The article compares different models for knowledge production, all of which include traditional knowledge, as part of Norwegian and Finnish Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) research and management projects. Our hope is to contribute constructively to more socially robust knowledge production in Arctic environmental governance. Through investigating how traditional knowledge comes to matter at local, regional (national), and international levels in different Atlantic salmon research and governance projects in Norway and Finland, we examine the social robustness of different approaches to knowledge co-production. In general, the projects that seem to fulfill Arctic expectations of traditional knowledge co-production with science (projects with high legitimacy) seem to have the least impact on policy, and vice versa. We argue that expectations at the international policy level towards traditional knowledge integration with science are at times unrealistically high and hard to meet at local levels and in national policy contexts. We therefore argue for rethinking how a legitimate and policy-relevant knowledge co-production process should be conducted. Arctic policy levels, Norwegian and Finnish environmental authorities, and salmon conservation science could fruitfully draw lessons from the Näätämö co-management project, which is already referred to as an example of best practice in Arctic environmental governance. To achieve social robustness, projects need to balance scientific credibility with legitimacy among local and Indigenous rights holders. This balance might entail giving up on expectations of integrating traditional ecological knowledge with science and embracing the undefined spaces within Arctic and Indigenous knowledge production.

Through the construction of a socio-ecological timeline for the Porsanger fjord ecosystem, this article illustrates the different ways in which environmental and social–ecological changes have influenced the adaptations of rural households in coastal Sami communities in Finnmark, north Norway. The main finding is that, although environmental change in the form of seal invasions and dwindling fish stocks directly impacted the fisheries, the introduction of a new vessel quota system decisively changed adaptive capacity and coastal Sami household adaptation strategies. These changes represented a tipping point for the social–ecological system in the period between 1986 and 1990. It is thus important to discuss the ways in which governance systems may facilitate actions to adapt to climate and biodiversity change and foster sustainable rural livelihood systems in coastal Norway. Based on traditional and local ecological knowledge on the state of the ecosystem prior to the tipping point, two relevant actions to increase the resilience of the system were identified: ensuring the possibility of re-entry into fisheries as part of rural livelihood combinations, and ecological restoration of kelp beds. Flexible diversification of livelihoods allows exploitation of a range of adjacent species without large investments in a fossile fuel-driven fisheries economy. Investing in regrowth of macroalgae to foster cod nursery areas and increase carbon sequestration can be a relevant alternative for communities that are interested in contributing to climate change mitigation on a larger scale.

This paper documents the presence of marine toponyms in the indigenous Sami language, which powerfully counters the Norwegian names inscribed in official sea charts. However, during the process of analysing the place name material for fishing grounds in the Porsanger fjord, place names in the majority language as well as modified versions of the original Sami names proved to be just as valuable for the study of seascape use in Porsanger. From conceiving of the seascape in terms of a ‘colonial’ or ‘contested’ landscape with two opposing user groups, other relations than the Sami-Norwegian dichotomist categories emerged. As this paper shows, the main lines of conflict and cooperation changed over time to run between subsistence fishers and the fishers who were connected to the larger state fisheries management system. The paper therefore argues that indigenous place name research has to pay more attention not only to ‘silenced’ names, but also to the hybrid products of ethnic relations and colonization processes than what is currently the case.

This article discusses effects of and drivers behind the current integration of experience-based knowledge in management. The case in point is production and integration of fishers' ecological knowledge (FEK) in coastal zone management in Norway. The article discusses how the principles of social justice and protection of biodiversity drive FEK integration, through analysing a case of conflict between small-scale fishers and cod farming in Storfjord, northern Norway. The case became known for the appearance of deformed “monster cod” which supported the fishers' claims that fish farming was harmful to the environment and thus also to the indigenous Sami culture. Assessing how FEK was judged in terms of its credibility, legitimacy and saliency, the article argues that the criteria by which FEK is judged are different from how other types of policy-relevant knowledge is judged. In addition to being scientifically credible, its quality as age-old knowledge derived from interaction with the environment increases its influence on management decisions in biodiversity conservation controversies where fishers' and managers' interests coincide. The article concludes that integration of FEK in management both fulfils goals of protection of biodiversity and social justice, which makes it harder to ignore in socially and environmentally controversial contexts in the future.

The article explores whether marine biodiversity mappings can contribute to the mapping of the material basis of Sami culture. Four different mapping practices are analysed in the article, all related to the seascape in the Lyngen fjord (Lyngenfjorden) in northern Norway. Initiatives undertaken by the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries and the Institute of Marine Research (IMR) to map cod spawning grounds, and by the Sami Rights Commission (SRC) to map customary use of a fjord are compared with local fishing practices. Although the seascape was initially mapped to find spawning grounds (the IMR and the Directorate) and to record social practices (the Directorate and the SRC), the outcomes also express social relations between the mappers and the mapped materials. Whereas the mappings that included fishermen's relations with fishing grounds are compatible with each other, the marine scientists' mapping documented biodiversity independent of local relations with it. The author argues that the marine environment should be seen as expressing social relations between groups of people and certain materialities instead of as separated in natural and social layers. Thus, even though marine biodiversity mapping practices reveal biodiversity in Sami settlement areas, they inform little about the material basis of Sami culture.