Women grab at heart of the hunt
Shotgun at her side, Stine Hagtveldt Viddal stops at a bare patch of ground in this valley, which is thick with pine trees, pointing to the spot where she helped hunt and then skin a roe deer a few weeks ago. Taking out her phone, she shows a photo of herself holding the animal’s heart in the palm of her hand, then another of the meal she made from it later that day.
Hunting was once a man’s pastime in Norway, one of the last bastions of macho male culture.
Today that’s no longer the case. Viddal is among the 12 per cent of Norwegian hunters who are female, according to figures from 2013, an increase of about 60 per cent over a decade.
This trend seems to underscore a growing interest both in the countryside and in the provenance of food. “My daughter is 6 years old,” Viddal, 33, says. “I want her to know that food comes from nature, not the freezer.”
But the rise in the numbers also reflects increased opportunities for Norwegian women to participate. Generally the men are welcoming, Viddal says, and though she has encountered instances of “mansplaining” — condescending advice — on the shooting range, it has not proved a big problem.
“I say, ‘Shut up, just see how I shoot before you correct me.’ Then they leave me alone,” she says.
To draw more women, the country’s main hunting association has encouraged female-only activities, says Espen Farstad, head of information at the Norwegian Association of Hunters and Anglers, during a break in the hunt in Holmestrand, south of Oslo. It seems to be working. Norwegians who hunt with firearms have to take regular exams, and roughly one in four of those doing so nowadays are women. There is an exclusively female club, the Ringerike Female Hunters Club, and many ordinary clubs with all-female groups up and down the country, Farstad, 58, says.
Delegates from 19 regions gather each year for a national female hunting and angling conference. Ole Kirkemo, 61, editor of the hunting magazine Jakt & Fiske, says there has been “an explosion” in the number of female hunters in the last 20 years
Nor is the deepening interest in hunting restricted to Norway. “The face of hunting is changing,” according to FACE, the European Federation of Associations for Hunting & Conservation. “In the past decade, more women are joining Europe’s hunting community, actively engaging in conservation and championing sustainable hunting and a real connection with nature.”
The federation points to other initiatives across the Continent, including a “Lady Hunt” in Latvia in January 2016.
Hunting has its critics, of course. Siri Martinsen, director of an animals rights group called NOAH, says the group “opposes hunting both on animal welfare grounds and because of the negative attitude hunting activities seem to promote against nature as a whole.”
Norway’s female hunters reject the idea that they are out of tune with nature.
“I totally respect vegetarians,” says Line Lillebo Osfoss, 45, putting down her Tikka rifle to drink coffee heated over a wood fire.
“I don’t respect people eating meat and still judging me for hunting,” she adds.