ABSTRACT The law regulating what non-industrial private forest owners (NIPF's) can and cannot do within their forest holdings is an outline law. Thus the NIPF's have great opportunity to shape the landscape inside their holdings by their own will. Their perceptions of their holdings can thus be of great interest. This because information about their perceptions can predict change, and also bring about more understanding of the group as a whole. The aim of this essay is therefore to explore the NIPF's relationship to their forest holdings by describing their mindscapes. The data necessary to fulfil the aim was acquired from semi-structured interviews, done with five NIPF's in Västerbotten. The data was then analysed using thematic analysis, with the term mindscape as a frame. All of the NIPF's were living in the same municipality as their forest holdings. Seven themes in the mindscapes of the NIPF's were found: Everyday knowledge, human presence, the balance between human- and natural processes, change, feelings, the forest holding inside the rural landscape and to be more than one. Previous research was used to triangulate, and to better understand the mindscape of the respondents. The respondents could be divided into two of Ingemarsons (2004) typologies; Traditionalists and multiobjective owners. Where the mindscape of the multiobjective owners contained the most change.