period of time successfully been managed as commons, just as they have in many other parts of the world. As a result, this chapter has three main aims; first, it will provide an introduction to the various types of commons before going on to link the issue of commons to the traditional forests and forest landscapes of Europe. Thirdly, it will look at how the role of forests and forest landscapes has changed and how it may change further in the future.

5.1 Introduction to the Commons Within the commons debate there is much discussion, and confusion, associated with terms such as common-pool resource or a common-property resource. Unhelpfully, within the literature both might be abbreviated and referred to as a “CPR”, C. Short (*) Countryside and Community Research Institute, University of Gloucestershire, Oxstalls Campus, Oxstalls Lane, Langlevens Gloucester, UK e-mail: [email protected] E. Ritter and D. Dauksta (eds.), New Perspectives on People and Forests, World Forests 9, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1150-1_5, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

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but there is a clear distinction between them. According to Edwards and Steins (1998) and Ostrom (1990 and 2005) the key characteristics of a common-pool resource are that an area is used by multiple-users or user groups, and that when one user exercises their use they in affect subtract benefits from another user. Finally, within a common-pool resource it is difficult to exclude users, often as there is no user rights attached to a specific group, a characteristic that is best described as a “free for all”. Such areas are not commons, and Hardin was really referring to an “open access” regime and not commons as his title suggests. Commons are almost always associated with common property where there are identifiable rights. Steins and Edwards (1999) suggest that by terming a resource as a “property” there is a series of benefits to which rights can be associated. Property rights is used as a term to refer to the social institutions, that may have evolved over centuries, that are attached to the resource as specific user groups govern and manage the benefits arising from it. Thus, across Europe there are many examples of common property resource where the rights to the resource are generally shared according to prescribed regulations (legislation as well as local custom and practice) and are exclusive to a well-defined set of people (the rights­ holders) that ensure the exclusion of other potential beneficiaries (Dolšak and Ostrom 2003; Short 2008). In these situations, the rightsholders operate largely as a club as well as the institutions and, according to McKean (1992), the associated rules developed to manage the resource equate to a “club good”. As this chapter will reveal the land itself may be in public or private ownership, but such land can still be a common through the presence of rights associated with products or benefits arising from that land. In the case of forests and forest landscapes, the benefit that would have arisen from these areas would have most universally been timber, either for construction or as fuel. However, there is considerable variation across Europe with communities, farmers and foresters each revealing their own traditions and customs in the way they use and govern forests and forest landscapes. For example, these include leaf litter as household bedding, the use of resin in the slaughter of pigs and mosses and lichens in traditional medicine. Not in all of these cases will these uses be reinforced by rights, creating a further lay of investigation into the division of rights from that of customary usage. In many cases this cannot be verified with any certainty, but there are examples in the UK and Europe where rights appear to be been recognized or granted as part of wider discussions between local communities and land owners or government representatives. A more recent development in forests and forest landscapes that is reflected in the commons is a more complex picture where different types of uses, both extractive as in the case of timber and non-extractive as in the case of landscape, are associated with different user groups and are managed under a mixture of property rights regimes. These developments result in presence of complex or multiple use commons that challenge previous traditions and customs and require new institutional frameworks to function. This has largely been the result of two centuries of change in which Europe has experienced dramatic social, economic and technological change, most especially during the Industrial Revolution.

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5.2 History of Forests as Commons in Europe The changes experienced throughout Europe as a result of the Industrial Revolution have a major impact on the social, economic and technological structure of this continent and as a result seriously challenged the governance and management of commons as well as their existence. Before that time forests, with extensive areas of woodland within them, would have extended over most of Europe both North and South. Within these forests there would have been areas of cultivation and habitation alongside open pasture and smaller areas of enclosure, as well as areas cleared by wind or disease (Green 2010). Therefore, as Vera (2000) confirms, it is not true to say that there would have been a natural closed canopy of trees extending across Europe. The decline of commons, especially in northwest Europe, has been well documented (see De Moor et al. 2002; Bravo and De Moor 2008) and only small pockets remain, with the most extensive mostly in mountainous regions. However, forests, along with other resources such as pasture, irrigation systems and other forms of agriculture, remain and are ­governed and managed by user groups or community-based institutions. This chapter is therefore set within a wider context that has promoted forestry as socially, economically and environmentally more important that the production of timber alone. The “Forestry Principles” agreed by UNCED during the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 included social, economic, ecological, cultural and spiritual values. Furthermore, much of European policy has been to sustain forests intergenerationally. Thus, while multiple use of forests is not new the notion of forests as commons with high levels of tradition, custom and practice remain a challenging notion to the Industrial Revolution’s preferred approach to natural resources of privatisation and commodification, and in the case of forests, clearance for other uses, mainly agriculture.

5.2.1 Northwestern Europe and the Alps Within Europe, the Alps form a distinct social, environmental and economic area, and it is in areas such as this that commons have survived. Merlo (1995) notes that from as early as the Middle Ages written rules were “laid down to regulate the social and economic life of village community members” with common forests, as well as pasture, at the heart of the communities in these alpine areas. The variety of uses and rights in this area provide us with a snapshot of what it may have been like across a much wider landscape and the level of attachment communities are likely to have had with the surrounding forests. For example, oral history work by Gimmi and Bürgi (2007) in the Swiss Alps revealed that members of mountain communities used larch needles for livestock bedding, filled mattress with beech leaves, cut the bark on coniferous trees to access the resin that, when added to hot water, prevented knifes from becoming blunt when taking the bristles of slaughtered pigs, and used mosses and lichens in traditional medicine and a wide variety of fruits and berries for food. Similarly, Andersson et al. (2005) found evidence of tree marking and the use of the inner bark of Scots Pine as food in areas of northern Sweden.

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The social and economic changes associated by the Industrial Revolution have resulted in modern state structures and economic development that, according to Merlo (1995), meant that only 5%, some 200,000  ha, of Italy’s alpine forests remains. This is partly because in these locations a combination of factors, ­including strong economic base, well-rooted ethical and cultural values as well as good fortune, were able to resist the more main stream economic changes. Nevertheless, these remnants of communal forests have, to some extent, shown themselves to be effective in and adaptable to various stages of socio-economic development. Merlo (1995) reports that up until 1700, the financial returns from communal forests were largely from sales of timber and that these were pooled to support the village community through education, water supply and health care. Some areas even became independent from feudal landlords on the basis of the wealth accumulated as a result. However, with the Industrial Revolution and the consequential establishment of modern states with a more centralized approach to governance meant that communal structures were broken up and divided between public or central ownership and private property. Bürgi and Stuber (2010) report that while these areas are visually similar from an aerial point of view, the loss of the diverse management within the Swiss Alps outlined above is having a much heavier impact on the biodiversity of these areas. In addition, since the various practices appear to have a strong regional diversity, for example only one area used larch needles for bedding, it is likely that the local ecology also varies. Gerber et al. (2008) report on the role of common pool resource institutions in the implementation of Swiss natural resource management policy. They too recognize that in a different part of the Alps the twentieth century witnessed the establishment of the “concept of exclusive property rights” and the implementation of wide spread “public policies”. They compare the impact of these changes to that of the enclosure movement in England, with the associated disappearance of not just the areas themselves, but the legal definition of “common” or “collective property”. The result being that the Federal Swiss Civil Code of 1912 incorporates only a few examples of common or collective property (Gerber et al. 2008). They go on to note that the result of this individualization of resource units was greater heterogeneity in management practices which proved difficult to management in terms of issues such as biodiversity, landscape and hydrological management, an issue that will be picked up in the next section. The response of the Swiss is in line with the majority of NW Europe with the introduction of a standardized approach but with pockets of continued collective management within the remnants of previously wider forest landscapes.

5.2.2 Southern Europe Southern Europe responded in a slightly different way to the Industrial Revolution, when compared to the northwestern parts of Europe described thus far. Reporting on the situation in Northern Spain, Lana Berasain (2008) uses the example of

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Navarre on the western border with France, where 44% of the land remains communal property, largely as a result of the arrangements with the Spanish government concerning autonomy in the Basque region. He summarizes the changes in commons in a similar way to previous commentators with the gradual unpicking of the communal structures throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the “rationalist and individualistic discourse of Enlightenment took hold” and dismantled communal property across Europe and Latin America. However, he notes that in Spain some upheld the collective approach as a positive thing with social benefits. These social benefits are now being recognized as fundamental in the maintenance of a managed forest landscape that includes areas of open pasture in reducing the risk of landscape-scale high intensity fires that would cause major damage to the ecosystem and nearby communities. Brouwer (1995) cites the example of Portugal where the commons, locally called baldios, were taken under state control in the mid 1930s, but returned to community under legislation passed in 1976 following the leftist military coup in 1974. Lana Berasain (2008) suggests that while commons were ubiquitous across all of Europe from the Middle Ages onwards, there were very different models for assigning rights to the resource, developing governance structures and the relationship with external powers. In supporting this notion, Lana Berasain cites the work of De Moor (2002), Sundberg (2002) and Winchester (2002). Even within his Naverre case study he finds two broad models of communal land tenure that developed from different environmental and social conditions. The first is a “closed community linked to agricultural production” and the second “an open community with less restrictive access rights” with neither system designed to “repair injustices but to maintain a balance” within a fragile society (Lana Berasain 2008). In his detailed analysis of the changes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries he concludes that commons persisted because of the social link to the community. However, while the division of resources and associated rights during the pre-industrial period was very unequal following the structural changes commons became synonymous with the poor and equitable use. The current situation in Spain outside the Basque area, where the highest concentration of commons are to be found, is broadly similar with two types of commons present in mountainous areas such as those within the Castilla y León region which includes the mountain range of the Cordillera Cantabrica. The commons within this area are seen as “public” lands and fall into two categories, those which are close to and the responsibility of the local community and those higher areas that are the responsibility of the municipality.

5.2.3 United Kingdom A similar conclusion is reached when reviewing the literature surrounding the commons the United Kingdom. However, some historians, such as Neeson (1996) suggest that commons were of far greater significance to social relations and

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production in eighteenth-century England than has been recognized by many historians and that this challenges the acceptance by many agrarian historians of the dominance of agrarian capitalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Short and Winter (1999) go on to suggest that as feudal relics, commons were, of course, concerned with production but were hardly productivist in the capitalist sense and would therefore be more accurately described as a “constrained productivism”. Productivism was the issue at the heart of the debate over enclosures. However, this was constrained by the commons system itself, because the use of commons was surrounded by conditions and a plurality of rights and rights holders which together seriously held back the release of maximum productive potential of the common land. That they survived at all reinforces the view that the links to the social and cultural structures of the community remained stronger than the forces of change. Edwards and Steins (1998) provide an interesting case study of the New Forest in southern England, an area of some 38,000 ha that was given its name by William the Conquer or in 1079 when he designated it a Royal Forest with the wild animals protected for his hunting (compare Chap. 4). Ownership has remained part of the Crown estate ever since meaning that it is in public ownership, but the majority of this land remains subject to common rights. These rights are spread among around 1,500 people who live within a defined area and relate to the taking of the products of the land, such as timber and turf for fuel and rights for grazing. The latter rights remain crucial to the management of the area, and around 200 commoners still turn out cattle and horses. Before bringing the discussion up-to-date, it is worth considering the impact of the forest and forest landscape on both individuals and communities. This has at least two dimensions: first through the close spatial proximity of the forest landscape to the community, and second the level of dependence from the individuals within the community on the natural resources provided by the forest. Other chapters discuss the spiritual and cultural aspects associated with forests. However, it is worth considering here the imprinting of a repeated mundane task conducted regularly over months, years and passed down through generations. The embedding within both the individual and community becomes an attachment to the land. In this sense, the ­forest, life and knowledge were intertwined and this led to a well developed local ecology. It is important to bear this in mind when the chapter moves towards the present day, as Wylie (2007) in his book on landscape suggests the specific detail of each place, its current configuration as well as its past and the unique arrangements, relationships and events that have shaped it need to be understood and considered. Nevertheless, the New Forest, like some of the other examples outlined in this section, also reflects a more recent change that will be discussed in the final two sections of this chapter. This change concerns the move from single natural resource-based commons to complex commons through the addition of new functions such as public recreation (the area has a population of over ten million within 1 h drive), nature conservation (much of the New Forest has international designations for wetlands and lowland heath), landscape (the area has recently been designated as a National Park) and heritage (a result of millennium of human activity). All of these functions now sit alongside the traditional function of “living off ” the products provided by the open and forested areas of the New Forest.

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The second area to be discussed in the final two sections concerns the shift across Europe from “government” towards “governance”, something that is as true of forestry as other land based industries. Governance is a term that has been deployed with increasing frequency in recent times to describe “the development of governing styles in which boundaries between and within public and private sectors has become blurred” (Stoker 1998, p 17). In addition to this blurring of boundaries, Stoker identifies the significance of autonomous self-governing networks of actors and government playing a role of steering and guiding as well as, or in addition to, legislative provision. Thus, the term is of particular relevance for commons where custom and practice is so important. Moreover, governance has much to do with breaking with hierarchical centralism through incorporating multiple stakeholders (Healey 1998), a central issue in the management and planning of commons and forests and forest landscapes.

5.3 How the Role and Use of Forests is Changing By returning to Merlo’s (1995) work on the northern Italian Alps it is possible to highlight the change in forestry that has occurred over the past 20–30 years. Merlo found that sustainable communal forestry had four main elements to it: Income from the production of timber and other forest products Water management and soil protection Environmental and landscape enhancement Recreation and tourism (adapted from Merlo 1995, p 5)

This list reflects a number of common factors across much of Europe; issues of rural depopulation in isolated regions, or re-population in less isolated areas but by people who are less involved in land-based industries (timber and agriculture), due to growing mechanization and better paid work in urban areas. As a result, forests are no longer part of the ordinary life of the local community in terms of everyday products and income. Instead, there is the emergence of new functions (as a recreational space) and new concerns (about the environment) which indicates that forests are increasingly complex with a range of objectives associated with decisionmaking. Therefore, there is an increased opportunity for competing objectives. It also reveals that forests and forest landscapes are no longer areas of maximizing timber output (often called the “productivist approach”), but now have a clear “post-productivist” strategy that incorporates a range of public or non-market benefits as well as traditional products such as timber and other forest products. This reflects the UNCED “Forestry Principles” and much European sustainable forestry policy. Mather et al. (2006) reviewed the post-productivist literature and concluded that this fits forestry far better than agriculture. In the previous section, work by Short and Winter (1999) highlighted the “constrained productivism” of commons and it is this that lies at the heart of their current interest. Constrained productivism is precisely what is required by many other users of forests and commons, offering

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an example not only of multiple land use but also as an arena for the articulation of non-productivist demands on the countryside. The role and significance of the non-market benefits of forestry has been the focus of a number of reviews in the UK and Europe (Willis et al. 2000, 2003; Slee et al. 2004). Like Merlo’s work in northern Italy and Edwards and Steins study of the New Forest, the studies identify a range of other activities connected with forests and forest landscapes: • • • • • • • •

Recreation Landscape Biodiversity Carbon sequestration Walter quality Pollution absorption Preservation of archaeological artifacts Health and social wellbeing

Contained within this list is the central recognition that forests and forest landscapes can impact on rural communities economically, socially and environmentally and the impacts in all three categories can be positive or negative. This is revealed very concisely by Slee et  al. (2004) who identify four main values that would be applicable across Europe. These are: • • • •

Forestry values “Shadow” values Non-market values Social values

Forestry values are the benefits or disadvantages arising from all forest activity including upstream and downstream economic linkages. Shadow values emerge from the influence of the forest or forest landscape over locational decisions made by businesses and individuals. Non-market values would include informal recreation, biodiversity, landscape and carbon sequestration. Social values comprise the value of these areas to local communities in terms of identity and a “shared sense of belonging”. This inclusion of social or human values has been noted by O’Brien (2003) who comments that “woodlands are appreciated for a wide range of benefits [by those that use them], the majority of which do not appear to be related to their economic use or necessarily to whether people use them frequently or now” (O’Brien 2003, p 50). A recent in-depth study of communities in England (Courtney et  al. 2007) revealed that forest managers were often keen to control forests in a way that was conducive to biodiversity and local access, however, they lived outside the local area; and this had an impact on active local engagement and empathy with the local community. In terms of forests and forest landscapes as commons, the move towards a wider interpretation of their value and purpose in social and environmental terms as well as economic is clearly advantageous to this chapter. Some of the specific roles, such as

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carbon sequestration and water quality, are directly linked to the management of global commons, something recognized by Dolšak and Ostrom (2003). The inclusion of social values as a valid element of forests and forest landscapes also has a relevance to commons as this has been termed the return to community or rural development forestry. Both terms are used to describe an approach where local people are meaningfully involved in the management of the forest and where they would benefit significantly from the resource itself. This is in part a return to the traditional forest commons before the Industrial Revolution and the centralization of policy and decision making. Equally important, it is a recognition that forests and forest landscapes are multifunctional areas that have to cover issues concerning production (of timber), protection (of water quality, landscape and carbon) and consumption (through amenity and recreation uses). This triangular approach has been used by Holmes (2006) to understand and interpret what he has most recently termed the “multi-functional countryside”. However, this overlooks the social aspect, particular of forest commons, where the human existence had been until relatively recently very close to the ecological. In this sense, it might be helpful to consider these as socio-ecological system (Olsson et al. 2004) or human ecosystems (Likens 1992). These recognise the impact of the performative activities over time to the extent that the nature and the social are combined and deeply connected. Both concepts centre around the suggestion of a paradigm shift in ecological thinking that recognises humans as part of the ecosystem and the need for participatory approaches to identify and integrate “traditional” human activities into conservation management. However, there remains a lack of willingness within central governments to develop policy and incentives that recognize the traditional governance and management structures on commons, forest or otherwise, or their value to a wide range of interests and communities (Short 2000). Nevertheless, there are opportunities that can be developed and incorporated as the next section will illustrate.

5.4 The Relationship Between People and Forest Commons Having revealed the significant change that has taken place regarding the use and understanding of what forests and forest landscapes are for, this final section will outline how the decision making and policy framework has begun to turn. In essence this is a shift in the basis of the relationship between the people of Europe and the forests and forest landscapes around them and suggests, at least in part, the return of forest commons as complex multi-functional sites. Edwards and Steins (1998) suggest further characteristics for complex commons, those that retain some element of the traditional long enduring common alongside less traditional activities. These include the recognition of several possible tensions, key relationships and subsequent points of discussion. A frequent tension is between the old structures, often developed for single-use commons, and those required for multiple-use decision-making. Moreover, the construction of a new multifunctional framework arising out of the traditional single-use system requires a dialogue to

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establish the scope of the required changes. As Libecap (1995) indicates, adjustment in commons is not likely to take place in a smooth or timely fashion when there are important differences between the bargaining parties. Due to the decline in the traditional function, timber production interests increasingly feel disempowered compared to other stakeholders. Edwards and Steins (1998) work in the New Forest notes that the newer interests are often more articulate and well resourced than traditional resource users. Libecap (1995) also comments that uncertainty about future regulatory policies provide additional problems within any discussions, something that applies to forestry across Europe. Critical within the commons literature is the relationship between central and local institutions and stakeholders. The most significant development in producing a management alternative to the centralized prescriptive approach has been the development of “adaptive management”. According to Berkes et  al. (2000), the main characteristics of adaptive management are the development of local-level regulations and a more accepting and influential role for traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). They outline adaptive management as being a system that might be characterized by: management through locally crafted rules enforced by users flexible resource use adjusted to suit resource at that time users who have accumulated ecological knowledge base livelihoods that are secure management adjusted to meet resource and ecosystem change (adapted from Berkes et al. 2000, p 160)

Central to this approach is the incorporation of different types of knowledge within the process, often balancing the formal, or scientific, alongside local, or lay, knowledge (Berkes 1989). For example, a current project in the Castilla y León of Spain is concerned with reducing the likelihood of large forest fires that would cause environmental alteration and land degradation because of the post-fire exposure of bare soil to rainfall. The project takes a multi-disciplinary approach and works with extensive livestock farmers who for generations used fire in traditional pasture management systems on commons to encourage pasture regeneration and control scrub encroachment. By promoting cultural change in pasture management systems on commons through, the support of pasture improvement (lime and fertilizers), adding value to the products from the area and encouraging collaboration between farmers to increase market share, alongside the banning of scrub burning, the project has succeeded in maintaining the current local governance structures. The intention of the work in the Swiss Alps is that key aspects of the traditional management might be maintained by farmers using the mountain slopes for summer grazing of cattle or others in mountain communities once the link between these customs and practices has been made to ecological need. This would necessitate the move of such previously ordinary everyday practices to become more symbolic. As suggested here the adaptive management approach moves away from centralized rules and regulations that are exclusively developed by technical experts and

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enforced by agents who have no connection with the resource being used. In such situations there is little scope for variability and opportunity as well as resilience and adaptation to circumstances (Berkes et al. 2000). Therefore, it is possible to see how the move towards rural development or community forestry incorporates the adaptive management approach. Clearly, the challenge for forestry and forest landscape management and research is the understanding and evaluation of what needs to change. Once again the principles of the commons literature is able to offer some helpful insights, notably the frameworks for complex multi-use commons developed by Edwards and Steins (1998) and the decision-making principles and rules of Ostrom (2005) based on numerous global case studies. The recognition that forests and forest landscapes are complex multi-sue sites will enable the decision-making mechanisms to adapt so that they are capable of regulating access and resource allocation with appropriate sanctions for non-compliance. The use of existing organizations can enable the cultural and traditional structures to continue. However, as Meinzen-Dick and Jackson (1996) indicate, “off-shoots of existing organizations tend to continue to reflect previous societal prejudices and may perpetuate inequality rather than providing a forum to meet the needs of a more diverse group”. The use of concepts such as co-management and the six step process outlined by Carlsson and Berkes (2005) provide a framework that would apply to forests and forest landscapes. The authors outline the need for an initial scoping of the area without predetermined ideas of how to adjust things to the benefit of a single ­interest. In the same way the GEMCONBIO research project (Simoncini et  al. 2008) sought to develop “policy guidelines on governance and ecosystem management for biodiversity conservation”. The project aimed to develop these guidelines using an ecosystem approach, an approach that emphasize the need for participation and arises out of the recent Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. GEMCONBIO concludes that biodiversity conservation needs to be determined from local economic and social characteristics as well as local, national and international ecological needs. The policy recommendations include the need to “recognise and respect customary institutions for natural resource management” and to “foster alliances between local, traditional institutions governing natural resources and the governmental agencies in charge of conservation”.

5.5 Conclusion Forest and forest landscape commons across Europe should no longer focus on the issue of declining traditional economic timber production functions, but on the effective inclusion of non-traditional functions that have increased both the economic significance as well as the environmental and social complexity of these areas. This chapter has shown that there is ample evidence regarding the significance of commons to these new forest functions. The traditional functions associated with forests and forest landscapes cannot be cast aside as these remain the most effective

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and sustainable means of management, as well as a crucial source of knowledge to the benefit of the other functions (Berkes et al. 2000). Further research is required to determine the role of national government and local management groups on these increasingly complex commons and if the variations across Europe. The opportunity for these commons to offer a range of natural (or ecosystem) services, such as water quality and carbon sequestration, should not be overlooked, further increasing both their value and complexity and making it vital that we understand the key design principles of successful approaches in terms of effective self-regulation, broad stakeholder engagement and policy development. In this regarding it is possible that two relatively new policy developments might be useful to those wishing to develop innovative and historically sensitive governance structures on forests and forest landscapes. The first is the introduction of the European Landscape Convention (ELC), agreed 10 years ago but being implemented on a voluntary basis across the member states. The guidelines for implementation outline the need to consider physical, functional, symbolic, cultural and historical functions (Council of Europe 2008). In a classic response, some member states, such as the UK, are using designations and policy frameworks that are several decades old to implement the ELC with the result that community involvement is not innovative and truly participatory. The second is the development and implementation across Europe of the Ecosystem Approach or Ecosystem Services (EASAC 2009). This framework arose out of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. It seeks to provide a rational framework that recognizes the range of natural services that ecosystems such as forests and forest landscapes offer in meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century. These two different frameworks provide an opportunity for the richness of tradition, custom and practice within forest communities to embed itself with other uses. Through using these two approaches there is also a stronger possibility of behavioural change both within the community and the other users on the one hand and policy makers on the other hand because of the knowledge exchange that occurs within process itself. This is important in terms of the multi-objective land management that occurs where there are a number of interests operating at the landscape scale. These discussions will embed the idea of forests as commons as well as the important of ecosystem services say within a river catchments or wider landscape.

References Andersson R, Östlund L, Törnlund E (2005) The last European Landscape to be colonised: a case study of land-use change in the far North of Sweden 1850–1930. Environ Hist 11(3):293–318 Berkes F (1989) Common property resources: ecology and community-based sustainable development. Belhaven Press, London Berkes F, Colding J, Folke C (2000) Rediscovery of traditional ecological knowledge as adaptive management. Ecol Appl 10(5):1251–1262 Bravo G, De Moor T (2008) The commons in Europe: from past to future. Int J Commun 2(2):155–161

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Brouwer R (1995) Baldios and common property resource management in Portugal Unasylva 180 FAO Corporate Document Repository. http://wwwfao.org//docrep/v3960e/v3960e07.htm. Accessed 6 July 2009 Bürgi M, Stuber M (2010) What, how and why? collecting traditional knowledge on forest uses in Switzerland. Landscape Archaeol Ecol End Tradition 8(September 2010):42–46 Carlsson L, Berkes F (2005) Co-management: concepts and methodological implications. J Environ Manage 75:65–76 Council of Europe (2008) Guidelines for the implementation of the European Landscape Convention. Committee of Ministers, Recommendation CM/Rec(2008) 3 Courtney P, Short C, Kambites C et al. (2007) The Social contribution of land-based industries to rural communities. Final report to the commission for rural communities. Countryside and Community Research Unit. Cheltenham De Moor M (2002) Common land and common rights in Flanders. In: De Moor M, Shaw-Taylor L, Warde P (eds) The management of common land in north-west Europe. Brepols, Turnhout De Moor M, Shaw-Taylor L, Warde P (eds) (2002) The management of common land in northwest Europe. Turnhout, Brepols Dolšak N, Ostrom E (eds) (2003) The commons in the new millennium: challenges and adaptation. The MIT Press, Cambridge Edwards V, Steins N (1998) Developing an analytical framework for multiple-use commons. J Theor Polit 10(3):347–383 European Academies Science Advisory Council (2009) Ecosystem services and biodiversity in Europe, EASAC policy report 09. The Royal Society, London Gerber J-D, Nahrath S, Reynard E, Thomi L (2008) The role of common pool resource institutions in the implementation of Swiss natural resource management policy. Int J Commun 2(2):222–247 Gimmi U, Bürgi M (2007) Using oral history and forest management plans to reconstruct traditional non-timber forest uses in the Swiss Rhone Valley (Valais). Environ Hist 13:211–246 Green T (2010) Natural origin of the commons: people, animals and invisible biodiversity. Landscape Archaeol Ecol End Tradition 8(September 2010):57–62 Healey P (1998) Collaborative planning in a stakeholder society. Town Plann Rev 69(1):1–21 Holmes J (2006) Impulses towards a multifunctional transition in rural Australia: gaps in the research agenda. J Rural Stud 22(2):142–160 Lana Berasain JM (2008) From equilibrium to equity. The survival of the commons in the Ebro Basin: Navarra from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Int J Commun 2(2):162–191 Libecap GD (1995) Conditions for successful collective action. In: Keohane RO, Ostrom E (eds) Local commons and global independence. Sage, London, pp 161–190 Likens G (1992) The ecosystem approach: its use and abuse. In: Kinne O (ed) Excellence in ecology, vol 3. Germany Ecology Institute, Oldendor Mather AS, Hill G, Nijnik M (2006) Post-productivism and rural land use: cul de sac of challenge for theorization? J Rural Stud 22(4):441–455 McKean M (1992) Success on the commons: a comparative examination of institutions for common property resource management. J Theor Polit 4(3):247–281 Meinzen-Dick R, Jackson LA (1996) Multiple uses, multiple users of water resources. Paper presented to 6th conference of the international association for the study of common property, Berkeley, CA, 5–9 June Merlo M (1995) Common property forest management in northern Italy: a historical and socioeconomic profile. Unasylva 180 FAO corporate document repository. http://wwwfao.org// docrep/v3960e/v3960e0a.htm. Accessed 26 June 2009 Neeson JM (1996) Commoners: common right, enclosure and social change in England 1700-1820. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge O’Brien EA (2003) Human values and their importance to the development of forestry policy in Britain: a literature review. Forestry 76:3–17 Olsson P, Folke C, Berkes F (2004) Adaptive co-management for building resilience in socioecological systems. Environ Manage 34(1):75–90

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Ostrom E (1990) Governing the commons: the evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Ostrom E (2005) Understanding institutional diversity. Princeton University Press, Oxford Short C (2000) Common Land and ELMS: a need for policy innovation in England and Wales. Land Use Policy 17:121–133 Short C (2008) The traditional commons of England and Wales in the twenty-first century: meeting new and old challenges. Int J Commun 2(2):192–221 Short C, Winter M (1999) The problem of common land: towards stakeholder governance. J Environ Plann Manage 42(5):613–630 Simoncini R, Borrini-Feyerabend G, Lassen B (2008) Policy guidelines on governance and ecosystem management for biodiversity conservation. Report of the governance and ecosystem management for the conservation of biology (GEMCONBIO) project, final report, www. gemconbio.eu Slee B, Roberts D, Evans R (2004) Forestry in the rural economy: a new approach to assessing the impact of forestry on rural development. Forestry 77:441–453 Steins N, Edwards V (1999) Platforms for collective action in multiple-use common-pool resources. Agr Hum Val 16:241–255 Stoker G (1998) Governance as theory: five propositions. Int Soc Sci J 155:17–28 Sundberg K (2002) Nordic common lands and common rights. Some interpretations of Swedish cases and debates. In: De Moor M, Shaw-Taylor L, Warde P (eds) The management of common land in north-west Europe. Brepols, Turnhout Vera FWM (2000) Grazing ecology and forest history. CABI Publishing, Wallingford, Oxon Willis K, Garrod G, Scarpa R et al (2000) Non-market benefits of forestry. Report to the forestry commission. University of Newcastle, Newcastle Willis K, Garrod G, Powe N et al (2003) The social and environmental benefits of forests in Great Britain. Report to the forestry commission. University of Newcastle, Newcastle Winchester A (2002) Upland commons in Northern England. In: De Moor M, Shaw-Taylor L, Warde P (eds) The management of common land in north-west Europe. Brepols, Turnhout Wylie J (2007) Landscape. Routledge, London

Chapter 6

New Forest Owners – Small-Scale Forestry and Changes in Forest Ownership Áine Ní Dhubháin

Small-scale forests account for a significant proportion of European forests and are typically owned by individuals and families. There is evidence that the sociodemographic characteristics of these owners are changing, and that fragmentation of small-scale forests is increasing. Given the significant role that small-scale forests play in delivering benefits to the wood industry and to society at large, it is important to look at the implications of this changing ownership structure and increasing fragmentation for these benefits.

6.1 What is Small-Scale Forestry? Forests in private ownership belong to individuals, families, private co-operatives, corporations, industries, religious and educational institutions, pension or investment funds and other private institutions (FAO 2004). A variety of terms has been used to describe the portion of this resource that is owned by individuals and families. These terms include non-industrial private forestry (NIPF), family forestry, small-scale forestry and farm forestry. Non-industrial private forestry is defined in the Dictionary of Forestry as “forest land that is privately owned by individuals or corporations other than forest industry, and where management may include objectives other than timber production” (Helms 1998). However, no definition of smallscale forestry is given in this dictionary, and there is no commonly adopted term for this type of forestry. Small-scale forestry means different things in different parts of the world (Hyttinen 2004). Hyttinen (2004, p 666) further elaborates that “a farmer operating with a woodlot of 5 ha would certainly be a small-scale forest owner, whereas an industrial company with thousands of hectares would be large. But, in between Á. Ní Dhubháin (*) Agriculture and Food Science Centre, School of Agriculture, Food Science and Veterinary Medicine, UCD Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] E. Ritter and D. Dauksta (eds.), New Perspectives on People and Forests, World Forests 9, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1150-1_6, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

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these examples, there exists a wide variety of sizes that can be considered either small or large depending on the viewpoint taken”. Herbohn (2006) outlined that non-industrial private forestry is the term ­commonly adopted for small-scale forests in the USA. This term is also used in Europe although family forestry is frequently employed. Sekot (2001, p 216) presented a definition of small-scale farm forestry for Austria as “a private forest holding of between 1 and 200  ha where the proprietor is a normal (and not juristic) person”. In the sections that follow, the term small-scale forestry is considered synonymous with non-industrial private forestry as defined by Helms (1998).

6.2 Characteristics of Small-Scale Forests Due to the lack of a commonly agreed definition for small-scale forestry, no comparable nor consistent statistical information about small-scale forests in different countries and continents is available (Hyttinen 2004). Consequently, statistics on private ownership are often used as a surrogate for small-scale forestry statistics, although it is important to note Hyttinen’s (2004) warning that private does not always mean small. Even with regard to private forest sector statistics, there is a significant lack of information (Schmithüsen and Hirsch 2008). The estimated total forest area of Europe (excluding the Russian Federation) is 192,604  million ha (FAO 2005); 49% of which is privately owned. Recently, the UNECE/FAO Timber Section, together with the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe (MCPFE) and the Confederation of European Forest Owners, established a private forest owners’ database. Twentythree of the 38 MCPFE countries originally addressed responded to this survey (Schmithüsen and Hirsch 2008). The results indicate that considerable variation exists in the level of private ownership at country level. For example, in Austria, France, Norway and Slovenia, privately owned forests account for more than threequarters of the total forest area, whereas in Bulgaria and Poland they represent less than one-quarter (Table 6.1). Families and individuals own 82% of Europe’s private forest area (data derived from 11 MCPFE countries).1 The proportion that is owned by individuals and families also varies at country level with only 33% of the Slovakian private forest area owned by these groups, while almost 90% of the Norwegian private forest area are “family forests”. However, these numbers do not reveal anything about the size of forest holding. The forest holding size privately owned varies considerably between countries at European level, nevertheless, based on their survey for the FAO, Schmithüsen and Hirsch (2008, p 18) conclude “that in terms of numbers of private forest owners,

Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, United Kingdom.

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Table 6.1  Private forest cover in selected European countries and the proportion of small holdings (Schmithüsen and Hirsch 2008) Total forest area % of private forest area Country (¢000 ha) % private in holdings