Nordic Climate Histories : Impacts, Pathways, Narratives

Abstract

Down the centuries, the people of the Nordic countries have confronted challenges from climatic variability and change and sought ways to survive and adapt. In a time of accelerating global warming, these climate histories take on new contemporary significance. Drawing on tools from the natural and historical sciences, the innovative scholarship in this volume addresses questions such as: How did Nordic societies cope with past climatic hazards? What was the historical significance of the ‘Little Ice Age’ or the ‘Medieval Climate Anomaly’ for Nordic countries? And how do we study, narrate and learn from these past experiences? This volume is the first to collect climate histories from across all the Nordic countries. It combines research from climatologists, historians, archaeologists and museologists to explore how climate and culture interacted in the past and what we might learn from these interactions today. The chapters range from in-depth case studies to reflexive meta-histories; cover periods from the Bronze Age to the present; and draw on sources from tree rings to material culture to poetry. They also discuss how these histories can be communicated today, including how museums and literature can bring them into conversation with a current audience looking for lived experiences of climate adaptation. The volume was conceived during an international conference at the University of Oslo in May 2024. This interdisciplinary forum connected leading scholars in the field with practitioners and stakeholders. The essays presented here engage a rapidly growing field of intense public and political concern in the Nordics and beyond. The book speaks to various academic communities (climatology, history, literature) and stakeholders (museum practitioners, climate communicators and advocates). It includes the growing research and student community invested in this topic across several disciplines, practitioners and communicators in the field and the wider public interested in the vibrant debates about climate adaptation and experience.