HOLMESTRAND, Norway — 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. Ms. Viddal is among the 12 percent of Norwegian hunters who are female, according to figures from 2013, an increase of about 60 percent 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,” says Ms. Viddal, 33. “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, says Ms. Viddal, 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, says Mr. Farstad, 58.
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 “A new generation of women who are independent and self-made,” he said. “They want to do everything that men do.”
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 and 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.
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, says Mr. Farstad, 58.
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 “A new generation of women who are independent and self-made,” he said. “They want to do everything that men do.”
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 and 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.”
She adds that it’s “only normal that the gender gap in any activity becomes slightly smaller,” but argues that some of those who take the hunters’ test do not go on to hunt, and that, over all, the number of male and female hunters in Norway has not changed in the last decade.
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 added.
For her, the hunt is about communing with nature and, for more than an hour, she waits, very still, concentrating on the vista in front of her, despite a blinding winter sun. The only sound is a stream babbling in the distance, and on this day, as is the case with perhaps half her hunts, there is no sign of prey.
“If you are the type of person who wants to rush around, this has nothing for you,” she says. “If you have the ability to sit and relax, and enjoy the nature around you, this is perfect. It is a kind of meditation in a way.”
Ms. Osfoss began studying for the hunting exam in 2007 while working as a Norwegian language teacher, later contacting a local organization in Oslo that offered moose hunts to women and novice male hunters.
“Hunting in Norway — as in other places, I guess — is a very male-dominated tradition from the old days,” she said. “It was the men who did hunting, and getting a foot inside that society, especially if you don’t know anything about it, or if your father or uncle don’t hunt, can be hard.”
But that does not mean aping macho behavior. “For me, hunting is nothing to do with an adrenaline kick,” she says, adding that it is essentially about connecting nature and food.
“I shoot it, I prepare it, I cook it,” she says. “I find it environmentally friendly, not part of the industrialized meat industry. I know exactly what has happened to it.”
In her car on her way to the hunt, Anne-Mette Kirkemo, 50, recalls how things have changed in Norway since she joined her local hunting club around three decades ago. Even serving on its governing committee and having enough bird-hunting experience to act as an instructor counted for nothing when the men went to shoot moose or deer.
“I would ask if I could come,” she recalls, adding that the reply was often, “‘Well, I’d love to take you, but my wife would hate that.” ’
Ms. Kirkemo now not only hunts deer and moose, but also works for the local police, tracking animals that are wounded on the highway and then skinning and dressing those that are killed.
Ms. Kirkemo says the job of skinning and butchering is “a bit hard-core, but you get used to it.”
Early the next morning Ms. Kirkemo carefully lays the carcass of a young roe deer on its back, its lifeless feet pointing skyward. Slowly, she cuts a neat line piercing the animal’s thick fur, and going deep into its skin.
Then, having exposed its internal organs, she slices them free, carefully removing the intestines, liver and heart with her bare hands.
“I hate gloves,” she explains. As she works on her porch, and later in her barn, Ms. Kirkemo concedes that the skinning and butchering process is “a bit hard-core, but you get used to it.”
“I think most female hunters are keen to prove themselves,” she adds.
Having skinned some 30 animals, Ms. Kirkemo no longer needs to do so, and soon a carcass weighing about 35 pounds is hanging in her barn. The whole process has taken a bit over an hour.
