A Finsler geometry may be understood as a homogeneous variational problem,
where the Finsler function is the Lagrangian. The extremals in Finsler geometry
are curves, but in more general variational problems we might consider extremal
submanifolds of dimension m. In this minicourse we discuss these problems
from a geometric point of view.Comment: This paper is a written-up version of the major part of a minicourse
given at the sixth Bilateral Workshop on Differential Geometry and its
Applications, held in Ostrava in May 201