Nordic Climate Histories (forthcoming)
Impacts, Pathways, Narratives
Dominik Collet, Ingar Mørkestøl Gundersen, Heli Huhtamaa, Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Astrid Ogilvie and Sam White (eds)
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.
This book is Open Access through the support of The Centre for Advanced Study (Oslo) and the NORCLI project at The University of Oslo.
THE EDITORS
The editors are all currently Fellows of the project The Nordic Little Ice Age (1300–1900) Lessons from Past Climate Change (NORLIA) at the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Dominik Collet is Professor of Climate and Environmental History at the University of Oslo, Norway. He is the PI of ClimateCultures – Socionatural entanglement in Little Ice Age Norway (1500–1800) as well as the thematic research group Nordic Climate History. He also leads the project The Nordic Little Ice Age (1300–1900) Lessons from Past Climate Change (NORLIA) at the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. His research focuses on the historical entanglements of climate and culture both in their material and mental configurations.
Ingar Mørkestøl Gundersen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology, Conservation, and History at the University of Oslo. He has published on a range of topics on climate history and the Scandinavian Iron Age. Gundersen received his Ph.D. in 2022 with the thesis ‘Iron Age Vulnerability’, which investigated the archaeological evidence for a sixth-century climate crisis in eastern Norway. His doctoral research was part of the VIKINGS project (Volcanic Eruptions and their Impacts on Climate, Environment, and Viking Society in 500–1250 ce). Together with Dr Manon Bajard, he received the Inter Circle U. prize 2022 for outstanding examples of cross-disciplinary research. He is currently part of two research projects on the Nordic Little Ice Age (ClimateCultures, University of Oslo and The Nordic Little Ice Age (1300–1900) Lessons from Past Climate Change (NORLIA) at the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Heli Huhtamaa is a climate and environmental historian. Her research interests include human consequences of the Little Ice Age and pre-industrial Nordic history. She focuses on interdisciplinary approaches concerning both historical and climate sciences. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Bern, Switzerland, where she leads a research project on volcanic impacts on climate, environment and society.
Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist is Professor of History, in particular Historical Geography, at Stockholm University, Sweden. He also holds the title of Associate Professor of Physical Geography at the same university. Ljungqvist was in 2022 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities awarded the Rettig Prize for “interdisciplinary works concerning climate and diseases in a long-term perspective”. He was a Pro Futura Scientia Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study from 2019 to 2024 and has been a visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge, Lanzhou University, University of Bern, and the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS).
Astrid Ogilvie is a Research Professor at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado and a Senior Associate Scientist at the Stefansson Arctic Institute in Akureyri, Iceland. Her research focuses on the broader issues of climatic change and contemporary Arctic issues, as well as the environmental humanities. Her interdisciplinary, international projects have included leadership of the NordForsk Nordic Centre of Excellence project: Arctic Climate Predictions: Pathways to Resilient, Sustainable Societies (ARCPATH); and The Natural World in Literary and Historical Sources from Iceland ca. AD 800 to 1800 (ICECHANGE). She is currently a Fellow of the project The Nordic Little Ice Age (1300–1900) Lessons from Past Climate Change (NORLIA) at the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. She is the author of some 100 scientific papers and has three edited books to her credit.
Sam White is Professor of Political History at the University of Helsinki, author of A Cold Welcome (Harvard University Press, 2017) and editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Climate History (Palgrave, 2018).
CONTENTS
Introduction: Integrating, Connecting and Narrating Nordic Climate Histories
Dominik Collet, Ingar Mørkestøl Gundersen, Heli Huhtamaa, Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Astrid E.J. Ogilvie and Sam WhiteChapter 1. The Development of Meteorological Institutions and Early Instrumental Climate Data in the Nordic Countries
Elin Lundstad, Stefan Norrgård and A.E.J. OgilvieANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL CLIMATE
Chapter 2. Cold or Culture? Effects of Mid-Holocene Temperatures on Forager and Early Farmer Demographics in Southern Norway
Svein Vatsvåg NielsenChapter 3. A Series of Unfortunate Events: Two Central Norwegian Settlements Facing the Climatic Downturn after ad536–540
Ingrid Ystgaard and Raymond SauvageChapter 4. Volcanic Vulnerability in Medieval Iceland
Carina DammChapter 5. The Moving Manors and Adaptation in Sixteenth Century Denmark
Sarah KerrChapter 6. Architectural Climate Change Adaptions in Little Ice Age Norway c. 1300–1550
Kristian ReinfjordLITTLE ICE AGE CLIMATE
Chapter 7. The Impact of Wildfire and Climate on the Resilience and Vulnerability of Peasant Communities in Seventeenth-Century Finland
Jakob StarlanderChapter 8. Northern Iceland Temperature Variations and Sea-Ice Incidence c. ad 1600–1850
A.E.J. Ogilvie and M.W. MilesChapter 9. Integrating Agricultural Vulnerability and Climate Extremes. Eighteenth-century Norway through the Works of Jacob Nicolaj Wilse (1735–1801)
Ingar Mørkestøl GundersenChapter 10. An Ice Breakup as in the Good Old Days’. Ice Jams in the Aura River, Turku, Southwest Finland, 1739–2024
Stefan NorrgårdNARRATING CLIMATE HISTORIES
Chapter 11. Climate Narratives in Norwegian Public Histories
Eivind Heldaas SelandChapter 12. Glacier Poetry in Norwegian Literary Historiography
Kristine KlevelandChapter 13. Through a Mirror, Darkly: Bringing Deep Environmental History into the Museum
Felix RiedeChapter 14. Back to the Future: Weaving Climate History into Nordic National Museum Narratives
Natália Melo, Bergsveinn Þórsson, Felix Riede and Stefan Norrgård
1st August 2025
ISBN 978-1-912186-98-3 (PB) £30, 360pp
eISBN 978-1-912186-99-0 (Open Access eBook)