Nordic Ruralities 2026

Theme – Changing Nordic rural realities

We live in a time of a fast-changing geopolitical situation, where international alliances change or reconfigure, and where national priorities and politics change correspondingly. Simultaneously, natural resources are being re-interpreted as is their management, and we face both climate change and the biodiversity crisis. Within health, we are experiencing continuing growth in stress-, anxiety and lifestyle related illnesses. Our populations age, especially in rural areas, and many rural areas experience shrinkage in terms of population numbers. Much of the Nordic population live highly mobile lives, and increasingly multi-local, as technology and the past pandemic have made remote work more feasible and accepted. The changes are many, and they happen fast. They bring some issues and dilemmas to the forefront but may overshade others. How do different institutions react? Who resist, and to what? How are different Nordic rural areas affected? How are issues of marginalization and of inequality, of accountability and reciprocity reconfigured by and reconfiguring the changes?

We are challenging all researchers and developers from different disciplines with an interest in the Nordic rural areas as an empirical field to discuss changing Nordic rural realities. You all are warmly welcomed to give presentations and discuss your ongoing research and projects with key scholars from the field. The conference will be held in Joensuu, Finland,19-21 May 2026, with the subthemes presented below. An additional question for all the subthemes is how relevant topics within each of them seem to be affected by changing Nordic rural realities.

Sub-themes

1. Cultures and people, places and identities

Nordic rural communities are being redefined, and rural areas are in a state of flux. Mobility and migration are increasing and new rural-urban relations, disparities and complementarities emerging. Distance working and migrating labor are increasing, as well as the number of second homes, the use of which is also influenced by opportunities of remote work. Depopulation continues in many regions, while some rural areas are thriving. The importance of place and location is changing. Many of us feel attached to certain rural places but might not live there for different reasons. These processes affect social cohesion and social differentiation in rural areas as well as the construction of identities across borders and places. How are such processes expressed in different locations? How do multilocal attachments influence place development, community coherence, innovation and entrepreneurship?  How do migration and mobility affect rural areas? Why would people want to live in rural areas? Why do people feel they belong to rural areas and how is place attachment constructed? What is the meaning of culture in and for rural development? What is the meaning of places and locality for people’s identity? And how is place and identity influenced by national and global agendas of greening of energy production and/or the new geopolitical landscape?

2. Sustainable use of natural resources and landscape management

Natural resources are valuable economic, ecological, political, social, and cultural resources. Nature conservation is important, while entrepreneurship and industries need space to contribute to regional and economic development of rural areas. Are contemporary rural and natural resource policies in line with the aims of different dimensions of sustainable development, including climate change mitigation and adaptation? New pressures, interests and claims on the use of natural resources and on landscapes lead to processes of innovation, re-evaluation, conflicts as well as depletion. Continuities in both natural resource governance and landscape management are questioned and transformed. Yet, path dependencies and institutional contexts shape activities as well. Multifunctional and sustainable landscapes and use of natural resources have become some of the keywords, as has resilience, circularity and bioeconomy. How are these processes enacted in different contexts? There may be conflicts between different industries, e.g. tourism and mining. How do trends in food and energy production, forestry, mining, tourism and nature conservation affect Nordic rural areas? How are entitlements, ownership and right of access and use of nature transformed? For example, does it matter who owns the agricultural land or the forests, and where they reside? What are the impacts on local levels, on local development and social cohesion, of ownership structures and use rights? The growing urgency of alternatives to fossil-based energy systems changes the national discourse about and the interest in rural territories. How is this experienced by rural local governments or by rural-based citizens? How is the power balance between different levels of government, and different territorial realities, changing? 

3. Rural economy and entrepreneurship

Rural economy is usually related to traditional industries and natural resource-based sectors such as agriculture, forestry, supplemented by recreation, well-being and tourism. Innovations are very often incremental or organizational within the same lines, carried out by the same entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, can changing landscapes also make way for new rural economies and entrepreneurship, for example within the energy sector? The Covid19 pandemic created a surge in national tourism and interest in outdoor activities. Local, place-engaged outdoor entrepreneurs may contribute to a renewal of the place brand, in addition to creating rural jobs. The new geopolitical and climate realities also influence rural-based industries, for example by planning large-scale energy-infrastructure within the rural areas, or possibly by a renewed focus on self-sufficiency, resilience and local production. Can new industries and new modes of entrepreneurship revalorize local resources and create growth within rural economies and cultural life? How does the increasing mobility and multi-local living influence the rural economy and the rural-based entrepreneurs? There is a need to explore such new industries and modes of entrepreneurship more detailed and see how they can contribute to the advance of rural economy. The role of the third sector, for example, as a producer of certain services has been emphasized in rural policy. But what is its real role in rural development? What about NGO’s, which may be big actors in rural areas and rural development? How are business support systems targeting the (changing) reality of rural entrepreneurs?

4. Policies and politics of the rural

Rural and agricultural politics and policies are increasingly open for new constellations in the rural development, bringing new kinds of challenges to the fore. What concepts of rurality underpin these different policies? Are urban ideals and rural realities at variance in the policy formation? What are the new issues and edges emerging in rural policy formation and policy? And how is this influenced by the new geopolitical situation, and/or the urgency of responses to the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis? How can we prepare for a decrease in subsidies? How are resources for business support and subsidies for entrepreneurship and industry distributed between rural and urban areas? What is the meaning of rural areas when thinking about the labour force needed in other areas? What is the meaning of place-based information in rural development and rural policy? How do governments, whether at local, regional or national level, deal with the growing mobility and multi-local lifestyles of parts of the population, and the increasingly seasonal changes in where we, as populations of the Nordic countries, spend our time?