A moment of rupture and regime destablisation: The contested energy landscape of the Fosen peninsula, Norway

In October 2021 the Norwegian Supreme Court ruled that two wind farms built on the Fosen peninsula, mid-Norway, interfered with the Sámi reindeer herders right to enjoy their own culture and hence the decisions to grant planning concessions were invalid. We interpret this ruling as a moment of rupture, with potential to destabilise the sociotechnical regime. In this article, we seek to explain this moment of rupture and the prevailing, of sorts, of the Sámi reindeer herders over the powerful apparatus of the Norwegian state. We employ a conceptual framework that draws together the concept of energy landscapes, multiple ways of knowing landscapes and theory on institutional legitimacy. Our analysis shows how state actors mobilised a construction of the energy landscape as a predominantly scenic and material phenomenon, that was mappable, visually observable and categorizable, and in accordance with institutionalised planning practices. The occlusion of the Sámi people's relational understanding of the landscape progressively became illegitimate under the spectra of international law during proceeding in the law courts, and the legitimacy of the decisions to grant concessions were progressively brought into question, eroded and finally lost. While it is not possible to provide a definitive understanding about why and on what basis decisions were made, the increasing attention given to Sámi landscape practices demands a reconsideration of whose landscape knowledge is considered and how in energy planning.