BROGÅRD BACKWARDS: THE HIGH‐END GOLF LANDSCAPE AND THE MORPHOLOGY OF MANORIAL SPACE

When Bro Hof Slott Golf Club – a high‐end, highprofile golf development in Upplands‐Bro, northwest of Stockholm – opened, the Brogård manor house became its clubhouse. Here a recent history of Bro Hof Slott as leisure space intermingles with a much longer history of Brogård as a landscape shaped through 400 years of nobility ownership. In place‐marketing and in short accounts, the estate's history is frequently reduced to merely a succession of names, sometimes combined with an appraisal of the scenic setting manorial ownership produced. The many hands, hooves and struggles historically shaping this landscape thus go missing, necessitating a more sustained focus on landscape morphology. How the estate landscape could be turned into an upmarket golf development is unintelligible without scrutinizing the nobility as a structuring force and the manorial landscape's current place in planning politics. Nobility power translated into extensive control of what could take place in the countryside. Brogård waschaped by crofters, tenant farmers and statare (labourers paid predominantly in kind) subordinate to the will of the estate owner, but also by all those processes resituating the nobility as class. Shaping the countryside, the nobility was in turn shaped by social movements, macro‐economic shifts and political decisions, together resulting in the particularities of the space now handled by municipal planning and appropriated to become Bro Hof Slott Golf Club. Through telling this story, I reconnect to a plea for acknowledging politics and political economy in analysing tourism and its spaces, while focus simultaneously lies on the dialectical entanglement of material landscape and its present‐day valuation.     

EMBEDDED AND DISEMBEDDED PRACTICE IN THE FIRM–PLACE NEXUS: A STUDY OF TWO WORLD‐LEADING MANUFACTURERS OF SKI EQUIPMENT IN THE LILLEHAMMER SKI CLUSTER

Studies of agglomerations and clusters in economic geography anticipate strong interdependency between firms and places. However, despite the extensive literature, we lack a coherent micro‐theoretical foundation. The relationship between the rationales and practices of firms remains somewhat unspecified. In this article, we analyse the diversity of rationales and practices in a firm–place nexus. Possible rationales for firm practice are outlined, examining the assumptions of three, main theoretical perspectives in economic geography. This microeconomic approach is applied through an analysis of the two key firms in the Lillehammer skiing industry cluster in Norway. The study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how the agency of firms influence and are influenced by co‐location.     

Distal cryptotephra found in a Viking boathouse: the potential for tephrochronology in reconstructing the Iron Age in Norway

Distal tephra deposits from Icelandic volcanic eruptions have been found in Norway and can be used to precisely date a variety of sedimentary environments. Tephrochronology has not yet been applied to archaeological investigations in Norway because tephra are generally not found as visible layers, but are present as very low concentrations of glass shards (i.e. cryptotephra). In this study, we present results from the analysis of cryptotephras found in an Iron Age boathouse in northern Norway. The boathouse was associated with the chieftain center at Borg on Vestvågøy in the Lofoten Islands. In 2003, a trench was excavated and the stratigraphy of the boathouse was described. Radiocarbon ages from cultural deposits show that it was constructed in the Early Iron Age c. AD 540–660 and the main period of use was at the end of the Iron Age between c. AD 1030 and AD 1270. Volcanic glass shards were isolated from sediment samples collected above and below the cultural deposit representing the main period of use. Electron microprobe analysis of the glass shards showed that the lower sample resembles the AD 860 Layer B tephra and the upper sample resembles tephra erupted from the Hekla volcanic system between AD 1104 and AD 1300. These tephrochronologic dates agree with the radiocarbon-derived dates and possibly further constrain the boathouse’s main period of use to c. AD 1030–1104. Our results demonstrate the value of using tephrochronology for archaeological studies in Norway and the potential for finding cryptotephra from other large explosive volcanic eruptions during the Iron Age.     

Assimilation and Exclusion of Foreign Trained Engineers in Canada: Inside a Professional Regulatory Organization

Professional labour markets in Ontario, Canada, are culturally regulated to the disadvantage of foreign‐born and foreign‐trained immigrant practitioners. In this paper we draw on Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of institutionalized cultural capital and habitus to examine processes of distinction between foreign and Canadian‐trained professionals. Based on fieldwork investigating Ontario's professional engineering regulatory system as a case study, we interpret institutionalized cultural familiarity in the licensing criteria enforced by regulatory bodies as processes of distinction that undermine immigrants' access to the engineering profession relative to Canadian‐born and Canadian‐trained applicants. In addition to assessing the value of non‐Canadian credentials, regulatory bodies attempt to reproduce the social and cultural integrity of the professional membership by requiring applicants to internalize cultural norms specific to the profession as it is practiced in Canada. Licensing procedures can thus facilitate the cultural exclusion of immigrant practitioners