The growth of sports and the increasing levels of participation, performance, and international competition are undeniable. This development has undoubtedly contributed to the tremendous growth of the sports economy during the last 100 years, as well as an impressive increase in results and performance levels in most sports. It is in turn linked to the comprehensive competition logic that drives sportification of performance and practice in predominantly Western sport, rooted in the cultivation of able bodies, and maximum performance. However, as sports have developed in tandem with the global industrial economy it is also facing similar problems. Over the last decade, sport organisations, supporters, athletes, scholars, and others have begun to problematise the consequences of an ever-growing sports economy and the constant strive for increasing performance levels, growing events, and intensified travel. This introduction will present an overview of how the logics of practice guided by performance, and the sportification model, are linked to potentially problematic aspects of sports in relation to the environment. We pose questions about whether sportification and a strong focus on increasing performance can go hand in hand with a sustainable development.

This anthology explores possibilities to acknowledge human motion, and traces thereof, as heritage. Today, with the increasing interest in local and sustainable connections, and in bodily and spiritual enhancement, we see a growing use of walking tracks both in landscapes within reach from urban centres and in more remotely located or ‘wild’ areas. The corona pandemic has further propelled these trends. Of course, landscapes that are commonly understood as wilderness or ‘nature’ are in most cases clearly influenced by human actions and movements. While walking trails tend to be regarded as pathways to experience nature and as tools to promote public health, they could also be seen and used as routes to culture and history, indeed as pathways to the past. Based on a Swedish research project with the aim to explore the multiple dimensions of walking, paths and movement, this volume engages and discusses the potential effects of such an expansion of the heritage register.

Can walking trails be understood not only as routes to history and heritage, but also as heritage in and of themselves? The paper explores the articulation of trails as a distinct landscape and mobility heritage, bridging the nature-culture divide and building on physical and intellectual movements over time. The authors aim to contribute to a better understanding of the geography of trails and trailscapes by analysing the emergence of the Swedish-Norwegian trail Finnskogleden. The trail is situated in the border region spanning the former county of Hedmark in present-day Innlandet County, south-eastern Norway, and Värmland County in mid-western Sweden, a forested area where Finnish-speaking immigrants settled from the 16th century to the early 20th century. Archives, literature, interviews, and field visits were used to analyse the emergence and governance of the trail. The main finding is the importance of continuous articulation work by local and regional stakeholders, through texts, maps, maintenance, and mobility. In conclusion, the Finn forest trailscape and its mobility heritage can be seen as an articulation of territory over time, a multilayered process drawing on various environing technologies, making the trail a transformative part of a trans-border political geography. 

Chapter 6 takes up the more recently developed sector of tourism, problematizing the assumptions inherent in conceptions such as “resource periphery” and “pleasure periphery”. Instead, the chapter shows that resource use and tourism may well interact, and that tourism even largely relates to mining or mining infrastructure: the extensive existence of infrastructure related to resource uses and industrial as well as post-industrial development at large can even be seen as the basis for tourists being able to access the “wilderness”.

Contemporary images of desirable work (for example at gaming companies or at one of the tech giants) foregrounds creativity and incorporates and idealises elements of play. Simultaneously, becoming one of the best in some particular leisure activity can require many long hours of hard, demanding work. Between on the one hand work and on the other hand leisure and play, we enter the domain of games and sports. Most classical sports originally developed from physical practices of moving the human body and these practices were, through standardization, organization and rationalization, turned into sports. Many sport researchers, (sport) historians and (sport) sociologists have pointed out that sports have gone through a process of “sportification”. Cross-country skiing is an example of an activity that has gone through a historical process of sportification, over time becoming progressively more managed and regulated. Computer games are today following a similar trajectory and have gone from being a leisure activity to becoming a competitive activity, “e-sports”, with professional players, international competitions, and live streams that are watched by tens of millions of viewers. In this paper we look at similarities between the sportification of cross-country skiing and e-sports. While there are many similarities, one important difference is that where classical sports (e.g. cross-country skiing) often originated in work-related practices (in this case forestry), the formation of new and emerging sports (for example e-sports) instead often originates in playful leisure activities. We will in this text show how sports and sportification processes can function as a lens with which to better understand the intersection of work and play, and well as their overlapping and hybrid albeit non-mutually exclusive combinations; laborious play and playful work.

In The Pasteurization of France, Bruno Latour argued that the rise of hygiene was dependent on collaboration between Pasteur, the hygiene movement, scientists and others. He also pointed at the importance of obligatory passage points such as the Pasteurian laboratory, to ensure the scientization and rationalization of hygiene. This article argues that there has been a similar process in elite sports, a ‘physiologization’ where scientists, sport organizations and specialized coaches have transformed training from a deeply personal and experiential matter to something universal and scientific. Physiologists made the test lab an obligatory passage point for athletes who wanted to compete on the highest level. Through theories of sportification and science and technology studies this paper analyses the scientization of endurance sports.

Walking in mountains is a way of transport in varied terrain and a means to enhance nature experiences and deepen landscape relations. It is also one of the most popular activities in Swedish outdoor life as well as among international tourists. Mobility has over time and for multiple reasons resulted in a network of trails and pathways – a ‘mobility heritage’. However, this heritage is not static but continuously transformed through new needs and uses, and as such it is a vital component in any reform towards a more sustainable landscape management by and for governing bodies, NGOs, and other interest groups.

Despite multiple users and uses, trails are often discrete, small-scale and with marginal direct effects on local ecology and landscape, although exceptions also exist. However, the long history of multiple actor use of trails and landscapes alongside them, and the reasons and interests behind their location and maintenance, has profoundly affected landscape perceptions over time.

We argue that trails can be used as a tool to engage different interests and to minimize conflicts between different users, while aiming to enhance landscape values for all users. This is highly relevant to various forms of nature conservation, Sami reindeer herding, recreation and tourism. We aim to provide deeper knowledge about trails, conceptually and about their roles, functions, and how this may relate to future management. Against a background of theoretical, historical and empirical approaches to pathways and walking we present our topic through the lens of Swedish mountain trails, with a special focus on Jämtland County. Can the interests of visiting hikers and multiple local and regional interests come to co-exist in a sustainable way by using trails as one main tool?