Swidden cultivation in the shadow of the Arctic Circle

Just how far back in time swidden techniques were first employed in Scandinavia is open to some question. It has been suggested that swidden practices were brought to Scandinavia by its earliest inhabitants.1 While that is surely an overstatement, it does seem fairly clear that by 1900 swidden agric...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Floyd, Donald R.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: California Council for Geographic Education 1983
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10211.2/2469
Description
Summary:Just how far back in time swidden techniques were first employed in Scandinavia is open to some question. It has been suggested that swidden practices were brought to Scandinavia by its earliest inhabitants.1 While that is surely an overstatement, it does seem fairly clear that by 1900 swidden agriculture had been present in the North for at least four millenia. Pollen analysis of peat bogs, for example, indicates that swidden farming techniques were probably being utilized in parts of what is now Denmark as well as in the southern reaches of contemporary Norway and Sweden at least as early as 2500 B.C.