1.
Norway
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The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him
2.
Nordland
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The county was formerly known as Nordlandene amt. The county administration is in Bodø, the remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen has been administered from Nordland since 1995. In the southern part is Vega, listed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list, the county is divided into traditional districts. These are Helgeland in the south, Salten in the centre, in the northwest lie the archipelagoes of Lofoten and Vesterålen. Nordland is located along the northwestern coast of the Scandinavian peninsula in Northern Norway, due to the large distance to the densely populated parts of Europe, this is one of the least polluted areas in Europe. Nordland extends about 500 km from Nord-Trøndelag to Troms, the distance by road from Bindal in the far south of the county to Andenes on the northern tip is roughly 800 km. Nordland has a coastline, with many fjords. From south to north, the main fjords are Bindalsfjord, Vefsnfjord, Ranfjord, Saltfjord-Skjerstadfjord, Folda, Tysfjord, Ofotfjord and Andfjord, which is shared with Troms county. The best-known is perhaps the Vestfjorden, which is not really a fjord, the Raftsundet strait, with its famous branch Trollfjord, is the shortest waterway connecting Lofoten and Vesterålen. The continental shelf is very narrow west of Andenes, nowhere else in Norway is the ocean only a few kilometres from shore. Saltstraumen whirlpool is just southeast of Bodø, and Moskenstraumen is located in southern Lofoten, the southern part of Norways largest island, Hinnøya is in Nordland, as is the third largest island, Langøya. In the fjords, the brim is much less developed, There might be a more gradual slope, with hills, towards the mountains. There are often valleys at the head of fjords, usually with a river at the centre of the valley, Mo i Rana, Mosjøen and Rognan are situated in such valleys. Norways second largest glacier, Svartisen, the second largest lake, Røssvatnet, the largest river is Vefsna which forms the Laksforsen waterfall. The Saltfjellet mountain range forms a border between Helgeland and Salten, and is where the Arctic Circle cuts through the county. The interior of Nordland, towards the border with Sweden, is dominated by the Kjølen Mountains, the highest mountain in Nordland is Oksskolten in Okstindan range, the second highest is Suliskongen in Fauske, and the third is Storsteinfjellet in Narvik. Stetind in Tysfjord has been voted as Norways national mountain, There are many glaciers in the mountains, like Blåmannsisen, Okstindbreen, the Sulitjelma Glacier, and Frostisen -7 of the 15 largest glaciers in continental Norway are located in Nordland. This Cambrian - Silurian bedrock, much of it mica schist, is by far the largest area in Norway with soft bedrock rich in nutritions good for plant growth
3.
Ofoten
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Ofoten is a traditional district in Nordland county in Northern Norway. It consists of the municipalities of Tysfjord, Ballangen, Evenes, Tjeldsund, Narvik and it is named after the main fjord, Ofotfjord, which is at the center of this district. The 6, 542-square-kilometre district was home to 30,421 residents in 2005, Ofoten is characterized by fjords surrounded by many mountains with high, jagged peaks reaching up to 1,900 metres in height. About 43% of the area lies above 600 metres, below elevations of 500 metres there are forests. Only 11% of the land is below an elevation of 60 metres, the mountains are high especially in the east. In the interior parts of the municipality, there are a number of glaciers, such as Gihtsejiegŋa, besides the Ofotfjord, there are a number of other fjords that cut into the landscapes, often with steep shorelines. The traditional district of Lofoten lies to the west of Ofoten, to the south is the district of Salten, to the east is northern Sweden. The municipality of Ofoten was established on 1 January 1838, on 1 January 1884, the municipality ceased to exist when it was split into two municipalities, Ankenes and Evindnæs. The district is named after Ofotfjord, the meaning of the first element is unknown and the last element is derived from the Old Norse word fótr which means foot. The oldest form of the name could have been Úffóti, in this case, the first element is úfr which means Eurasian eagle-owl. The three inner branches of the Ofotfjord might have been compared with the three claws of an owl
4.
Sami people
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The Sami people are an indigenous Finno-Ugric people inhabiting the Arctic area of Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of far northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. The Sami are the indigenous people of Scandinavia recognized and protected under the international conventions of indigenous peoples. Sami ancestral lands are not well-defined and their traditional languages are the Sami languages and are classified as a branch of the Uralic language family. Traditionally, the Sami have pursued a variety of livelihoods, including fishing, fur trapping. Their best-known means of livelihood is semi-nomadic reindeer herding, currently about 10% of the Sami are connected to reindeer herding, providing them with meat, fur, and transportation. 2,800 Sami people are involved in herding on a full-time basis. For traditional, environmental, cultural, and political reasons, reindeer herding is legally reserved only for Sami people in regions of the Nordic countries. The Sámi are often known in other languages by the exonyms Lap, Lapp, some Sami regard these as pejorative terms, while others do not. Finn was the originally used by Norse speakers to refer to the Sami, as attested in the Icelandic Eddas. As Old Norse gradually developed into the separate Scandinavian languages, Swedes apparently took to using Finn exclusively to refer to inhabitants of Finland, Finnish immigrants to Northern Norway in the 18th and 19th centuries were referred to as Kvens to distinguish them from the Sami Finns. Ethnic Finns are a group from Sami. In fact, Saxo never explicitly connects the Sami with the two Laplands, there is another suggestion that it originally meant wilds. In Finland and Sweden, Lapp is common in names, such as Lappi, Lappeenranta and Lapinlahti in Finland. As already mentioned, Finn is an element in Norwegian place names. In the North Sámi language, láhppon olmmoš means a person who is lost, Sámi refer to themselves as Sámit or Sápmelaš, the word Sámi being inflected into various grammatical forms. It has been proposed that Sámi, Häme, and perhaps Suomi are of the origin and ultimately borrowed from the Baltic word *žēmē. The Baltic word is cognate with Slavic земля, which means land. The Sámi institutions—notably the parliaments, radio and TV stations, theatres, etc. —all use the term Sámi, including when addressing outsiders in Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, or English
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Northern Norway
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Northern Norway is the geographical region of Norway, consisting of the three northernmost counties Nordland, Troms and Finnmark, in total about 35% of the Norwegian mainland. Some of the largest towns in Northern Norway are Mo i Rana, Bodø, Narvik, Harstad, Tromsø, Northern Norway is often described as the land of the midnight sun and the land of the northern lights. Further north, halfway to the North Pole, is the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, the region is multi-cultural, housing not just Norwegians but also the indigenous Sami people, Norwegian Finns and Russian populations. Finnish is spoken in only a few communities in the east of Finnmark, Northern Norway covers about a third of Norway. The southernmost part, roughly the part south of the Arctic Circle, is called Helgeland, the inland is covered with dense spruce forests and mountains near the Swedish border, some of the biggest rivers in the region are the Vefsna and the Ranelva. The highest mountain in Northern Norway is found here in the Okstindan range south of Mo i Rana with Oksskolten reaching 1,915 metres above sea level, the Saltfjellet range, with its Svartisen glacier and intersecting Arctic Circle, divides Helgeland from the next region, called Salten. Notable peaks in Salten are the Børvasstindan south of Bodø, Suliskongen near Fauske, the Steigartindan, between Saltfjellet and eastern Finnmark, Norway spruce trees have originally been planted and are mostly privately owned. The older plantations are now producing lumber,80 years after planted, Lofoten is a chain of peaks that jut out of the ocean. From the mainland side it looks very barren, but behind the violet-black peaks there are also flatlands with good grazing for sheep, the Vesterålen islands consist of smaller and bigger islands with a huge variation in landscape. There are also glaciers, like Frostisen and Blåisen, big islands like Senja, Kvaløya and Ringvassøya have green, forested interiors and a barren, mountainous coastline, with smaller islands offshore. The Lyngen Alps are the highest mountains of the area, rising to 1,833 metres, the 269 metres Mollisfossen waterfall in Nordreisa is the highest waterfall in the north, while Målselvfossen is Norways national waterfall. Finnmark county has fjords and glaciers in the far southwest, the inland is covered by Finnmarksvidda, a relatively barren plateau about 300 to 400 metres high, with many lakes and rivers like Alta-Kautokeino and Tana/Deatnu. Even at this latitude, pine forests grow naturally in lowland areas inland, east of Honningsvåg, there are no islands protecting the barren coasts that rise directly up from the sea. The landscape towards the Russian border is comparatively flat, Finnmark is situated north of northernmost Finland, and to the east Norway has a 196 kilometres border with Russia. The oldest known historical culture in the region is called Komsa, the first people possibly arrived around 12–13,000 years ago, but it is uncertain whether they came from southern Norway or from the Kola Peninsula. Today the rock carvings at Hjemmeluft in Alta or at Leknes in Nordland are among the remainders of the Stone Age cultures, showing reindeer swimming across the fjords. A significant find area is between the river Tana and the fjord of Varanger, where the reindeer probably ran over the isthmus on the way between the winter and summer grazing, metals were introduced around 500 BC. The Sami culture can be traced back at least 2,000 years, there is also some archeological evidence of Bronze Age agricultural settlements about 2,500 years old, as in Steigen and Sømna
6.
Tysfjord
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Tysfjord or Divtasvuodna is a municipality in Nordland county, Norway. It is part of the district of Ofoten. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Kjøpsvik, other villages include Drag, Hundholmen, Korsnes, Musken, Rørvika, Skarberget, and Storå. Tysfjord has a large population of Lule Sami people. The Árran Lule Sami Center is located in the village of Drag, the municipality of Tysfjord was established on 1 January 1869 when it was separated from the municipality of Lødingen. Initially, the population of Tysfjord was 1,402, on 1 January 1964, the Tysnes and Molvik village areas was transferred from Hamarøy to Tysfjord. The municipality is named after the Tysfjorden, Tysfjord is a Norwegianized form of the Lule Sami name Divtasvuodna. The meaning of the first element divtas is unknown, the last element is vuodna which means fjord in the Sami language. The coat-of-arms is from modern times, they were granted on 31 July 1987, the arms show a black lobster on a silver background. The lobsters in Tysfjord are the most northerly in the world, the Church of Norway has three parishes within the municipality of Tysfjord. It is part of the Ofoten deanery in the Diocese of Sør-Hålogaland, there are prehistoric rock carvings at Leiknes showing scenes of hunting, and the worlds oldest known depiction of an orca whale. In 1948, an investigation that had lasted for years, was dismissed in regards to a group of Sami from Tysfjord. These individuals had worked as guides—guiding Norwegians who chose to flee into Sweden, a 2004 article in Avisa Nordland estimated that out of 2209 inhabitant, between 600 and 1000 are Sami. The municipality is governed by a council of elected representatives. The municipal council of Tysfjord is made up of 17 representatives that are elected to four years. Currently, the party breakdown is as follows, Due to the limestone in Tysfjord, the modern Norcem factory still is a vital employer in Kjøpsvik, with about 130 employees, since 1999 it has been a part of the German worldwide company Heidelberger Cement. Public services, some tourism, and agriculture are the main sources of income in Tysfjord. The municipality is located along the Tysfjorden, the Tysfjorden is the second deepest fjord in Norway, with a maximum depth of 897 metres
7.
Tjeldsund
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Tjeldsund is a municipality in Nordland county, Norway. It is part of the district of Ofoten. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Hol i Tjeldsund, other important villages include Fjelldal, Myklebostad, and Ramsund. Norges Brannskole is situated in Fjelldal in the part of the municipality. Marinejegerkommandoen is based south of Ramsund, the municipality of Tjeldsund was established on 1 January 1909 when it was separated from the municipality of Lødingen. Tjeldsund encompassed the part of Lødingen prior to the division. Initially, Tjeldsund had a population of 1,404, on 1 January 1964, the western part of the island of Tjeldøya was transferred to Tjeldsund. On the same date the unpopulated Ramnes area of Evenes was also transferred to Tjeldsund, the municipality is named after the Tjeldsundet strait between the islands of Tjeldøya and Hinnøya. The first element is the Old Norse name of Tjeldøya and the last element is sund which means strait or sound, the name of the island is probably derived from the word tjald which means tent or the similar word tjaldr which means oystercatcher. The coat-of-arms is from modern times, they were granted in 1990, the arms show a blue-colored Anthonys cross on a silver background. The Anthonys cross is a canting of the letter T for Tjeldsund, the Church of Norway has one parish within the municipality of Tjeldsund. It is part of the Ofoten deanery in the Diocese of Sør-Hålogaland, Tjeldsund is located in Nordland county on the border with Troms county. Tjeldsund is mostly located on the island of Tjeldøya which is surrounded by the Ofotfjorden on the south, the Tjeldsundet strait to the west and north, the island is connected to the mainland by the Ramsund Bridge. The rest of the municipality is an area on the mainland to the east of Tjeldøya. The municipalities of Evenes and Skånland lies to the east of Tjeldsund, Harstad and Kvæfjord lie to the north, Lødingen to the west, the municipality is governed by a municipal council of elected representatives, which in turn elect a mayor. The municipal council of Tjeldsund is made up of 17 representatives that are elected to four years. Currently, the party breakdown is as follows, Nordland travel guide from Wikivoyage Municipal fact sheet from Statistics Norway
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Parish
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A parish is a church territorial unit constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the care and clerical jurisdiction of a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or more curates. Historically, a parish often covered the same area as a manor. By extension the term refers not only to the territorial unit. In England this church property was technically in ownership of the parish priest ex-officio, the eighth Archbishop of Canterbury Theodore of Tarsus appended the parish structure to the Anglo-Saxon township unit, where it existed, and where minsters catered to the surrounding district. In the wider picture of ecclesiastical polity, a parish comprises a division of a diocese or see, parishes within a diocese may be grouped into a deanery or vicariate forane, overseen by a dean or vicar forane, or in some cases by an archpriest. Some churches of the Anglican Communion have deaneries as units of an archdeaconry, in the Roman Catholic Church, each parish normally has its own parish priest, who has responsibility and canonical authority over the parish. These are called assistant priests, parochial vicars, curates, or, in the United States, associate pastors, each diocese is divided into parishes, each with their own central church called the parish church, where religious services take place. An example is that of personal parishes established in accordance with the 7 July 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum for those attached to the form of the Roman Rite. Most Catholic parishes are part of Latin Rite dioceses, which cover the whole territory of a country. There can also be overlapping parishes of eparchies of Eastern Catholic Churches, the Church of England geographical structure uses the local parish church as its basic unit. The parish system survived the Reformation with the Anglican Churchs secession from Rome remaining largely untouched, Church of England parishes nowadays all lie within one of 44 dioceses divided between the provinces of Canterbury,30 and York,14. A chapelry was a subdivision of a parish in England. It had a status to a township but was so named as it had a chapel which acted as a subsidiary place of worship to the main parish church. In England civil parishes and their parish councils evolved in the 19th century as ecclesiastical parishes began to be relieved of what became considered to be civic responsibilities. Thus their boundaries began to diverge, the word parish acquired a secular usage. Since 1895, a council elected by public vote or a parish meeting administers a civil parish and is formally recognised as the level of local government below a district council. The parish is also the level of church administration in the Church of Scotland
9.
Grain
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Grains are small, hard, dry seeds, with or without attached hulls or fruit layers, harvested for human or animal consumption. Agronomists also call the plants producing such seeds grain crops, the two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals such as wheat and rye, and legumes such as beans and soybeans. Because of the ubiquity of grain as a source, the term grain is often used to describe something small. After being harvested, dry grains are more durable than other foods, such as starchy fruits. Thus, major global commodity markets exist for canola, maize, rice, soybeans, wheat, in botany, grains and cereals are synonymous with caryopses, the fruits of the grass family. In agronomy and commerce, seeds or fruits from other plant families are called if they resemble caryopses. For example, amaranth is sold as grain amaranth, and amaranth products may be described as whole grains, the pre-Hispanic civilizations of the Andes had grain-based food systems but, at the higher elevations, none of the grains was a cereal. All three grains native to the Andes are broad-leafed plants rather than such as corn, rice. All cereal crops are members of the grass family, cereal grains contain a substantial amount of starch, a carbohydrate that provides dietary energy. As is the case all other whole plant foods, pulses also contain carbohydrate. Vegetable oils provide dietary energy and some essential fatty acids and they are also used as fuel or lubricants. Those who handle grain at grain facilities may encounter numerous occupational hazards, risks include grain entrapment, where workers are submerged in the grain and unable to remove themselves, explosions caused by fine particles of grain dust, and falls
10.
Hay
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Hay is grass, legumes, or other herbaceous plants that have been cut, dried, and stored for use as animal fodder, particularly for grazing animals such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep. Hay is also fed to animals such as rabbits and guinea pigs. Pigs may be fed hay, but they do not digest it as efficiently as more fully herbivorous animals and it is also fed during times when an animal is unable to access pasture, such as when animals are kept in a stable or barn. Commonly used plants for hay include mixtures of such as ryegrass, timothy, brome, fescue, Bermuda grass, orchard grass. Hay may also include legumes, such as alfalfa and clovers, legumes in hay are ideally cut pre-bloom. Other pasture forbs are also sometimes a part of the mix, straw is used mainly for animal bedding. Although straw is used as fodder, particularly as a source of dietary fiber. It is the leaf and seed material in the hay that determines its quality, farmers try to harvest hay at the point when the seed heads are not quite ripe and the leaf is at its maximum when the grass is mowed in the field. Hay is very sensitive to conditions, particularly when it is harvested. In drought conditions, both seed and leaf production are stunted, making hay that has a ratio of dry coarse stems that have very low nutritional values. If the weather is too wet, the cut hay may spoil in the field before it can be baled, the hay may also develop rot and mold after being baled, creating the potential for toxins to form in the feed, which could make the animals sick. It also has to be stored in a manner to prevent it from getting wet, mold and spoilage reduce nutritional value and may cause illness in animals. A symbiotic fungus in fescue may cause illness in horses and cattle, the successful harvest of maximum yields of high-quality hay is entirely dependent on the coincident occurrence of optimum crop, field, and weather conditions. When this occurs, there may be a period of activity on the hay farm while harvest proceeds until weather conditions become unfavourable. Hay or grass is the foundation of the diet for all grazing animals, Hay is usually fed to an animal in place of allowing the animal to graze on grasses in a pasture, particularly in the winter or during times when drought or other conditions make pasture unavailable. Animals that can eat hay vary in the types of grasses suitable for consumption, the ways they consume hay, most animals are fed hay in two daily feedings, morning and evening. However, this schedule is more for the convenience of humans, some animals, especially those being raised for meat, may be given enough hay that they simply are able to eat all day. The proper amount of hay and the type of hay required varies somewhat between different species, some animals are also fed concentrated feeds such as grain or vitamin supplements in addition to hay
11.
Barn
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A barn is an agricultural building usually located on farms and used for various purposes. In the North American area, a barn refers to structures that house livestock, including cattle and horses, as well as equipment and fodder, and often grain. As a result, the barn is often qualified e. g. tobacco barn, dairy barn, sheep barn. On the Continent, however, barns were often part of integrated structures known as byre-dwellings, in addition, barns may be used for equipment storage, as a covered workplace, and for activities such as threshing. The word barn comes from the Old English bere, for barley, and aern, for a storage place—thus, “Another word for barn in Old English was beretun, barley enclosure (from tun, enclosure, house, or beretun, also meaning a threshing floor. In historical times, the barn was to be distinguished from the granary, now, however, the common English name for a grain storage building is granary. The modern barn largely developed from the three aisled barn, commonly known as tithe barn or monastic barn. This, in turn, originated in a 12th-century building tradition, also applied in halls, in the 15th century several thousands of these huge barns were to be found in Western-Europe. In the course of time, its method was adopted by normal farms and it gradually spread to simpler buildings. As a rule, the barn had large entrance doors. The storage floors between the posts or in the aisles were known as bays or mows. The main types were large barns with sideway passages, compact barns with a central entrance, the latter also spread to Eastern Europe. Whenever stone walls were applied, the timber frame often gave way to single-naved buildings. A special type were byre-dwellings, which included living quarters, byres and stables, such as the Frisian farmhouse or Gulf house, not all, however, evolved from the medieval barn. Other types descended from the prehistoric longhouse or other building traditions, one of the latter was the Low German house, in which the harvest was stored in the attic. In many cases, the New World colonial barn evolved from the Low German house, in the mid to late 19th century in the U. S. barn framing methods began to shift away from traditional timber framing to truss framed or plank framed buildings. Truss or plank framed barns reduced the number of timbers instead using dimensional lumber for the rafters, joists, the joints began to become bolted or nailed instead of being mortised and tenoned. The inventor and patentee of the Jennings Barn claimed his design used less lumber, less work, less time, concrete block began to be used for barns in the early 20th century in the U. S
12.
Meadow
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A meadow is a field habitat vegetated by grass and other non-woody plants. Meadows are of importance because they are open, sunny areas that attract and support flora. Meadows may be naturally occurring or artificially created from cleared shrub or woodland and they often host a multitude of wildlife, providing areas for courtship displays, nesting, food gathering and sometimes sheltering if the vegetation is high enough. Many meadows support an array of wildflowers, which makes them of utmost importance to insects like bees and other pollinating insects. In agriculture, a meadow is grassland which is not regularly grazed by domestic livestock, especially in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the term meadow is commonly used in its original sense to mean a hay meadow, signifying grassland mown annually in the summer for making hay. Agricultural meadows are typically lowland or upland fields upon which hay or pasture grasses grow from self-sown or hand-sown seed, traditional hay meadows were once common in rural Britain, but are now in decline. Ecologist Professor John Rodwell states that over the past century, England, fewer than 15.000 hectares of lowland meadows remain in the UK and most sites are relatively small and fragmented. 25% of the UKs meadows are found in Worcestershire, with Fosters Green Meadow managed by the Worcestershire Wildlife Trust being a major site. A similar concept to the hay meadow is the pasture, which differs from the meadow in that it is grazed through the summer, rather than being allowed to grow out, the term, grassland, is used to describe both hay meadows and grass pastures. The specific agricultural practices in relation to the meadow can take on various expressions, as mentioned, this could be hay production or providing food for grazing cattle and livestock but also to give room for orchards or honey production. A transitional state can be artificially-maintained through a system, in which cultivated soil. For example, some of todays meadows originated thousands of years ago, types of perpetual meadows may include, Alpine meadows occur at high elevations above the tree line and maintained by harsh climatic conditions. Coastal meadows maintained by salt sprays, desert meadows restricted by low precipitation or lack of nutrients and humus. Prairies maintained by periods of drought or subject to wildfires. Wet meadows saturated with water much of the year. Apart from the meadows, meadows are often conceived of as artificial or cultural habitats, since they have emerged from and continually require human intervention to persist. It can be argued however, that meadows are really semi-cultural habitats, the reason is, that in many places the natural, pristine populations of free roaming large grazers are either extinct or very limited due to human activities. This reduces or removes their natural influence on the surrounding ecology, mankind has influenced the ecology and the landscape for millennia in many parts of the world, so it can sometimes be difficult to discern what is natural and what is cultural
Nordland travel guide from Wikivoyage
