In this chapter, I examine animal images on maps of medieval and early modern Scandinavia to expose how the North and its fauna were understood in the premodern era as distinct from the fauna of Continental Europe. The chapter is well illustrated with early modern maps. I argue that mapmakers …
This is the introduction to our volume exploring who and what was in the North according to people in the ancient, medieval, and early modern eras. The volume is interdisciplinary within the humanities with scholars from history, art history, and literature. It includes chapters covering thinkers across Europe, ranging from …
Abstract: Humans see distinctions between artifacts, which are constructed by human hands with human ingenuity, and nature, which we tend to think of as somehow not made by humans even if we acknowledge that little nature is left untouched by humans. An artifact at its core is related to the …
I held a public talk called “Anthropocene Animals: How humans are changing the planet and its inhabitants” at the Bildmuseet in Umeå, Sweden, in September 2016. The lecture was held in conjunction with the opening of the Perpetual Uncertainty exhibit about the nuclear age. You can see it here: https://vimeo.com/187611816
In this chapter I present an experiment: five pseudo-posts about blogging. I call them pseudo-posts because unlike the true online format of a blog, clickable links and embedded visuals are not possible. Yet I’ve tried to simulate the reading of a blog through indicated links (they are underlined and you …
This exhibit review discusses the Welcome to the Anthropocene: The Earth in Our Hands exhibit at the Deutsches Museum, Munich, within the context of how history of technology should engage with the Anthropocene concept. We argue that technology is the linchpin in the Anthropocene as an idea, and thus historians and museums of technology need …
I gave a presentation titled ‘History for a sustainable future’ for a group of parliamentary representatives and researchers in the Sällskapet Riksdagsledamöter och Forskare (RIFO) as part of a seminar on environmental humanities on 14 October 2015. My talk stressed the need to incorporate environmental history and historical research into the environmental policy process. …
An interview with me was recorded for the Department of History at Lund University on 16 October 2014. I talk about the field of environmental history, as well as my own work. The podcast starts and ends with some Swedish commentary. The interview with me goes from 05:30 to 30:00 and …
Environment and History 20 (2014): 479-489 Technologies in the hands of humans have turned humans into a force of nature. Environmental historians have increasingly recognised the value of history of technology to explain many environmental changes. Scholarship at the environment-technology junction, deploying ideas developed with the framework of Science and …
in Northscapes: History, Technology & the Making of Northern Environments (University of British Columbia Press, 2013) Co-authored with Sverker Sörlin This essay, which is the introduction to the volume, first situates the “North” as a hard to define entity–something more than Arctic but not clearly defined by a line on the map. We then …
