Even when restrictions are enforced, they tend to determine where and how cabins are built, rather than whether expansion should continue at all.
We love our cabins. Norwegians build cabins to be closer to nature. But the cabins themselves are transforming the very landscapes people come to enjoy.
In 2025 alone, almost 3,000 new holiday homes were built in Norway, according to Statistics Norway. At the beginning of that year, the country had around 484,000 buildings used as holiday homes.
Traditionally associated with simple living and outdoor recreation, Norwegian cabins have increasingly become larger, more comfortable second homes, often with facilities resembling permanent housing.
But new cabin developments bring roads, electricity, water and sewage infrastructure.
Forests, wetlands and mountain landscapes give way to construction. The combined environmental impact can be considerable and difficult to reverse.
Carmen Mapis is a planning researcher at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). She investigated how environmental concerns influence decisions about cabin development in three mountain municipalities in Eastern Norway: Krødsherad, Sigdal and Øystre Slidre.
She found that environmental concerns rarely determine whether new cabin developments should go ahead.
"We often discuss how to make new developments more sustainable, but we rarely ask whether continued expansion is sustainable in the first place," says Mapis.
Greener cabins but continued expansion
Building cabins closer together, improving infrastructure and reducing the environmental impact of individual cabin developments are frequently presented as more sustainable solutions.
While these measures can reduce certain impacts, Mapis found that they rarely limit further development or adequately address its cumulative effects on nature.
“Environmental sustainability is interpreted differently by those with different interests. Measures presented as protecting nature can also be used to justify further construction,” says Mapis.
The result is that environmental concerns often influence where and how cabins are built, rather than whether development should take place at all.
Who shapes the decisions?
Mapis found that power relations play an important role in determining which interests influence municipal planning.
Developers, landowners and political interests that favour economic growth often have greater influence over planning agendas than environmental authorities and those advocating stronger protection of nature.
Municipalities have the formal authority to approve or reject development plans. But in practice, many zoning proposals are initiated by private developers or landowners, which means municipalities often respond to development proposals rather than setting the agenda from scratch.
Economic pressure to keep building
Cabin development can provide significant economic opportunities for rural communities. Building new cabins generates work for construction companies and contractors, while cabin owners bring customers to local shops, restaurants and other businesses.
For mountain municipalities that rely on this economic activity, restricting further development can be a difficult decision, even when they recognise the environmental consequences.
Mapis found that alternatives to continued expansion were often regarded as politically or economically unrealistic.
Despite these findings, Mapis also identified examples where environmental concerns have led to substantial restrictions on cabin development.
In Sigdal, for example, objections from state authorities led to reductions in planned development areas, fewer cabins per area, and stronger protection of wild reindeer migration routes, agricultural land and mountain areas above the treeline.
In Øystre Slidre, environmental concerns contributed to the removal of approximately 3,000 decares of land previously designated for cabin development. The municipality also introduced restrictions on new cabin construction in mountain and summer-farming areas.
Even so, these restrictions did not fundamentally change the municipalities' wider ambitions for continued development and growth.
Need to set limits
The research points to several ways municipalities can strengthen environmental protection. These include clearer restrictions on development, greater consideration of the combined impacts of cabin construction and closer cooperation between municipalities, regional and national authorities.
It also highlights the need to reconsider land already allocated for development and to explore alternatives to continued expansion.
For Mapis, the key issue is not only whether cabins can be built more carefully regarding impacts on nature. It is whether yet more development in Norway’s cherished areas of natural beauty should take place at all.
Carmen Beatriz Marta Mapis will defend her doctoral thesis ‘Environmental Sustainability in Municipal Second Homes Planning in Eastern Norway: A Study of Meaning, Power and Utopia’ on 23 November at NMBU. See the event webpage for more information.
