Mountain holding in the 21st century – difficulties and possibilities   This study examines the difficulties and possibilities that mountain holding farmers have today. The following questions were considered: i) Who is cultivating mountain holdings today? ii) Which is the most important reason to keep animals there? iii) What kind of subsidies are most common? iv) What kinds of animals and what breeds are the most common? v) For how long period of time are the animals kept at the mountain holdings every season? vi) How are the fundamental regulations in the animal welfare law being followed, and are there any problems/conflicts in keeping animals at the mountain holdings? vii) What meaning do the animals have for the farmers and what are the farmer’s thoughts about the future? A survey based on these issues was sent out to 107 mountain holdings farmers with animals on grazing land, where 59 % submitted a response. The results showed that knowledge on how to keep animals at the mountain holdings was overall good. The biggest difficulties for the farmers were not following the current regulations but an increased number of predators and poor profitability. 45 % of 62 responders thought predators were a problem and 35 % that poor profitability was a problem. The possibilities that farmers have are mostly to focus their resources on tourism. Today we talk about biological diversity, locally produced and national particularities, and from this study I think that the mountain holdings have several important functions to fill there.