Reflections of Change: The Natural World in Literary and Historical Sources from Iceland ca. AD 800 to 1800 (ICECHANGE)
Iceland is well known for its rich literary tradition, which includes a wealth of written works encompassing many genres, from the famous "Sagas of Icelanders" to numerous other corpora of great value. This documentary archive contains much information on the natural world (e.g., accounts of volcanic eruptions, encroachments of glaciers, flash floods, extreme winters, severe storms and damaging sea ice), an environment subject to rapid and volatile changes capable of causing great societal hardships. The project undertakes a systematic analysis of weather, climate and other environmental information in Icelandic literature - encompassing historiographic, literary and normative documents from the early medieval period to ca. 1800. Past environmental impacts, extreme events, and human adaptations to environmental changes can provide valuable points of comparative reference for present and future socioenvironmental change. Research questions concern the development and transmission of local environmental knowledge, the emergence of native ideologies of nature and environment, the development of land and resource use systems, and the influence of operative conceptions of human-environmental relations on social structures and movements. The project is also important because it will illuminate ongoing work on the environmental history of Iceland. The research will lay the foundation for a larger research program with a similar focus extendable throughout the North Atlantic region.
Final report
The ICECHANGE project has undertaken a systematic analysis of descriptions of the natural world drawn from the literature and history of Iceland for the period ca. AD 800-1800. These dates were chosen for the following reasons. The traditional date for the settlement of Iceland is AD 871, but there is some evidence for a slightly earlier date. Furthermore, some of the early sources refer to events immediately preceding the settlement. The end date of 1800 was chosen as a cut-off point because after that time sources become so prolific that it would not be possible to address them all in a 3-year project. The date ranges also allowed for a millennial-scale perspective. The project has taken advantage of the wealth of written records from Iceland encompassing many different genres and has undertaken a systematic analysis of weather, climate and other environmental information in the rich corpora of Icelandic literature, encompassing historiographic, literary, and normative documents. The focus has included accounts of volcanic eruptions, encroachments of glaciers, flash floods, extreme winters, severe storms, and the harmful sea ice that drifted to the coasts. As anticipated, they have revealed an environment subject to rapid changes with extreme consequences that frequently caused the human population considerable hardship. The investigation of these aspects were divided into four main project stages and five focus tasks.
The four project stages have been carried through as planned. These have been: i) investigations of previous work relevant to the project; ii) an inventory of environmentally relevant source documents with special emphasis on previously un-researched and unpublished documents; iii) close reading and analysis of documents selected (from the inventory task) for their interesting environmental elements (literary texts) and environmental information (historical sources); iv) a synthesis of project results and integration of knowledge from archaeology and the geosciences. Emphasis was placed on five focus tasks: i) eco-critical analysis of literary works; ii) analysis of climate data in historical source materials (in order to reconstruct climatic variations over the project period); iii) documentation of natural hazards (in particular volcanic eruptions and storms) from historical and geological records; iv) analysis of land management and resource systems in historical source materials; v) human responses to system disturbances: both a) prolonged or recurring events; and b) extreme natural hazards and pandemics. Highlights of project results from these five focus tasks are as follows:
1) The eco-critical and integrative analysis of literary works has focused on the concept of environmental memory as well as several novel approaches to the investigation of such works in the light of recent studies exploring the longue durée of human impacts on island landscapes, the impacts of climate and other environmental changes on human communities, and the interaction of human societies and their environments at different spatial and temporal scales. See, e.g., Hartman et al., 2017. This article also illustrates the benefits of an integrated environmental-studies approach that draws on data, methodologies and analytical tools of environmental humanities, social sciences, and geosciences to better understand long-term human ecodynamics and changing human-landscape-environment interactions through time. Another important focus has been a re-evaluation of the interface among humans, nature and environment as reflected in a variety of literary texts. This has been achieved by developing a long-term (longue durée) perspective on human perceptions/conceptions of nature and environments that change, sometimes fundamentally, over the course of time. A deeper understanding of these changes can shed valuable light on modern conceptions of nature, the environment and social-ecological relations as well as on multivocal understandings of the past and both temporal and spatial/geographical contexts. The new readings of Icelandic literary sources in the ICECHANGE project have served to develop a fresh understanding of all these concepts, as facilitated in part by application of recent ecocritical theory as well as through the kinds of environmental humanities methodologies mentioned above. Such approaches regard the gradual (intergenerational and wider diachronic) evolution of literary works (including narratives, motifs, and multivocal understandings of place in historical, cultural, biographical and environmental terms) in the light of organic (iterative) processes of development over time as these play out in dynamic local traditions of negotiating, understanding, memorializing and even renegotiating the past. The new approaches to literary environmental history and so-called “green” cultural studies prominent in this work in the ICECHANGE project have been significantly informed by recent theoretical contributions from material ecocriticism and cultural ecology (Hreinsson, 2018abc; 2019), historical ecology (Crumley, 2016; Crumley et al., 2019; Isendahl, 2019) and integrated environmental humanities (Hartman, 2015; 2016abc; Hartman et al., 2016; Hartman, et al. 2017; Lethbridge and Hartman, 2016).
ii) The project has also placed a major emphasis on historical descriptions of environmental change. Analyses of climatic variations and natural hazards for the period 1400 to 1700 resulted in: a) descriptions of environmental stress involving famines, mortality and livestock deaths (Ogilvie, 2020); as well as analyses of sea-ice incidence and storms (Ogilvie, 2021). An analysis focusing on climatic and geological history of the period 1600 to 1800 is forthcoming (see articles in preparation in the publication section). Climatic analyses for the project have also contributed to overview articles e.g., by Pfister et al., 2018.
iii) The third focus task of the project was the documentation of natural hazards. A particular emphasis has been on the incidence of the sea ice that reaches the shores of Iceland, brought on ocean currents from East Greenland. The ice had a variety of negative impacts. These included the prevention of fishing when the ice was fast to the shore, as well as precluding the much-needed trading vessels from landing. Even more detrimental was the reduction in temperatures on land that the sea ice caused. This had a severe effect on the all-important grass crop. (For most of Iceland's history, the climate has meant that agriculture was marginal and grass for the livestock was the most important crop). When the grass crop failed, and there was insufficient hay to feed the livestock over the winter, they could die, with consequential famines for the human population. For the early timeframe of the project, sea-ice data are fairly sporadic but it is likely that there were severe sea-ice years in, for example, 1233, 1261, 1306, 1320 and 1374. There is some evidence that temperatures in Iceland were relatively mild on the whole for the period 1395 to 1430. Between 1430 and 1560 there are very few contemporary sources. The 1580s and 1590s were likely to have been periods with much sea ice. The severe ice-years around 1600 are well documented, as are the years 1615 and 1633. From ca. 1640 to ca. 1680 there appears to have been little sea ice off Iceland’s coasts. During the period 1600 to 1800, the decades with most ice present were probably the 1750s and the 1780s. Although a climate deterministic approach has been avoided, there can be little doubt that severe sea-ice years were complicit in the many famines that occurred in Iceland's history. The two most devastating volcanic eruptions to occur during the project period were Öræfajökull in 1362 when an entire district in the southeast was laid waste, and the Lakagígar eruption in 1782-3 which had a catastrophic effect in Iceland, not because the eruption caused direct loss of life, but because of the indirect effects as a result of the emission of volcanic gases and ash, distributed by wind. The grass, the basic food supply of the grazing livestock became polluted and flourine poisoned. Approximately a quarter of Iceland´s population died as a result of the eruption. See Demarée and Ogilvie, 2017 and the discussion by Ogilvie in Damodaran et al., 2018.
iv). The fourth project focus task involved investigating land management and resource-use systems and thus questions relating to economic and social organization systems. Examples of new and significant research for the project include questions concerning the extent of medieval settlement in Iceland. It is becoming clear that currently available written evidence on sub-tenancies only shows the tip of the iceberg. New lines of research show that the number of deserted sub-tenancies is much larger than previously thought. This discovery has the potential to change many of the parameters for the evaluation of Icelandic medieval social, economic and environmental history. Another discovery touches upon the place of whale beachings in the medieval economy. A large number of contemporary documents describing these resources and their uses is available in the "Diplomatarium Islandicum". This material has not been analysed or used in research until now. The analysis of these documents shows that these beachings were important sources of whale meat and blubber from the 13th century onwards, an extremely welcome additional food source. The prominence of beached whales in these documentary records indicates that they were much more important than hitherto thought. In short, many of our analyses of early written sources have resulted in re-evaluations of conventional wisdom concerning social-environmental changes and resource-use practices in Iceland during the medieval era.
v). The fifth focus area of the project has been on evaluating human responses to system disturbances. A key research question has been on how people coped with short-term extreme events such as storms, avalanches, glacial floods, sea-ice years, famines and epidemics. During crisis years (as in the early 1600s, the 1690s, the 1750s and the 1780s) years of severe weather and sea ice (as well as the background of unfavourable economic and political conditions) caused starvation and loss of life. Responses seem to have primarily taken the form of the desertion of farms as well as an increase in the recourse to fisheries. A further focus has been on shipwrecks. In data analysed for the period 1599-1700 shipwrecks are noted in: 1599, 1600, 1602, 1603, 1608-1610, 1613-1616, 1618-1621, 1623, 1625-1629, 1631-1633, 1635-1645, 1647, 1648, 1650, 1652-1656, 1658, 1661-1663, 1665, 1666, 1669-1672, 1674, 1678, 1681-1685, 1687-1690, and 1694-1700. In other words, there would appear to be shipwrecks among local Icelandic fishermen almost every year during this period (Ogilvie, 2021). Epidemics were also highly disruptive occurrences in Icelandic history, sometimes causing changes in land use and resource systems. Notable epidemic events occurred in: 1402-1404 and 1494 (the plague); and a smallpox outbreak in 1707-09. An interesting development is that the latter may even have had an impact on the fisheries as the resulting population decline meant that there were fewer men to man the boats.
The ICECHANGE project has been extremely successful in all aspects and has resulted in a large number of presentations and publications, some of which are still in press. However, perhaps the most significant project result to date is the fact that ICECHANGE is playing a part in highlighting the potential value of the humanities in environmental and climate research. As an example of this, a recent article (see http://theconversation.com/why-science-needs-the-humanities-to-solve-climate-change-113832) that makes the point that the humanities have a crucial part to play in the solving of climate-change issues refers to an ICECHANGE prize-winning article by Hartman et al, 2017. A further significant forthcoming result of the project will be the book co-authored by team members. Other important results include the unearthing of very many unknown historical and literary sources, in particular in unpublished manuscript form, that are highly relevant for the project. This effort includes the first steps in the establishment of a database of over 14000 photographs of manuscript pages containing nature/environmental poetry, deriving from two manuscript collections that include comprehensive registers made by the lay-philologist, Páll Pálsson (1806-1877). These combined collections are perhaps the most representative assemblage of Icelandic post-reformation poetry. The project has worked to design and trial run an open-source platform and online interface to crowdsource citizen-science transcriptions of a selection of these unpublished literary works in manuscript as a pilot project. Both the extensive high-resolution photographic documentation of these previously unpublished works in manuscript form (from 1700-1900) and the pilot project to test a platform and methodology to digitalize transcriptions of these works as an open-access database for a follow-through project are a particularly significant result of the ICECHANGE project.
It should be noted that a number of lectures and conference papers planned for 2020 have been impacted by the emergency lockdowns and cancellations occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. In many cases, workshops, conferences and other public events were cancelled for this reason, and in other cases they were postponed and are in the process of being rescheduled for 2021. The pandemic had a very disruptive effect on the immersive project workshops of the ICECHANGE team planned to take place in Iceland, Sweden and the UK during 2020, at which forthcoming joint-authored papers, chapters and one book project to be published by the ICECHANGE team were scheduled for substantive synthesis work. This development has had the effect of slowing final integration activities and efforts on these published outcomes. These works are still slated for publication but may not appear in print before later 2021 and 2022 as a result.
In spite of these Covid-19-related delays, the output of the three-year project has been prodigious. It has resulted in: one published book; two books in progress; eighteen published articles; ten articles in progress; four extended abstracts; one report in published conference proceedings; fifty-two conference presentations; and seventeen individual presentations. Furthermore, as noted in the "Publications" section of this report, an open-access domain for the ICECHANGE project is in the process of being finalized for a launch in March-April 2021.
REFERENCES NOT CITED IN THE PUBLICATIONS LIST
Crumley, Carole L. 2016. Historical Ecology. (In) Hilary Callan (ed), The Wiley Blackwell International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, Hilary Callan, (ed). New York: Wiley Blackwell.
Crumley, Carole L., Lennartsson, T. and Westin, A. eds. 2019. Issues and Concepts in Historical Ecology: The Past and Future of Landscapes and Regions. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Hartman, Steven. 2015. Unpacking the Black Box: the need for Integrated Environmental Humanities (IEH) (2015). In Future Earth Blog, published 3 June 2015.
Hartman, Steven. 2016a. Revealing Environmental Memory: what the study of medieval literature can tell us about long-term environmental change.” In Biodiverse Nr. 2 2016 (May 2016) online. Tidskrift från Center för Biologisk Mångfald, Sveriges Landbruksuniversitet. PRV utgivningsbevis nr. 21404.
Hartman, Steven. 2016b. Att avkoda det ekologiska minnet: Vad studier av medeltida litteratur kan berätta om historiska miljöförändringar.” In Biodiverse Nr. 2 2016 (May 2016). Tidskrift från Center för Biologisk Mångfald, Sveriges Landbruksuniversitet, 4-7. PRV utgivningsbevis nr. 21404.
Hartman, Steven. 2016c. Climate Change, Public Engagement & Integrated Environmental Humanities, Teaching Climate Change in the Environmental Humanities, Eds. (In) Shane Hall, Stephanie LeMenager and Stephen Siperstein (eds), Routledge: Abingdon & New York, 67-75. ISBN: 978-1138907157.
Hartman, Steven, Ogilvie, A.E.J. and Hennig, R. 2016. 'Viking' Ecologies: Icelandic Sagas, Local Knowledge and Environmental Memory. (In) Parham & Westling (eds), Cambridge Global History of Literature and Environment (Cambridge UP), 125-140. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316212578.010.
Isendahl, C. 2019. Introduction: Bridging the Past and Present, (In) Christian Isendahl and Daryl Stump (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Historical Ecology and Applied Archaeology, 483-485. Oxford University Press, 48-485, 978-0-19-967269-1].
Lethbridge, Emily and Hartman, Steven. 2016, Inscribing Environmental Memory in the Icelandic Sagas (IEM) and the Icelandic Saga Map (ISM) Project, PMLA Vol 131: 2 (March 2016), 381-391. DOI: 10.1632/pmla.2016.131.2.381
The four project stages have been carried through as planned. These have been: i) investigations of previous work relevant to the project; ii) an inventory of environmentally relevant source documents with special emphasis on previously un-researched and unpublished documents; iii) close reading and analysis of documents selected (from the inventory task) for their interesting environmental elements (literary texts) and environmental information (historical sources); iv) a synthesis of project results and integration of knowledge from archaeology and the geosciences. Emphasis was placed on five focus tasks: i) eco-critical analysis of literary works; ii) analysis of climate data in historical source materials (in order to reconstruct climatic variations over the project period); iii) documentation of natural hazards (in particular volcanic eruptions and storms) from historical and geological records; iv) analysis of land management and resource systems in historical source materials; v) human responses to system disturbances: both a) prolonged or recurring events; and b) extreme natural hazards and pandemics. Highlights of project results from these five focus tasks are as follows:
1) The eco-critical and integrative analysis of literary works has focused on the concept of environmental memory as well as several novel approaches to the investigation of such works in the light of recent studies exploring the longue durée of human impacts on island landscapes, the impacts of climate and other environmental changes on human communities, and the interaction of human societies and their environments at different spatial and temporal scales. See, e.g., Hartman et al., 2017. This article also illustrates the benefits of an integrated environmental-studies approach that draws on data, methodologies and analytical tools of environmental humanities, social sciences, and geosciences to better understand long-term human ecodynamics and changing human-landscape-environment interactions through time. Another important focus has been a re-evaluation of the interface among humans, nature and environment as reflected in a variety of literary texts. This has been achieved by developing a long-term (longue durée) perspective on human perceptions/conceptions of nature and environments that change, sometimes fundamentally, over the course of time. A deeper understanding of these changes can shed valuable light on modern conceptions of nature, the environment and social-ecological relations as well as on multivocal understandings of the past and both temporal and spatial/geographical contexts. The new readings of Icelandic literary sources in the ICECHANGE project have served to develop a fresh understanding of all these concepts, as facilitated in part by application of recent ecocritical theory as well as through the kinds of environmental humanities methodologies mentioned above. Such approaches regard the gradual (intergenerational and wider diachronic) evolution of literary works (including narratives, motifs, and multivocal understandings of place in historical, cultural, biographical and environmental terms) in the light of organic (iterative) processes of development over time as these play out in dynamic local traditions of negotiating, understanding, memorializing and even renegotiating the past. The new approaches to literary environmental history and so-called “green” cultural studies prominent in this work in the ICECHANGE project have been significantly informed by recent theoretical contributions from material ecocriticism and cultural ecology (Hreinsson, 2018abc; 2019), historical ecology (Crumley, 2016; Crumley et al., 2019; Isendahl, 2019) and integrated environmental humanities (Hartman, 2015; 2016abc; Hartman et al., 2016; Hartman, et al. 2017; Lethbridge and Hartman, 2016).
ii) The project has also placed a major emphasis on historical descriptions of environmental change. Analyses of climatic variations and natural hazards for the period 1400 to 1700 resulted in: a) descriptions of environmental stress involving famines, mortality and livestock deaths (Ogilvie, 2020); as well as analyses of sea-ice incidence and storms (Ogilvie, 2021). An analysis focusing on climatic and geological history of the period 1600 to 1800 is forthcoming (see articles in preparation in the publication section). Climatic analyses for the project have also contributed to overview articles e.g., by Pfister et al., 2018.
iii) The third focus task of the project was the documentation of natural hazards. A particular emphasis has been on the incidence of the sea ice that reaches the shores of Iceland, brought on ocean currents from East Greenland. The ice had a variety of negative impacts. These included the prevention of fishing when the ice was fast to the shore, as well as precluding the much-needed trading vessels from landing. Even more detrimental was the reduction in temperatures on land that the sea ice caused. This had a severe effect on the all-important grass crop. (For most of Iceland's history, the climate has meant that agriculture was marginal and grass for the livestock was the most important crop). When the grass crop failed, and there was insufficient hay to feed the livestock over the winter, they could die, with consequential famines for the human population. For the early timeframe of the project, sea-ice data are fairly sporadic but it is likely that there were severe sea-ice years in, for example, 1233, 1261, 1306, 1320 and 1374. There is some evidence that temperatures in Iceland were relatively mild on the whole for the period 1395 to 1430. Between 1430 and 1560 there are very few contemporary sources. The 1580s and 1590s were likely to have been periods with much sea ice. The severe ice-years around 1600 are well documented, as are the years 1615 and 1633. From ca. 1640 to ca. 1680 there appears to have been little sea ice off Iceland’s coasts. During the period 1600 to 1800, the decades with most ice present were probably the 1750s and the 1780s. Although a climate deterministic approach has been avoided, there can be little doubt that severe sea-ice years were complicit in the many famines that occurred in Iceland's history. The two most devastating volcanic eruptions to occur during the project period were Öræfajökull in 1362 when an entire district in the southeast was laid waste, and the Lakagígar eruption in 1782-3 which had a catastrophic effect in Iceland, not because the eruption caused direct loss of life, but because of the indirect effects as a result of the emission of volcanic gases and ash, distributed by wind. The grass, the basic food supply of the grazing livestock became polluted and flourine poisoned. Approximately a quarter of Iceland´s population died as a result of the eruption. See Demarée and Ogilvie, 2017 and the discussion by Ogilvie in Damodaran et al., 2018.
iv). The fourth project focus task involved investigating land management and resource-use systems and thus questions relating to economic and social organization systems. Examples of new and significant research for the project include questions concerning the extent of medieval settlement in Iceland. It is becoming clear that currently available written evidence on sub-tenancies only shows the tip of the iceberg. New lines of research show that the number of deserted sub-tenancies is much larger than previously thought. This discovery has the potential to change many of the parameters for the evaluation of Icelandic medieval social, economic and environmental history. Another discovery touches upon the place of whale beachings in the medieval economy. A large number of contemporary documents describing these resources and their uses is available in the "Diplomatarium Islandicum". This material has not been analysed or used in research until now. The analysis of these documents shows that these beachings were important sources of whale meat and blubber from the 13th century onwards, an extremely welcome additional food source. The prominence of beached whales in these documentary records indicates that they were much more important than hitherto thought. In short, many of our analyses of early written sources have resulted in re-evaluations of conventional wisdom concerning social-environmental changes and resource-use practices in Iceland during the medieval era.
v). The fifth focus area of the project has been on evaluating human responses to system disturbances. A key research question has been on how people coped with short-term extreme events such as storms, avalanches, glacial floods, sea-ice years, famines and epidemics. During crisis years (as in the early 1600s, the 1690s, the 1750s and the 1780s) years of severe weather and sea ice (as well as the background of unfavourable economic and political conditions) caused starvation and loss of life. Responses seem to have primarily taken the form of the desertion of farms as well as an increase in the recourse to fisheries. A further focus has been on shipwrecks. In data analysed for the period 1599-1700 shipwrecks are noted in: 1599, 1600, 1602, 1603, 1608-1610, 1613-1616, 1618-1621, 1623, 1625-1629, 1631-1633, 1635-1645, 1647, 1648, 1650, 1652-1656, 1658, 1661-1663, 1665, 1666, 1669-1672, 1674, 1678, 1681-1685, 1687-1690, and 1694-1700. In other words, there would appear to be shipwrecks among local Icelandic fishermen almost every year during this period (Ogilvie, 2021). Epidemics were also highly disruptive occurrences in Icelandic history, sometimes causing changes in land use and resource systems. Notable epidemic events occurred in: 1402-1404 and 1494 (the plague); and a smallpox outbreak in 1707-09. An interesting development is that the latter may even have had an impact on the fisheries as the resulting population decline meant that there were fewer men to man the boats.
The ICECHANGE project has been extremely successful in all aspects and has resulted in a large number of presentations and publications, some of which are still in press. However, perhaps the most significant project result to date is the fact that ICECHANGE is playing a part in highlighting the potential value of the humanities in environmental and climate research. As an example of this, a recent article (see http://theconversation.com/why-science-needs-the-humanities-to-solve-climate-change-113832) that makes the point that the humanities have a crucial part to play in the solving of climate-change issues refers to an ICECHANGE prize-winning article by Hartman et al, 2017. A further significant forthcoming result of the project will be the book co-authored by team members. Other important results include the unearthing of very many unknown historical and literary sources, in particular in unpublished manuscript form, that are highly relevant for the project. This effort includes the first steps in the establishment of a database of over 14000 photographs of manuscript pages containing nature/environmental poetry, deriving from two manuscript collections that include comprehensive registers made by the lay-philologist, Páll Pálsson (1806-1877). These combined collections are perhaps the most representative assemblage of Icelandic post-reformation poetry. The project has worked to design and trial run an open-source platform and online interface to crowdsource citizen-science transcriptions of a selection of these unpublished literary works in manuscript as a pilot project. Both the extensive high-resolution photographic documentation of these previously unpublished works in manuscript form (from 1700-1900) and the pilot project to test a platform and methodology to digitalize transcriptions of these works as an open-access database for a follow-through project are a particularly significant result of the ICECHANGE project.
It should be noted that a number of lectures and conference papers planned for 2020 have been impacted by the emergency lockdowns and cancellations occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. In many cases, workshops, conferences and other public events were cancelled for this reason, and in other cases they were postponed and are in the process of being rescheduled for 2021. The pandemic had a very disruptive effect on the immersive project workshops of the ICECHANGE team planned to take place in Iceland, Sweden and the UK during 2020, at which forthcoming joint-authored papers, chapters and one book project to be published by the ICECHANGE team were scheduled for substantive synthesis work. This development has had the effect of slowing final integration activities and efforts on these published outcomes. These works are still slated for publication but may not appear in print before later 2021 and 2022 as a result.
In spite of these Covid-19-related delays, the output of the three-year project has been prodigious. It has resulted in: one published book; two books in progress; eighteen published articles; ten articles in progress; four extended abstracts; one report in published conference proceedings; fifty-two conference presentations; and seventeen individual presentations. Furthermore, as noted in the "Publications" section of this report, an open-access domain for the ICECHANGE project is in the process of being finalized for a launch in March-April 2021.
REFERENCES NOT CITED IN THE PUBLICATIONS LIST
Crumley, Carole L. 2016. Historical Ecology. (In) Hilary Callan (ed), The Wiley Blackwell International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, Hilary Callan, (ed). New York: Wiley Blackwell.
Crumley, Carole L., Lennartsson, T. and Westin, A. eds. 2019. Issues and Concepts in Historical Ecology: The Past and Future of Landscapes and Regions. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Hartman, Steven. 2015. Unpacking the Black Box: the need for Integrated Environmental Humanities (IEH) (2015). In Future Earth Blog, published 3 June 2015.
Hartman, Steven. 2016a. Revealing Environmental Memory: what the study of medieval literature can tell us about long-term environmental change.” In Biodiverse Nr. 2 2016 (May 2016) online. Tidskrift från Center för Biologisk Mångfald, Sveriges Landbruksuniversitet. PRV utgivningsbevis nr. 21404.
Hartman, Steven. 2016b. Att avkoda det ekologiska minnet: Vad studier av medeltida litteratur kan berätta om historiska miljöförändringar.” In Biodiverse Nr. 2 2016 (May 2016). Tidskrift från Center för Biologisk Mångfald, Sveriges Landbruksuniversitet, 4-7. PRV utgivningsbevis nr. 21404.
Hartman, Steven. 2016c. Climate Change, Public Engagement & Integrated Environmental Humanities, Teaching Climate Change in the Environmental Humanities, Eds. (In) Shane Hall, Stephanie LeMenager and Stephen Siperstein (eds), Routledge: Abingdon & New York, 67-75. ISBN: 978-1138907157.
Hartman, Steven, Ogilvie, A.E.J. and Hennig, R. 2016. 'Viking' Ecologies: Icelandic Sagas, Local Knowledge and Environmental Memory. (In) Parham & Westling (eds), Cambridge Global History of Literature and Environment (Cambridge UP), 125-140. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316212578.010.
Isendahl, C. 2019. Introduction: Bridging the Past and Present, (In) Christian Isendahl and Daryl Stump (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Historical Ecology and Applied Archaeology, 483-485. Oxford University Press, 48-485, 978-0-19-967269-1].
Lethbridge, Emily and Hartman, Steven. 2016, Inscribing Environmental Memory in the Icelandic Sagas (IEM) and the Icelandic Saga Map (ISM) Project, PMLA Vol 131: 2 (March 2016), 381-391. DOI: 10.1632/pmla.2016.131.2.381
Publication list
ARTICLE PUBLICATIONS IN JOURNALS AND BOOK CHAPTERS
Damodaran, V., Allan, R., Ogilvie, A.E.J, Demarée, G.R., Gergis, J., Mikami, T., Mikhail, A., Nicolson, S.E., Norrgård, S. and Hamilton, J. 2018. The 1780s: Global Climate Anomalies, Floods, Droughts, and Famines. In: White S., Pfister C., Mauelshagen F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 517-550. First Online 18 July 2018 DOI https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_34. eBook ISBN 978-1-137-43020-5; Hardcover ISBN 978-1-137-43019-9.
Demarée, G.R. and Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2017. L’eruption du Lakagígar en Islande ou ‘Annus Mirabilis 1783’ Chronique d’une année extraordinaire (The eruption of Lakagígar in Iceland or ‘Annus Mirabilis 1783’ – Chronicle of an extraordinary year), Sémata, Ciencias Sociais e Humanidades, 229: 239-260.
Demarée, G.R. and Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2021. Early Meteorological Observations in Greenland: The Contributions of David Cranz, Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein and Christopher Brasen. In (Felicity Ann Jensz and Christina Patterson, editors) Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, Legacies of David Cranz's "Historie von Grönland" (1765). (There is mention of Iceland in this paper, and ICECHANGE is acknowledged.
Dugmore, A.J., Rowan, J., Cooper, D., Newton, A., Júlíusson, Á.D., Streeter, R., Hreinsson, V., Crabtree, S., Hambrecht, G., Hicks, M. and McGovern, T.H. 2020. Continuity in the Face of a Slowly Unfolding Catastrophe: The Persistence of Icelandic Settlement Despite Large-Scale Soil Erosion. (In) Riede, F. and Sheets, P. (eds) Catastrophes in Context: Archaeological Perspectives on Socio-ecological Crisis, Response, and Collapse, Berghahn Books, New York, Oxford, 162-199.
Hartman, S. and Holm, P. 2018. Humanities Interventions in Response to Global Challenges, Proceedings of the first World Humanities Conference (Liege, Belgium 2017), UNESCO & the Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences, 67-77.
Hartman, S., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Ingimundarson, J.H., Dugmore, A.J., Hambrecht, George, McGovern, T.H. 2017. Medieval Iceland, Greenland, and the New Human Condition: A case study in integrated environmental humanities, Global and Planetary Change 156, 123-139, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.04.007. (Winner of the St Andrews Article Prize in European Environmental History awarded by the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH).
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. Violence, power relations, interests and truth. On the various accounts of the “Spánverjavíg”, (In) Irujo, Xabier and Miglio, Viola (eds) Jón Guðmundsson Lærði's True Account and the Massacre of Basque Whalers in Iceland in Iceland in 1615, Center for Basque Studies Press, Reno, 145-168.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. In Icelandic. Pegasus í fjósinu og kýrrassatrú – Var Káinn hagyrðingur eða skáld? ("Pegasus in the Cowshed and Belief in Heifer´s Rumps. Was Káinn a Poet or a Versifier?"), Són 15, 163-178.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018a. A Matter of Context and Balance. Pre-industrial Conceptualizations of Sustainability, (In) Birkeland, I., Burton, R.J.F., Parra, C. and Siivonen, K. (eds), Cultural Sustainability and the Nature-Culture Interface: Livelihoods, Policies and Methodologies, Routledge, 79-92.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018b. Vicious Cycle of Violence: The Afterlife of Hervör, (In) Driscoll, M., Hufnagel, S., Lavender, P. and Stegmann, B. (eds), The Legendary Legacy: Transmission and reception of the Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda, Viking Collection 24, Odense, University Press of Southern Denmark, 71-90.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018c. Ghosts, Power, and the Natures of Nature: Reconstructing the World of Jón Guðmundsson the Learned, (In) Bergthaller, H. and Mortensen, P. (eds), Framing the Environmental Humanities, (Studies in Environmental Humanities 5), Brill, 67-85.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018d. In Icelandic. Frá Rútsstöðum til Uppsala – Brot úr framfirskri bókmenntasögu ("From Rútsstaðir to Uppsala – A Fragment of the Literary History of Eyjafjarðarsveit”), Súlur – norðlenskt tímarit XLIV, 121-137.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018e. In Icelandic. Andófsmaðurinn Jón lærði ("The Dissenter Jón the Learned"), Tímarit Máls og menningar, 79 (1), 77-88.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2019f. In Icelandic. Hannes tekur í nefið. Um vistfræði sagnalistar ("Hannes [Pétursson] takes snuff. About the Ecology of Storytelling”), Skírnir 193, 349-406.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2017. A Brief Description of Sea Ice. In: Elizabeth Ogilvie, Out of Ice, Black Dog Publishing, London, 88-90.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Sea-ice stories from Iceland and Labrador. Online publication https://bifrostonline.org/sea-ice-stories-from-iceland-and-labrador/
Ogilvie, A.E.J. Famines, Mortality, Livestock Deaths and Scholarship: Environmental Stress in Iceland ca. 1500-1700. 2020. (In) Andrea Kiss and Katherine Prybil, eds., The Dance of Death. Environmental Stress, Mortality and Social Response in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe, London, Routledge, 9-24, Online 2019 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429491085
Pfister C., Brázdil R., Luterbacher J., Ogilvie A.E.J., White S. 2018. Early Modern Europe. In: White S., Pfister C., Mauelshagen F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 265-295. First Online 18 July 2018 DOI https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_23. eBook ISBN 978-1-137-43020-5; Hardcover ISBN 978-1-137-43019-9.
Sigurðardóttir, Ragnhildur, Newton, A.J., Hicks, M.T., Dugmore, A.J., Hreinsson, Viðar, Ogilvie, A.E.J., Júlíusson, Árni Daníel, Einarsson, Árni, Hartman, S., Simpson, I.A., Vésteinsson, Orri, McGovern, T.H. 2019. Trolls, Water, Time, and Community: Resource Management in the Mývatn District of Northeast Iceland. In: L.R. Lozny and T.H. McGovern (eds) Global Perspectives on Long Term Community Resource Management, Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation 11, 71-101. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 77. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15800-2_5
PUBLISHED EXTENDED ABSTRACTS
Hreinsson, V. 2018g. Changing Nature in Iceland – Conceptions and Expressions 800-2018. 48th International Arctic Workshop, Program and Abstracts 2018, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder, 61-62.
Júlíusson, Á.D. Arctic Farming from the Past to Modernity. 48th International Arctic Workshop, Program and Abstracts 2018, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder, 65-67.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. The Foundations of Map-Making and Geography in Iceland. 48th International Arctic Workshop, Program and Abstracts 2018, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder, 82-85.
Sigurðardóttir, R., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Júlíusson, A.D., Hicks, M.T. and Hreinsson, V. 2018. Drivers of Change: Sustainability and Environmental Change in the Lake Mývatn District of Iceland AD 1700-1950. 48th International Arctic Workshop, Program and Abstracts 2018, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder, 110-113.
BOOKS PUBLISHED
Júlíusson, Á.D. Af hverju strái. Saga um byggð, gras og bændur. (In Icelandic: "From Every Blade of Grass": A History of Settlement, Grass and Farmers"). (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan 2018).
ARTICLES SUBMITTED
Ogilvie, A.E.J. Stormy Weather: Climate and Sea-Ice Variations in the North Atlantic (Iceland Sector) AD 1400-1700. (In) Natascha Mehler, ed., German voyages to the North Atlantic islands (1400-1700), Northern World series, Brill, Leiden.
ARTICLES IN PREPARATION
Hartman, S. Critical Revaluations of Sustainability and Resilience in Icelandic History and Heritage 800-1800. To be included in the co-authored book described below.
Hartman, S. and Hreinsson, V. Forces of Nature and the Inscription of Environmental Memory in The Saga of Grettir the Strong.
Hartman, S., Trump, B., Ogilvie, A. and McGovern, T. Using Lessons of the Past to Shape Future Sustainability Science and Policy. Chapter in preparation for the volume What sort of the past does the future need? Policy lessons and the historical imagination, ed. Piotr Filipkowski, John Haldon and Adam Izdebski
Hreinsson, V. Changing Natures: Developing Conceptions of Nature and Environment in Iceland as Reflected in Literary Sources 800-1800. To be included in the co-authored book described below.
Ingimundarson, J.H. 2021. The Political Ecology of Changing Farming Systems in Medieval to Early Modern Iceland. To be included in the co-authored book described below.
Ingimundarson, J.H. and Hartman, S. Transgendered Social Transformations of Björn Hítdælakappi in the Saga of Bjorn, Champion of the Hitardal People.
Jackson, R., Dugmore, A., Hambrecht, G., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Hartman, S., Madsen, C.K., Megan Hicks, M., Harrison, R., Smiarowski, K., McGovern, T.H. 2021. Long term Lessons in Human Ecodynamics: Survival and Extinction in the North Atlantic, (in review 2021) (In) Piotr Filipkowski, John Haldon and Adam Izdebski (eds), What sort of the past does the future need? Policy lessons and the historical imagination, Springer Press.
Júlíusson, Á.D. The Pox and the Plague. The Black Death in Iceland in 1402-1404 and the smallpox proxy 1707–1709. To be included in the co-authored book described below.
Júlíusson, Á.D., Ogilvie, A.E.J. and Ingimundarson, J.H. A New Look at Climate and Agriculture in Fifteenth-Century Iceland. (In) Andrea Kiss, Rudolf Brazdil and Chantal Camenisch, eds., The Fifteenth-Century Climate of Europe.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. Writing on Sea Ice: Icelandic Scholars of the Late 16th and Early Seventeenth Century. (In) Klaus Dodds and Sverker Sörlin, eds., Ice Humanities: Materiality, Ontology and Representation.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. Ice and Fire in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Iceland. To be included in the co-authored book described below.
BOOKS IN PREPARATION
A co-authored book with chapters by all ICECHANGE team members is in preparation. The complete book proposal is in the process of being submitted to the Routledge Environmental Humanities Series at the invitation of the series editors. The draft working title is the same as the project title: The Natural World in Literary and Historical Sources from Iceland ca. AD 800 to 1800. Drawing on the ethos of ICECHANGE, the book will make the point that, in the light of the world’s present crises in biodiversity, climate change, resource conflicts and water/food security, there is much that can be learned from a rigorous analysis not only of how physical environments have changed in the past but also of the human memory of such socio-environmental change as reflected and kept alive in the poems, sagas, folk tales, place names, annals and other textual archives of a culture on the circumpolar periphery of Europe’s power centres.
A book by Viðar Hreinsson with a provisional title of Earthly Powers and the Art of Stories. This will be based on another important ICECHANGE focus. This has been a re-evaluation of the interface between humans, nature and environment as reflected in a variety of literary texts, by developing a long-term (longue durée) perspective on historically conditioned human perceptions/conceptions of nature and environment that change fundamentally in the course of time. A deeper understanding of these changes can shed light on our own modern conceptions, by regarding literary products as organic growth in terms of material ecocriticism and cultural ecology.
CONFERENCE PAPERS and PRESENTATIONS
Hartman, Steven. 2017. Engaging Humanities Knowledge Domains to Meet the Human-Environmental Challenges of Our Time, plenary lecture, World Humanities Conference, organized by UNESCO & the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences, Liége, Belgium, 8 August 2017.
Hartman, Steven. 2018. Mobilizing Art, Science and Civil Society in collaborative citizen-focused interventions on climate change adaptation and mitigation, invited presentation, PLuS Alliance workshop Humanities for the Anthropocene: New Approaches to Valuing Evaluation and Evaluating Impact, organized by Arizona State University, Kings College London & University of New South Wales, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA, 13 January 2018.
Hartman, Steven. 2018. Bifrost: bridging the past and the present, connecting knowledge to action, and working to link diverse actors and stakeholders to address future sustainability challenges, Invited keynote lecture to Resilience and Transformation in the Territories of Low Demographic Density: Integrated Methodologies of Human and Social Sciences, 4th International Seminar on Culturally Integrated Landscape Management – Apheleia, Polytechnic Institute of Tomar, Portugal, 15 March 2018.
Hartman, Steven. 2018. Historical Research in the North Atlantic as a Key Focus of the Humanities for the Environment Circumpolar Observatory, workshop Orkney - Gateway to the Atlantic, organized by the Institute of Archaeology, University of Highlands and Islands, Rousay, Orkney, UK, 20 April 2018.
Hartman, Steven. 2019. Sustainability without Culture is not Sustainable, Invited keynote lecture to Environmental Humanities in the Anthropocene Age, inaugural conference of the Cappadocia University Environmental Humanities Center, Cappadocia University, Nevsehir, Turkey, 7 March 2019.
Hartman, Steven. 2019. The Great Challenges of the 21st Century Demand a New Humanities Paradigm, Invited keynote lecture to Tangibility: Designing Future Landscapes (Fifth Apheleia International Seminar of Mac¸a~o, 15 March 2019.
Hartman, Steven, 2019. Integrated environmental humanities in an age of escalating environmental anxiety, plenary lecture, international symposium Seeing the Knowledge: environmental experience and the humanities, Research Institute for Nature and Humanity, National Institutes for the Humanities, Kyoto, Japan, 23-25 October 2019.
Hartman, Steven. 2019. Interdisciplinary Configurations of the Arts, Humanities & Sciences in an Age of Climate & Biodiversity Crisis, plenary lecture, Symposium “Interdisciplinarity Revisited” organized by Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, StiftungHumboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss & Volkswagenstiftung, Berlin, October 2019.
Hartman, Steven, 2019. Building Resilience in Defense of Environments and Societies, plenary lecture, Second International Conference of Humanities: Sustainability, Well-being and Human Rights, International Council for Philosophy & Human Sciences, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 10 December 2019.
Hartman, Steven. 2020. UNESCO’s Principles for Sustainability Science as Guidelines for Formulating Qualitative Scenario Storylines (QSS) and Collaborative Conceptual Modeling (CCM), invited lecture in the Climate Change and History Research Initiative seminar series, Princeton University, 13 October 2020.
Hartman, Steven. The Unrealized Potential of Stories as Change Agents: Shaping Sustainable Futures, invited public lecture, Hope for the Globe program, Tiedekulma Lounge/The Thinking Lounge, University of Helsinki (lecture prepared for 20 April 2020 but postponed to autumn 2021, date TBD, due to the COVID19 crisis).
Hartman, Steven and Ingimundarsson, Jón Haukur. Food Sovereignty, Land Tenure and Economies of Power in Medieval Iceland: depictions of social-environmental crisis in the Icelandic family sagas, keynote lecture (in preparation), international conference on Food Futures: Humanities and Social Sciences Approaches, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan, Nov. 2021 due to COVID19 crisis.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. In Icelandic. Jón lærði og náttúrur náttúrunnar ("Jón the Learned and the Natures of Nature"), The Strandir Sorcery Museum’s winter festival, Hólmavík, 18 February 2017.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. In Icelandic. Jón lærði í vísindavagninum. Samskipti Jóns lærða við Hólamenn ("Jón the Learned on the wagon of science. His encounters with the intellectuals of Hólar"), Anniversary Symposium of the Skagafjörður Historical society and the Skagafjörður local Archives, 7 May 2017.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. In Icelandic. Að hrekjast úr Trékyllisvík. Hugvekja um Jón lærða, dyggðir náttúrunnar, sköpun og drottnunarvald (“To be driven away from Trékyllisvík. A sermon on Jón the Learned, the Virtues of Nature and the Worldly Powers”), A Symposium on the Hvalá Power Plant Project, Trékyllisvík, 25 June 2017.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. In Icelandic. Pegasus í fjósinu og kýrrassatrú. Var Káinn skáld eða hagyrðingur? ("Pegasus in the Cowshed and Belief in Heifer´s Rumps. Was Káinn a Poet or a Versifier?" Dear People of the Snow, Symposium on Káinn (Kristján Níels Júlíus Jónsson), University of Akureyri, 26 August 2017.
Hreinsson, Viðar, Sigurðardóttir, R., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Júlíusson, Á.D. and Hicks, M. 2017. Perceptions of Nature and Natural Resources by Lake Mývatn in Iceland, Conference Our Islands, Our Past, University of the Highlands and Islands, Orkney, 16 September 2017.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018. In Icelandic. Jarðarinnar fylling og Mývatn ("The Earth´s Interior and Lake Mývatn"), Annual Humanities Conference, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, 10 March 2018.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018. Changing Nature in Iceland – Conceptions and Expressions 800-2018. 48th International Arctic Workshop 2018, INSTAAR, Boulder, Colorado 5-6 April 2018.
Hreinsson, Viðar, Christens-Barry, W.A. and Toth, M.B. 2018. Preliminary Spectral Imaging of an Early Icelandic Map: Support for Conservation and Scholarship. Workshop on Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 17, Copenhagen, Denmark, 11-13 April 2018.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018. Manuscript culture: Stories of 6000 Years (or Literary Deep Time). Rousay Symposium, Orkney, 19 April 2018.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018. Black and White: The Natural World as Conceived by Jón Guðmundsson the Learned (1574-1658), Scientia Workshop, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 18 May 2018.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018. Exploring the Themes of Cold and Winter in the Poetry of Stephan G. Stephansson (1853-1927), Nordic Association for Canadian Studies conference X11: Exploring Canada: Exploits and Encounters, Akureyri, 10 August 2018.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018. In Icelandic. Heittrúuð harðneskja. Af séra Jóni, tíðaranda og menningarástandi. Sá guðlega þenkjandi náttúruskoðari - um Jón lærða, ("Pietist harshness. Regarding Reverend Jón, the Spirit of the Times and the Cultural Conditions. The Pious Thinking Observer of Nature - on Jón the Learned"), Conference on Jón Jónsson the Learned of Möðrufell, Laugarborg, 8 September 2018.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2019. In Icelandic. Náttúrulaus sagnalist, eða lifandi gróður og lífrænir ávextir? (“Impotent storytelling or living growth and organic fruits. Memorial lecture for Snorri Sturluson, Snorrastofa, Reykholt, 1 October 2019.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2019. In Icelandic. Þvegið í hrútsketssoði og lambsgalli nuddað á. Um læknislistir Jóns lærða (“Washed in Ram-Meat-Broth and Lamb´s Gall Rubbed on. About Jón the Learned´s Healing Arts"), Magic and Healing. Symposium of the Icelandic Society of the History of Medicine, held in the National Museum of Iceland, 2 November 2019.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2019. In Icelandic. Vistræði sagnalistar ("Ecology of Storytelling"). Lecture delivered at the general meeting of the Icelandic Literary Society, Hotel Saga, 30 November 2019.
Hreinsson, Viðar and Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2019. New Knowledge Regarding Early Modern Maps of Iceland, SCIENTIAE Early Modern Knowledge, Queen’s University, Belfast 12-15 June 2019. Presented by Viðar Hreinsson on 12 June.
King, L., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Ingimundarson, J.H., Hreinsson, V., Hartman, S. 2018. From Narratives to Numbers: Blending the Humanities and Natural Science in Northern Research, 4th International St Magnus Conference Alternative Fact and Actual Fiction: Constructing the Social Narrative, Orkney Islands, Scotland, 16-18 April 2018.
Ingimundarson, J. H., Feeley, F. and Hambrecht, G. Elite Managed 13th Century Fisheries in Iceland: Documents and Zooarchaeology, Session IX, Paleoecology and the Subarctic Seas: High Latitude Climates, Oceans, Ecosystems, and Human Histories 3, at 7th International Conference of the OCEANS PAST Platform (OPP7), Tracing Human Interactions with Marine Ecosystems through Deep Time: Implications for Policy and Management, Bremerhaven, Germany. October 22-26, 2018. Also presented at the NABO 2019 Workshop. Université Lavel, Quebec City, Canada, 19-20 May 2019.
Ingimundarson, J. H. and Feeley, F. Elite Managed late 13th and early 14th Century Fisheries in Iceland: Documents and Zooarchaeology. Presentation at the NABO 2019 Workshop. Université Lavel, Quebec City, Canada, 19-20 May 2019.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017. Two Famines in Iceland. COMPOT workshop. Turku, Finnland. 12 January 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017. In Danish. Den lange reformation i Nord-Atlanteren. ("The Long Reformation in the North Atlantic". Matchpoint, Aarhus, Denmark, 17 May 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017. Transplanting a Culture. Nordic History Seminar, Aalborg, Denmark, 16. August 2017
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. In Icelandic. Fyrirlestur um höfuðból. ("Presentation on Manor Farms"), Seminar on 1703 Project, University of Iceland, 22 August 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. In Icelandic. Söguritun um siðbreytinguna. Spjall í tilefni af 500 ára afmælinu. ("Historical Writing at the Time of the Reformation. Talk on the Occasion of the 500th Anniversary"). Workshop on the Reformation in Iceland, Skálholt 2 September 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel, Hicks, M., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Sigurðardóttir, Ragnhildur, Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. Farm Succession in a Cold Climate the Case of Mývatnssveit in Iceland 1801-1930. Succession Workshop, Rural History Conference. Leuven, Belgium, 12 September 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017 Sheriffs´ Reports on the General State of the Counties. Sources for Famine Research in Iceland?” COMPOT workshop. Uppsala, Sweden, 27-30 September 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. Icelandic Peasant Farmers and Early Modern Trade Books. Conference on Colonialism and Commercialism in the North Atlantic. Bifröst, Borgarfjord, Iceland, 17 and 18 October 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017. In Icelandic. Mikið úrval eyðibýla. "A Wide Choice of Deserted Farms", The Icelandic Archeological Society, The National Museum, Reykjavik, 14 December 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2018. Arctic Farming in Iceland from the Past to Modernity. 48th International Arctic Workshop, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder, 4-6 April 2018.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. Reading the Ruins. Some Points on the Development of Settlement in the Two Valleys of Svarfaðardalur and Hörgárdalur in 870-1700 and Vicinity, Rousay Workshop, Orkney, 19 April 2018.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2018. A Cultural Landscape of Milk. Medieval Farming Settlement in Iceland and the Development of Dairy Farming. Leeds International Medieval Conference, 2-5 July 2018.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2018. The Closing of a Commodity Frontier. The Case of Sheep Export from Iceland in the 19th and 20th centuries, World Ecology Conference, Helsinki, Finnland, 17 August 2018.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2018. In Icelandic. Íbúatala á Íslandi á 14. öld, ("The Population of Iceland in the 14th Century") Erindi á málþinginu Vesæl þjóð í vondu landi? Workshop on "Poor People in a Bad Country?" National Museum, Reykjavík, 8 December 2018.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2019. In Icelandic. Í ókunnu landi. Um hinn mikla mun á búskaparháttum á 14. öld og þeirri 18, ("In Unknown Territory. On the Great Difference between Farming Practics in the 14th and 18th Centuries"), University of Iceland Theology Workshop, 9 March 2019.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. In Icelandic Hvalrekar á miðöldum, ("Medieval Whale Beaching"), National Museum of Iceland, 16 April 2019.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. Whale Beachings in 13th and 14th century Icelandic documents. Norse Use of Marine Mammals in the Medieval North Atlantic (NUM3NA) workshop, Beaufort, North Carolina, 27 May 2019.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel and Jónsdóttir, Ingibjörg. 2019. In Icelandic. Höfuðból í hárri upplausn, ("Manor Farms in Dissolution", University of Iceland Theology Workshop, 9 March 2019.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel, Ogilvie, A.E.J. and Demarée, G.R. 2019. Local Impacts of the 1783-84 Lakagígar Eruption in Iceland. INQUA 2019, 31 July 2019, Dublin, Ireland.
King, L., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Ingimundarson, J.H., Hreinsson, V., Hartman, S. 2018. From Narratives to Numbers: Blending the Humanities and Natural Science in Northern Research, 4th International St Magnus Conference Alternative Fact and Actual Fiction: Constructing the Social Narrative, Orkney Islands, Scotland, 16-18 April 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J., Sigurðardóttir, Ragnhildur, Júlíusson, Árni Daníel, Hreinsson, Viðar and Hicks, Megan. 2017. Climate, Environment and Adaptation in Northeastern Iceland A.D. 1750 to the Present. Session 5.3. Evaluation and Planning for Uncertain Times in a Rapidly Changing Environment, ICASS IX, Umeå, Sweden, 9 June 2017.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. The Foundations of Map-Making and Geography in Iceland, 48th International Arctic Workshop, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder, 4-6 April 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Reflections on Weather and Climate by Travellers to the North, Climate Existence Conference, Sigtunastiftelsen, Sigtuna, Sweden, 7-9 May 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Climate, Sea Ice and Human Ecodynamic Systems in Northeastern Iceland, Hay and Wetland Management Workshop, Hannesarholt, Reykjavik, Iceland, 14-17 June 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Climate, Sea Ice and Human Ecodynamic Systems in Northeastern Iceland: Lessons from the Past and Perspectives from the Future, Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences International Conference. Climate and Cultures: Perspectives for the Future, Palais des Académies, Brussels, Belgium. Invited Keynote Lecture, 23-24 May 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2020. Reflections of Change: The Natural World in Literary and Historical Sources for Iceland ca. AD 800-1800, Invited lecture to University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute Research Seminar, Kirkwall, Orkney, Scotland, virtually on 25 September 2020.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2020. Weather as Magic and Metaphor in the Sagas of Icelanders, Invited Hermann Pálsson Memorial Lecture at the Annual Conference of the Scottish Society for Northern Studies, virtually on 21 November 2020.
Sigurðardóttir, R., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Júlíusson, A.D., Hicks, M.T. and Hreinsson, V. 2018. Drivers of Change: Sustainability and Environmental Change in the Lake Mývatn District of Iceland AD 1700-1950, 48th International Arctic Workshop, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder, 4-6 April 2018.
Sigurðardóttir, R., Júlíusson, Á.D., Hreinsson, V., Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Narratives of Catastrophe and Survival in Northeast Iceland, 4th International St Magnus Conference Alternative Fact and Actual Fiction: Constructing the Social Narrative, Orkney Islands, Scotland, 16-18 April 2018.
INDIVIDUAL LECTURES PRESENTING ICECHANGE WORK AND FINDINGS
Hartman, Steven. Anthropocenic Flotsam and Jetsam and Völuspá’s tragedy of knowing: the dilemmas of prognosis, agency and in/action in our new Age of Anxiety, invited lecture in preparation, Helsinki Forum in Environmental Humanities, University of Helsinki, (lecture originally planned for 20 April 2020 but postponed to autumn 2021, date TBD, due to the COVID19 crisis).
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. In Icelandic Jón lærði og skapandi náttúra. "Jón the Learned and Creative Nature". Fyrirlestur vegna bókmennta- og menningarverkefnisins "Lesið í sköpunarkraft Vestfjarða", Opening lecture in connection with the the Literary and Cultural Project "Interpreting the Creative Force of the Westfjords" Hrafnseyri, 29 July 2017.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. In Icelandic. Ekkert sprettur af engu. Jón lærði og endurreisn þekkingar á Hjaltastað, "Nothing Will Come of Nothing. Jón the Learned and the revival of Learning at Hjaltastaður", Seminar Í fótspor Jóns lærða á Úthéraði, "In the Footsteps of Jón the Learned in the Útherað district", Hjaltalund 3 November 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017. Þúfur sem segja sögu – ný sýn á íslenskar miðaldir ("Hummocks that tell a story - new views on the Icelandic Middle Ages". The Culture House Museum, Reykjavík, 7 April 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017. In Icelandic. Um búskap og hernað á Sturlungaöld. ("Farming and Conflict in the Age of the Sturlungs"). Erindi flutt í tilefni af endurútgáfu bókarinnar Á Sturlungaslóð í Skagafirði. Lecture on the occasion of the republication of the book "Sturlunga Locations in Skagafjord". Kakalaskáli, Skagafjord, 12 August 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017. In Icelandic. Lesið í leifar. Um byggð og landeign í Svarfaðardal og Hörgárdal á miðöldum. ("Reading the Remains: On Settlement and Land Ownership in Svarfaðardalur and Hörgárdalur"), Lecture to the University of Iceland Centre for Medieval Studies (Miðaldastofa), Reykjavík, 5 October 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2019. In Icelandic. Hvalrekar og hvalafurðir á 13. og 14. öld. ("Whale strandings and Whale Monsters". Lecture series of the National Museum, 16 April 2019.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2017. North Atlantic Exploration and Climate. Invited Outreach presentations to Denver Museum of Nature and Science re. exhibit Vikings: Beyond the Legend. 21 February 2017. Lecture given twice.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2017. Sagas and Science: Documentary Evidence of Changes in Climate and Sea-Ice Incidence in Iceland from the Settlement to the Late 1800s. Invited lecture to the University of Iceland Centre for Medieval Studies (Miðaldastofa), Reykjavík, 9 March 2017.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2017. Sagas and Science: Reconstructing the Past Climate of Iceland Using Documentary Sources. Invited lecture to School for International Training (SIT) Graduate Student Group on: Iceland and Greenland: Climate Change and the Arctic, Akureyri, 15 March 2017.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2017. Cross-Disciplinary Investigations of the Long-Term Sustainability of Human Ecodynamic Systems in Northeastern Iceland. Invited lecture to School for International Training (SIT) Graduate Student Group on: Iceland and Greenland: Climate Change and the Arctic, Akureyri, 16 March 2017.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2017. Reconstructing the Past Climate of Iceland Using Documentary Sources. Invited lecture to School for International Training (SIT) Graduate Student Group on: Iceland and Greenland: Climate Change and the Arctic, Akureyri, 9 October 2017. I
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Climate History of Iceland and the Lake Mývatn Area, Svartárkot Culture-Nature Project, Human ecology and culture at Lake Mývatn 1700-2000: Dimensions of Environmental and Cultural Change, Bárðardalur, northern Iceland, 24 August 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Examples of Climate Impacts: Case Studies from Iceland in General and Mývatn in Particular, Svartárkot Culture-Nature Project, Human ecology and culture at Lake Mývatn 1700-2000: Dimensions of Environmental and Cultural Change, Bárðardalur, northern Iceland, 24 August 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. General Climate History of Iceland: Documentary Evidence ca. 1600-2018, University of Iceland Course on Society and Environment in Mývatnssveit (Samfélag og umhverfi við Mývatn) 1700-1950. University of Iceland, Reykjavik, 9 November 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Climate Impacts ca. 1700-1950: Examples from Iceland in General and Mývatnssveit in Particular, University of Iceland Course on Society and Environment in Mývatnssveit (Samfélag og umhverfi við Mývatn) 1700-1950. University of Iceland, Reykjavik, 16 November 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2019. Outreach presentation on The Viking Age and the European Settlement of the North Atlantic World to Frazier Meadows retirement community, Boulder, Colorado, 20 February 2019.
ICECHANGE OPEN ACCESS SITE AND DIGITAL OUTPUTS
An open-access domain for the ICECHANGE project is in the process of being finalized for launch in March-April 2021. The site will include scores of media, including video 8 webinars of ICECHANGE lectures and seminar discussions, interviews with the ICECHANGE team, downloadable published papers, a feature on historic representations of whales in Iceland manuscripts from the late medieval period through the modern period, a rich gallery of infographics of interpretations of historical data on environmental change in Iceland and a manuscript transcription pilot project. This pilot project will present high-resolution images of 20+ works from unpublished manuscripts with significant environmental data and representations from 17th-19th centuries with an upload interface to collect citizen-science transcriptions for editorial curation and publication in digital form to accompany the manuscript images. This pilot project is designed to help beta test crowd sourcing of citizen-science transcriptions and editorial curation for a projected database project in development intended to make available hundreds of unique manuscript sources not yet available in published or digital form. The entire ICECHANGE open access site, including all the materials specified here, is expected to launch as a sub-domain on the site www.bifrostonline.org in March/April 2021.
This pilot will develop and systematize a methodology and interface for a future larger-scale open-source transcription platform that will include a selection of representative poetry and prose from the 17th through the 19th centuries with significant environmental data/content/representation. This future database will include 100-200 poems by 30-40 poets and 50-70 “works“ of prose by 10-20 writers (various items, tales, diaries, reworked sagas etc.) This latter project, following on the methods and approaches developed in the pilot, will create a databank of promising manuscript texts—i.e., works such as poetry, history, storytelling, so-called "ego documents" (diaries, letters), science, religious material and folklore, bearing in mind the organic nature of the manuscript production. The purpose is to make these interesting environmental content/data and representation-rich materials, which are otherwise hard to access because they are available now only in manuscript form in archives, available through open access publishing to enable crowdsourced/citizen science transcriptions to be realized for the benefit of a larger research community.
Damodaran, V., Allan, R., Ogilvie, A.E.J, Demarée, G.R., Gergis, J., Mikami, T., Mikhail, A., Nicolson, S.E., Norrgård, S. and Hamilton, J. 2018. The 1780s: Global Climate Anomalies, Floods, Droughts, and Famines. In: White S., Pfister C., Mauelshagen F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 517-550. First Online 18 July 2018 DOI https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_34. eBook ISBN 978-1-137-43020-5; Hardcover ISBN 978-1-137-43019-9.
Demarée, G.R. and Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2017. L’eruption du Lakagígar en Islande ou ‘Annus Mirabilis 1783’ Chronique d’une année extraordinaire (The eruption of Lakagígar in Iceland or ‘Annus Mirabilis 1783’ – Chronicle of an extraordinary year), Sémata, Ciencias Sociais e Humanidades, 229: 239-260.
Demarée, G.R. and Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2021. Early Meteorological Observations in Greenland: The Contributions of David Cranz, Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein and Christopher Brasen. In (Felicity Ann Jensz and Christina Patterson, editors) Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, Legacies of David Cranz's "Historie von Grönland" (1765). (There is mention of Iceland in this paper, and ICECHANGE is acknowledged.
Dugmore, A.J., Rowan, J., Cooper, D., Newton, A., Júlíusson, Á.D., Streeter, R., Hreinsson, V., Crabtree, S., Hambrecht, G., Hicks, M. and McGovern, T.H. 2020. Continuity in the Face of a Slowly Unfolding Catastrophe: The Persistence of Icelandic Settlement Despite Large-Scale Soil Erosion. (In) Riede, F. and Sheets, P. (eds) Catastrophes in Context: Archaeological Perspectives on Socio-ecological Crisis, Response, and Collapse, Berghahn Books, New York, Oxford, 162-199.
Hartman, S. and Holm, P. 2018. Humanities Interventions in Response to Global Challenges, Proceedings of the first World Humanities Conference (Liege, Belgium 2017), UNESCO & the Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences, 67-77.
Hartman, S., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Ingimundarson, J.H., Dugmore, A.J., Hambrecht, George, McGovern, T.H. 2017. Medieval Iceland, Greenland, and the New Human Condition: A case study in integrated environmental humanities, Global and Planetary Change 156, 123-139, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.04.007. (Winner of the St Andrews Article Prize in European Environmental History awarded by the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH).
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. Violence, power relations, interests and truth. On the various accounts of the “Spánverjavíg”, (In) Irujo, Xabier and Miglio, Viola (eds) Jón Guðmundsson Lærði's True Account and the Massacre of Basque Whalers in Iceland in Iceland in 1615, Center for Basque Studies Press, Reno, 145-168.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. In Icelandic. Pegasus í fjósinu og kýrrassatrú – Var Káinn hagyrðingur eða skáld? ("Pegasus in the Cowshed and Belief in Heifer´s Rumps. Was Káinn a Poet or a Versifier?"), Són 15, 163-178.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018a. A Matter of Context and Balance. Pre-industrial Conceptualizations of Sustainability, (In) Birkeland, I., Burton, R.J.F., Parra, C. and Siivonen, K. (eds), Cultural Sustainability and the Nature-Culture Interface: Livelihoods, Policies and Methodologies, Routledge, 79-92.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018b. Vicious Cycle of Violence: The Afterlife of Hervör, (In) Driscoll, M., Hufnagel, S., Lavender, P. and Stegmann, B. (eds), The Legendary Legacy: Transmission and reception of the Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda, Viking Collection 24, Odense, University Press of Southern Denmark, 71-90.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018c. Ghosts, Power, and the Natures of Nature: Reconstructing the World of Jón Guðmundsson the Learned, (In) Bergthaller, H. and Mortensen, P. (eds), Framing the Environmental Humanities, (Studies in Environmental Humanities 5), Brill, 67-85.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018d. In Icelandic. Frá Rútsstöðum til Uppsala – Brot úr framfirskri bókmenntasögu ("From Rútsstaðir to Uppsala – A Fragment of the Literary History of Eyjafjarðarsveit”), Súlur – norðlenskt tímarit XLIV, 121-137.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018e. In Icelandic. Andófsmaðurinn Jón lærði ("The Dissenter Jón the Learned"), Tímarit Máls og menningar, 79 (1), 77-88.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2019f. In Icelandic. Hannes tekur í nefið. Um vistfræði sagnalistar ("Hannes [Pétursson] takes snuff. About the Ecology of Storytelling”), Skírnir 193, 349-406.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2017. A Brief Description of Sea Ice. In: Elizabeth Ogilvie, Out of Ice, Black Dog Publishing, London, 88-90.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Sea-ice stories from Iceland and Labrador. Online publication https://bifrostonline.org/sea-ice-stories-from-iceland-and-labrador/
Ogilvie, A.E.J. Famines, Mortality, Livestock Deaths and Scholarship: Environmental Stress in Iceland ca. 1500-1700. 2020. (In) Andrea Kiss and Katherine Prybil, eds., The Dance of Death. Environmental Stress, Mortality and Social Response in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe, London, Routledge, 9-24, Online 2019 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429491085
Pfister C., Brázdil R., Luterbacher J., Ogilvie A.E.J., White S. 2018. Early Modern Europe. In: White S., Pfister C., Mauelshagen F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 265-295. First Online 18 July 2018 DOI https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_23. eBook ISBN 978-1-137-43020-5; Hardcover ISBN 978-1-137-43019-9.
Sigurðardóttir, Ragnhildur, Newton, A.J., Hicks, M.T., Dugmore, A.J., Hreinsson, Viðar, Ogilvie, A.E.J., Júlíusson, Árni Daníel, Einarsson, Árni, Hartman, S., Simpson, I.A., Vésteinsson, Orri, McGovern, T.H. 2019. Trolls, Water, Time, and Community: Resource Management in the Mývatn District of Northeast Iceland. In: L.R. Lozny and T.H. McGovern (eds) Global Perspectives on Long Term Community Resource Management, Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation 11, 71-101. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 77. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15800-2_5
PUBLISHED EXTENDED ABSTRACTS
Hreinsson, V. 2018g. Changing Nature in Iceland – Conceptions and Expressions 800-2018. 48th International Arctic Workshop, Program and Abstracts 2018, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder, 61-62.
Júlíusson, Á.D. Arctic Farming from the Past to Modernity. 48th International Arctic Workshop, Program and Abstracts 2018, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder, 65-67.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. The Foundations of Map-Making and Geography in Iceland. 48th International Arctic Workshop, Program and Abstracts 2018, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder, 82-85.
Sigurðardóttir, R., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Júlíusson, A.D., Hicks, M.T. and Hreinsson, V. 2018. Drivers of Change: Sustainability and Environmental Change in the Lake Mývatn District of Iceland AD 1700-1950. 48th International Arctic Workshop, Program and Abstracts 2018, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder, 110-113.
BOOKS PUBLISHED
Júlíusson, Á.D. Af hverju strái. Saga um byggð, gras og bændur. (In Icelandic: "From Every Blade of Grass": A History of Settlement, Grass and Farmers"). (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan 2018).
ARTICLES SUBMITTED
Ogilvie, A.E.J. Stormy Weather: Climate and Sea-Ice Variations in the North Atlantic (Iceland Sector) AD 1400-1700. (In) Natascha Mehler, ed., German voyages to the North Atlantic islands (1400-1700), Northern World series, Brill, Leiden.
ARTICLES IN PREPARATION
Hartman, S. Critical Revaluations of Sustainability and Resilience in Icelandic History and Heritage 800-1800. To be included in the co-authored book described below.
Hartman, S. and Hreinsson, V. Forces of Nature and the Inscription of Environmental Memory in The Saga of Grettir the Strong.
Hartman, S., Trump, B., Ogilvie, A. and McGovern, T. Using Lessons of the Past to Shape Future Sustainability Science and Policy. Chapter in preparation for the volume What sort of the past does the future need? Policy lessons and the historical imagination, ed. Piotr Filipkowski, John Haldon and Adam Izdebski
Hreinsson, V. Changing Natures: Developing Conceptions of Nature and Environment in Iceland as Reflected in Literary Sources 800-1800. To be included in the co-authored book described below.
Ingimundarson, J.H. 2021. The Political Ecology of Changing Farming Systems in Medieval to Early Modern Iceland. To be included in the co-authored book described below.
Ingimundarson, J.H. and Hartman, S. Transgendered Social Transformations of Björn Hítdælakappi in the Saga of Bjorn, Champion of the Hitardal People.
Jackson, R., Dugmore, A., Hambrecht, G., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Hartman, S., Madsen, C.K., Megan Hicks, M., Harrison, R., Smiarowski, K., McGovern, T.H. 2021. Long term Lessons in Human Ecodynamics: Survival and Extinction in the North Atlantic, (in review 2021) (In) Piotr Filipkowski, John Haldon and Adam Izdebski (eds), What sort of the past does the future need? Policy lessons and the historical imagination, Springer Press.
Júlíusson, Á.D. The Pox and the Plague. The Black Death in Iceland in 1402-1404 and the smallpox proxy 1707–1709. To be included in the co-authored book described below.
Júlíusson, Á.D., Ogilvie, A.E.J. and Ingimundarson, J.H. A New Look at Climate and Agriculture in Fifteenth-Century Iceland. (In) Andrea Kiss, Rudolf Brazdil and Chantal Camenisch, eds., The Fifteenth-Century Climate of Europe.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. Writing on Sea Ice: Icelandic Scholars of the Late 16th and Early Seventeenth Century. (In) Klaus Dodds and Sverker Sörlin, eds., Ice Humanities: Materiality, Ontology and Representation.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. Ice and Fire in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Iceland. To be included in the co-authored book described below.
BOOKS IN PREPARATION
A co-authored book with chapters by all ICECHANGE team members is in preparation. The complete book proposal is in the process of being submitted to the Routledge Environmental Humanities Series at the invitation of the series editors. The draft working title is the same as the project title: The Natural World in Literary and Historical Sources from Iceland ca. AD 800 to 1800. Drawing on the ethos of ICECHANGE, the book will make the point that, in the light of the world’s present crises in biodiversity, climate change, resource conflicts and water/food security, there is much that can be learned from a rigorous analysis not only of how physical environments have changed in the past but also of the human memory of such socio-environmental change as reflected and kept alive in the poems, sagas, folk tales, place names, annals and other textual archives of a culture on the circumpolar periphery of Europe’s power centres.
A book by Viðar Hreinsson with a provisional title of Earthly Powers and the Art of Stories. This will be based on another important ICECHANGE focus. This has been a re-evaluation of the interface between humans, nature and environment as reflected in a variety of literary texts, by developing a long-term (longue durée) perspective on historically conditioned human perceptions/conceptions of nature and environment that change fundamentally in the course of time. A deeper understanding of these changes can shed light on our own modern conceptions, by regarding literary products as organic growth in terms of material ecocriticism and cultural ecology.
CONFERENCE PAPERS and PRESENTATIONS
Hartman, Steven. 2017. Engaging Humanities Knowledge Domains to Meet the Human-Environmental Challenges of Our Time, plenary lecture, World Humanities Conference, organized by UNESCO & the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences, Liége, Belgium, 8 August 2017.
Hartman, Steven. 2018. Mobilizing Art, Science and Civil Society in collaborative citizen-focused interventions on climate change adaptation and mitigation, invited presentation, PLuS Alliance workshop Humanities for the Anthropocene: New Approaches to Valuing Evaluation and Evaluating Impact, organized by Arizona State University, Kings College London & University of New South Wales, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA, 13 January 2018.
Hartman, Steven. 2018. Bifrost: bridging the past and the present, connecting knowledge to action, and working to link diverse actors and stakeholders to address future sustainability challenges, Invited keynote lecture to Resilience and Transformation in the Territories of Low Demographic Density: Integrated Methodologies of Human and Social Sciences, 4th International Seminar on Culturally Integrated Landscape Management – Apheleia, Polytechnic Institute of Tomar, Portugal, 15 March 2018.
Hartman, Steven. 2018. Historical Research in the North Atlantic as a Key Focus of the Humanities for the Environment Circumpolar Observatory, workshop Orkney - Gateway to the Atlantic, organized by the Institute of Archaeology, University of Highlands and Islands, Rousay, Orkney, UK, 20 April 2018.
Hartman, Steven. 2019. Sustainability without Culture is not Sustainable, Invited keynote lecture to Environmental Humanities in the Anthropocene Age, inaugural conference of the Cappadocia University Environmental Humanities Center, Cappadocia University, Nevsehir, Turkey, 7 March 2019.
Hartman, Steven. 2019. The Great Challenges of the 21st Century Demand a New Humanities Paradigm, Invited keynote lecture to Tangibility: Designing Future Landscapes (Fifth Apheleia International Seminar of Mac¸a~o, 15 March 2019.
Hartman, Steven, 2019. Integrated environmental humanities in an age of escalating environmental anxiety, plenary lecture, international symposium Seeing the Knowledge: environmental experience and the humanities, Research Institute for Nature and Humanity, National Institutes for the Humanities, Kyoto, Japan, 23-25 October 2019.
Hartman, Steven. 2019. Interdisciplinary Configurations of the Arts, Humanities & Sciences in an Age of Climate & Biodiversity Crisis, plenary lecture, Symposium “Interdisciplinarity Revisited” organized by Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, StiftungHumboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss & Volkswagenstiftung, Berlin, October 2019.
Hartman, Steven, 2019. Building Resilience in Defense of Environments and Societies, plenary lecture, Second International Conference of Humanities: Sustainability, Well-being and Human Rights, International Council for Philosophy & Human Sciences, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 10 December 2019.
Hartman, Steven. 2020. UNESCO’s Principles for Sustainability Science as Guidelines for Formulating Qualitative Scenario Storylines (QSS) and Collaborative Conceptual Modeling (CCM), invited lecture in the Climate Change and History Research Initiative seminar series, Princeton University, 13 October 2020.
Hartman, Steven. The Unrealized Potential of Stories as Change Agents: Shaping Sustainable Futures, invited public lecture, Hope for the Globe program, Tiedekulma Lounge/The Thinking Lounge, University of Helsinki (lecture prepared for 20 April 2020 but postponed to autumn 2021, date TBD, due to the COVID19 crisis).
Hartman, Steven and Ingimundarsson, Jón Haukur. Food Sovereignty, Land Tenure and Economies of Power in Medieval Iceland: depictions of social-environmental crisis in the Icelandic family sagas, keynote lecture (in preparation), international conference on Food Futures: Humanities and Social Sciences Approaches, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan, Nov. 2021 due to COVID19 crisis.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. In Icelandic. Jón lærði og náttúrur náttúrunnar ("Jón the Learned and the Natures of Nature"), The Strandir Sorcery Museum’s winter festival, Hólmavík, 18 February 2017.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. In Icelandic. Jón lærði í vísindavagninum. Samskipti Jóns lærða við Hólamenn ("Jón the Learned on the wagon of science. His encounters with the intellectuals of Hólar"), Anniversary Symposium of the Skagafjörður Historical society and the Skagafjörður local Archives, 7 May 2017.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. In Icelandic. Að hrekjast úr Trékyllisvík. Hugvekja um Jón lærða, dyggðir náttúrunnar, sköpun og drottnunarvald (“To be driven away from Trékyllisvík. A sermon on Jón the Learned, the Virtues of Nature and the Worldly Powers”), A Symposium on the Hvalá Power Plant Project, Trékyllisvík, 25 June 2017.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. In Icelandic. Pegasus í fjósinu og kýrrassatrú. Var Káinn skáld eða hagyrðingur? ("Pegasus in the Cowshed and Belief in Heifer´s Rumps. Was Káinn a Poet or a Versifier?" Dear People of the Snow, Symposium on Káinn (Kristján Níels Júlíus Jónsson), University of Akureyri, 26 August 2017.
Hreinsson, Viðar, Sigurðardóttir, R., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Júlíusson, Á.D. and Hicks, M. 2017. Perceptions of Nature and Natural Resources by Lake Mývatn in Iceland, Conference Our Islands, Our Past, University of the Highlands and Islands, Orkney, 16 September 2017.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018. In Icelandic. Jarðarinnar fylling og Mývatn ("The Earth´s Interior and Lake Mývatn"), Annual Humanities Conference, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, 10 March 2018.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018. Changing Nature in Iceland – Conceptions and Expressions 800-2018. 48th International Arctic Workshop 2018, INSTAAR, Boulder, Colorado 5-6 April 2018.
Hreinsson, Viðar, Christens-Barry, W.A. and Toth, M.B. 2018. Preliminary Spectral Imaging of an Early Icelandic Map: Support for Conservation and Scholarship. Workshop on Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 17, Copenhagen, Denmark, 11-13 April 2018.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018. Manuscript culture: Stories of 6000 Years (or Literary Deep Time). Rousay Symposium, Orkney, 19 April 2018.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018. Black and White: The Natural World as Conceived by Jón Guðmundsson the Learned (1574-1658), Scientia Workshop, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 18 May 2018.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018. Exploring the Themes of Cold and Winter in the Poetry of Stephan G. Stephansson (1853-1927), Nordic Association for Canadian Studies conference X11: Exploring Canada: Exploits and Encounters, Akureyri, 10 August 2018.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2018. In Icelandic. Heittrúuð harðneskja. Af séra Jóni, tíðaranda og menningarástandi. Sá guðlega þenkjandi náttúruskoðari - um Jón lærða, ("Pietist harshness. Regarding Reverend Jón, the Spirit of the Times and the Cultural Conditions. The Pious Thinking Observer of Nature - on Jón the Learned"), Conference on Jón Jónsson the Learned of Möðrufell, Laugarborg, 8 September 2018.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2019. In Icelandic. Náttúrulaus sagnalist, eða lifandi gróður og lífrænir ávextir? (“Impotent storytelling or living growth and organic fruits. Memorial lecture for Snorri Sturluson, Snorrastofa, Reykholt, 1 October 2019.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2019. In Icelandic. Þvegið í hrútsketssoði og lambsgalli nuddað á. Um læknislistir Jóns lærða (“Washed in Ram-Meat-Broth and Lamb´s Gall Rubbed on. About Jón the Learned´s Healing Arts"), Magic and Healing. Symposium of the Icelandic Society of the History of Medicine, held in the National Museum of Iceland, 2 November 2019.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2019. In Icelandic. Vistræði sagnalistar ("Ecology of Storytelling"). Lecture delivered at the general meeting of the Icelandic Literary Society, Hotel Saga, 30 November 2019.
Hreinsson, Viðar and Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2019. New Knowledge Regarding Early Modern Maps of Iceland, SCIENTIAE Early Modern Knowledge, Queen’s University, Belfast 12-15 June 2019. Presented by Viðar Hreinsson on 12 June.
King, L., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Ingimundarson, J.H., Hreinsson, V., Hartman, S. 2018. From Narratives to Numbers: Blending the Humanities and Natural Science in Northern Research, 4th International St Magnus Conference Alternative Fact and Actual Fiction: Constructing the Social Narrative, Orkney Islands, Scotland, 16-18 April 2018.
Ingimundarson, J. H., Feeley, F. and Hambrecht, G. Elite Managed 13th Century Fisheries in Iceland: Documents and Zooarchaeology, Session IX, Paleoecology and the Subarctic Seas: High Latitude Climates, Oceans, Ecosystems, and Human Histories 3, at 7th International Conference of the OCEANS PAST Platform (OPP7), Tracing Human Interactions with Marine Ecosystems through Deep Time: Implications for Policy and Management, Bremerhaven, Germany. October 22-26, 2018. Also presented at the NABO 2019 Workshop. Université Lavel, Quebec City, Canada, 19-20 May 2019.
Ingimundarson, J. H. and Feeley, F. Elite Managed late 13th and early 14th Century Fisheries in Iceland: Documents and Zooarchaeology. Presentation at the NABO 2019 Workshop. Université Lavel, Quebec City, Canada, 19-20 May 2019.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017. Two Famines in Iceland. COMPOT workshop. Turku, Finnland. 12 January 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017. In Danish. Den lange reformation i Nord-Atlanteren. ("The Long Reformation in the North Atlantic". Matchpoint, Aarhus, Denmark, 17 May 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017. Transplanting a Culture. Nordic History Seminar, Aalborg, Denmark, 16. August 2017
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. In Icelandic. Fyrirlestur um höfuðból. ("Presentation on Manor Farms"), Seminar on 1703 Project, University of Iceland, 22 August 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. In Icelandic. Söguritun um siðbreytinguna. Spjall í tilefni af 500 ára afmælinu. ("Historical Writing at the Time of the Reformation. Talk on the Occasion of the 500th Anniversary"). Workshop on the Reformation in Iceland, Skálholt 2 September 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel, Hicks, M., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Sigurðardóttir, Ragnhildur, Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. Farm Succession in a Cold Climate the Case of Mývatnssveit in Iceland 1801-1930. Succession Workshop, Rural History Conference. Leuven, Belgium, 12 September 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017 Sheriffs´ Reports on the General State of the Counties. Sources for Famine Research in Iceland?” COMPOT workshop. Uppsala, Sweden, 27-30 September 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. Icelandic Peasant Farmers and Early Modern Trade Books. Conference on Colonialism and Commercialism in the North Atlantic. Bifröst, Borgarfjord, Iceland, 17 and 18 October 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017. In Icelandic. Mikið úrval eyðibýla. "A Wide Choice of Deserted Farms", The Icelandic Archeological Society, The National Museum, Reykjavik, 14 December 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2018. Arctic Farming in Iceland from the Past to Modernity. 48th International Arctic Workshop, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder, 4-6 April 2018.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. Reading the Ruins. Some Points on the Development of Settlement in the Two Valleys of Svarfaðardalur and Hörgárdalur in 870-1700 and Vicinity, Rousay Workshop, Orkney, 19 April 2018.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2018. A Cultural Landscape of Milk. Medieval Farming Settlement in Iceland and the Development of Dairy Farming. Leeds International Medieval Conference, 2-5 July 2018.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2018. The Closing of a Commodity Frontier. The Case of Sheep Export from Iceland in the 19th and 20th centuries, World Ecology Conference, Helsinki, Finnland, 17 August 2018.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2018. In Icelandic. Íbúatala á Íslandi á 14. öld, ("The Population of Iceland in the 14th Century") Erindi á málþinginu Vesæl þjóð í vondu landi? Workshop on "Poor People in a Bad Country?" National Museum, Reykjavík, 8 December 2018.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2019. In Icelandic. Í ókunnu landi. Um hinn mikla mun á búskaparháttum á 14. öld og þeirri 18, ("In Unknown Territory. On the Great Difference between Farming Practics in the 14th and 18th Centuries"), University of Iceland Theology Workshop, 9 March 2019.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. In Icelandic Hvalrekar á miðöldum, ("Medieval Whale Beaching"), National Museum of Iceland, 16 April 2019.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. Whale Beachings in 13th and 14th century Icelandic documents. Norse Use of Marine Mammals in the Medieval North Atlantic (NUM3NA) workshop, Beaufort, North Carolina, 27 May 2019.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel and Jónsdóttir, Ingibjörg. 2019. In Icelandic. Höfuðból í hárri upplausn, ("Manor Farms in Dissolution", University of Iceland Theology Workshop, 9 March 2019.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel, Ogilvie, A.E.J. and Demarée, G.R. 2019. Local Impacts of the 1783-84 Lakagígar Eruption in Iceland. INQUA 2019, 31 July 2019, Dublin, Ireland.
King, L., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Ingimundarson, J.H., Hreinsson, V., Hartman, S. 2018. From Narratives to Numbers: Blending the Humanities and Natural Science in Northern Research, 4th International St Magnus Conference Alternative Fact and Actual Fiction: Constructing the Social Narrative, Orkney Islands, Scotland, 16-18 April 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J., Sigurðardóttir, Ragnhildur, Júlíusson, Árni Daníel, Hreinsson, Viðar and Hicks, Megan. 2017. Climate, Environment and Adaptation in Northeastern Iceland A.D. 1750 to the Present. Session 5.3. Evaluation and Planning for Uncertain Times in a Rapidly Changing Environment, ICASS IX, Umeå, Sweden, 9 June 2017.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. The Foundations of Map-Making and Geography in Iceland, 48th International Arctic Workshop, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder, 4-6 April 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Reflections on Weather and Climate by Travellers to the North, Climate Existence Conference, Sigtunastiftelsen, Sigtuna, Sweden, 7-9 May 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Climate, Sea Ice and Human Ecodynamic Systems in Northeastern Iceland, Hay and Wetland Management Workshop, Hannesarholt, Reykjavik, Iceland, 14-17 June 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Climate, Sea Ice and Human Ecodynamic Systems in Northeastern Iceland: Lessons from the Past and Perspectives from the Future, Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences International Conference. Climate and Cultures: Perspectives for the Future, Palais des Académies, Brussels, Belgium. Invited Keynote Lecture, 23-24 May 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2020. Reflections of Change: The Natural World in Literary and Historical Sources for Iceland ca. AD 800-1800, Invited lecture to University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute Research Seminar, Kirkwall, Orkney, Scotland, virtually on 25 September 2020.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2020. Weather as Magic and Metaphor in the Sagas of Icelanders, Invited Hermann Pálsson Memorial Lecture at the Annual Conference of the Scottish Society for Northern Studies, virtually on 21 November 2020.
Sigurðardóttir, R., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Júlíusson, A.D., Hicks, M.T. and Hreinsson, V. 2018. Drivers of Change: Sustainability and Environmental Change in the Lake Mývatn District of Iceland AD 1700-1950, 48th International Arctic Workshop, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder, 4-6 April 2018.
Sigurðardóttir, R., Júlíusson, Á.D., Hreinsson, V., Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Narratives of Catastrophe and Survival in Northeast Iceland, 4th International St Magnus Conference Alternative Fact and Actual Fiction: Constructing the Social Narrative, Orkney Islands, Scotland, 16-18 April 2018.
INDIVIDUAL LECTURES PRESENTING ICECHANGE WORK AND FINDINGS
Hartman, Steven. Anthropocenic Flotsam and Jetsam and Völuspá’s tragedy of knowing: the dilemmas of prognosis, agency and in/action in our new Age of Anxiety, invited lecture in preparation, Helsinki Forum in Environmental Humanities, University of Helsinki, (lecture originally planned for 20 April 2020 but postponed to autumn 2021, date TBD, due to the COVID19 crisis).
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. In Icelandic Jón lærði og skapandi náttúra. "Jón the Learned and Creative Nature". Fyrirlestur vegna bókmennta- og menningarverkefnisins "Lesið í sköpunarkraft Vestfjarða", Opening lecture in connection with the the Literary and Cultural Project "Interpreting the Creative Force of the Westfjords" Hrafnseyri, 29 July 2017.
Hreinsson, Viðar. 2017. In Icelandic. Ekkert sprettur af engu. Jón lærði og endurreisn þekkingar á Hjaltastað, "Nothing Will Come of Nothing. Jón the Learned and the revival of Learning at Hjaltastaður", Seminar Í fótspor Jóns lærða á Úthéraði, "In the Footsteps of Jón the Learned in the Útherað district", Hjaltalund 3 November 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017. Þúfur sem segja sögu – ný sýn á íslenskar miðaldir ("Hummocks that tell a story - new views on the Icelandic Middle Ages". The Culture House Museum, Reykjavík, 7 April 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017. In Icelandic. Um búskap og hernað á Sturlungaöld. ("Farming and Conflict in the Age of the Sturlungs"). Erindi flutt í tilefni af endurútgáfu bókarinnar Á Sturlungaslóð í Skagafirði. Lecture on the occasion of the republication of the book "Sturlunga Locations in Skagafjord". Kakalaskáli, Skagafjord, 12 August 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2017. In Icelandic. Lesið í leifar. Um byggð og landeign í Svarfaðardal og Hörgárdal á miðöldum. ("Reading the Remains: On Settlement and Land Ownership in Svarfaðardalur and Hörgárdalur"), Lecture to the University of Iceland Centre for Medieval Studies (Miðaldastofa), Reykjavík, 5 October 2017.
Júlíusson, Árni Daníel. 2019. In Icelandic. Hvalrekar og hvalafurðir á 13. og 14. öld. ("Whale strandings and Whale Monsters". Lecture series of the National Museum, 16 April 2019.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2017. North Atlantic Exploration and Climate. Invited Outreach presentations to Denver Museum of Nature and Science re. exhibit Vikings: Beyond the Legend. 21 February 2017. Lecture given twice.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2017. Sagas and Science: Documentary Evidence of Changes in Climate and Sea-Ice Incidence in Iceland from the Settlement to the Late 1800s. Invited lecture to the University of Iceland Centre for Medieval Studies (Miðaldastofa), Reykjavík, 9 March 2017.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2017. Sagas and Science: Reconstructing the Past Climate of Iceland Using Documentary Sources. Invited lecture to School for International Training (SIT) Graduate Student Group on: Iceland and Greenland: Climate Change and the Arctic, Akureyri, 15 March 2017.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2017. Cross-Disciplinary Investigations of the Long-Term Sustainability of Human Ecodynamic Systems in Northeastern Iceland. Invited lecture to School for International Training (SIT) Graduate Student Group on: Iceland and Greenland: Climate Change and the Arctic, Akureyri, 16 March 2017.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2017. Reconstructing the Past Climate of Iceland Using Documentary Sources. Invited lecture to School for International Training (SIT) Graduate Student Group on: Iceland and Greenland: Climate Change and the Arctic, Akureyri, 9 October 2017. I
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Climate History of Iceland and the Lake Mývatn Area, Svartárkot Culture-Nature Project, Human ecology and culture at Lake Mývatn 1700-2000: Dimensions of Environmental and Cultural Change, Bárðardalur, northern Iceland, 24 August 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Examples of Climate Impacts: Case Studies from Iceland in General and Mývatn in Particular, Svartárkot Culture-Nature Project, Human ecology and culture at Lake Mývatn 1700-2000: Dimensions of Environmental and Cultural Change, Bárðardalur, northern Iceland, 24 August 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. General Climate History of Iceland: Documentary Evidence ca. 1600-2018, University of Iceland Course on Society and Environment in Mývatnssveit (Samfélag og umhverfi við Mývatn) 1700-1950. University of Iceland, Reykjavik, 9 November 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2018. Climate Impacts ca. 1700-1950: Examples from Iceland in General and Mývatnssveit in Particular, University of Iceland Course on Society and Environment in Mývatnssveit (Samfélag og umhverfi við Mývatn) 1700-1950. University of Iceland, Reykjavik, 16 November 2018.
Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2019. Outreach presentation on The Viking Age and the European Settlement of the North Atlantic World to Frazier Meadows retirement community, Boulder, Colorado, 20 February 2019.
ICECHANGE OPEN ACCESS SITE AND DIGITAL OUTPUTS
An open-access domain for the ICECHANGE project is in the process of being finalized for launch in March-April 2021. The site will include scores of media, including video 8 webinars of ICECHANGE lectures and seminar discussions, interviews with the ICECHANGE team, downloadable published papers, a feature on historic representations of whales in Iceland manuscripts from the late medieval period through the modern period, a rich gallery of infographics of interpretations of historical data on environmental change in Iceland and a manuscript transcription pilot project. This pilot project will present high-resolution images of 20+ works from unpublished manuscripts with significant environmental data and representations from 17th-19th centuries with an upload interface to collect citizen-science transcriptions for editorial curation and publication in digital form to accompany the manuscript images. This pilot project is designed to help beta test crowd sourcing of citizen-science transcriptions and editorial curation for a projected database project in development intended to make available hundreds of unique manuscript sources not yet available in published or digital form. The entire ICECHANGE open access site, including all the materials specified here, is expected to launch as a sub-domain on the site www.bifrostonline.org in March/April 2021.
This pilot will develop and systematize a methodology and interface for a future larger-scale open-source transcription platform that will include a selection of representative poetry and prose from the 17th through the 19th centuries with significant environmental data/content/representation. This future database will include 100-200 poems by 30-40 poets and 50-70 “works“ of prose by 10-20 writers (various items, tales, diaries, reworked sagas etc.) This latter project, following on the methods and approaches developed in the pilot, will create a databank of promising manuscript texts—i.e., works such as poetry, history, storytelling, so-called "ego documents" (diaries, letters), science, religious material and folklore, bearing in mind the organic nature of the manuscript production. The purpose is to make these interesting environmental content/data and representation-rich materials, which are otherwise hard to access because they are available now only in manuscript form in archives, available through open access publishing to enable crowdsourced/citizen science transcriptions to be realized for the benefit of a larger research community.