landskapsbruken

Landskapsbruken refers to a type of traditional management practice that originated in Scandinavian countries, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland in particular. The term landskapsbruken is derived from the Swedish words 'landskap', meaning "landscape" and 'bruken', meaning "use" or "practice". This form of land use has been utilized by local communities for centuries, predating the concept of state-managed forests.

The core principle of landskapsbruken is multifunctional forestry and agriculture that integrates farming, grazing, and forestry activities within the same management area. Landskapsbruken areas combine forests, arable land, and grasslands, along with paddocks, meadows, and sometimes even built-up areas. Farmers and agricultural workers would use the areas to cultivate crops, graze livestock, harvest timber, and manage the areas to a combination of productive and recovery phases.

This type of management focuses on using the natural environment to create diversity and structural complexity within an ecosystem, while at the same time cultivating the specific area given the local climate and soil conditions. A highly desirable aspect of landskapsbruken is that such landscapes contain a variety of natural habitats, providing a more stable biodiversity base for various habitats and giving larger areas more ecological resilience and recovery capabilities.