Medieval Iceland, Greenland, and the New Human Condition : A case study in integrated environmental humanities

• Published in: Global and Planetary Change
• Main Authors: Hartman, Steven, Ogilvie, A. E.J., Ingimundarson, Jón Haukur, Dugmore, A. J., Hambrecht, George, McGovern, T. H.
• Other Authors: Faculty of Social Sciences
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Loftslagsbreytingar; Saga; Miðaldir; Menning; Environmental humanities; Global change; Historical climatology; Historical ecology; Icelandic sagas; Medieval Iceland; Political ecology; Zooarchaeology; Global and Planetary Change; Oceanography; Greenland; Iceland; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11815/3172; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.04.007

Funding Information: This research was made possible by generous grants from the Icelandic Centre for Research/RANNÍS (award 163133-051 ), Riksbankens Jubileumsfond: the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences (award F11-1313:1 ), the National Science Foundation (awards: 0732327 1140106 1119354 1203823 1203268 1202692 1249313 0527732 0638897 0629500 0947862 1446308 ) and NordForsk (awards: 29002 61841 76654 72925 ); Mid Sweden University Faculty of Human Sciences-funded and Vetenskapsrådet: the Swedish Research Council-funded research time for " Mapping Environmental Consciousness " (award # 421-2007-1929 ) supported the wider intellectual effort leading to this paper. Publisher Copyright: © 2017 The Authors This paper contributes to 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. In particular, the paper addresses Iceland during the medieval period (with a secondary, comparative focus on Norse Greenland) and discusses episodes where environmental and climatic changes have appeared to cross key thresholds for agricultural productivity. The paper draws upon international, interdisciplinary research in the North Atlantic region led by the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) and the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES) in the Circumpolar Networks program of the Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE). By interlinking analyses of historically grounded literature with archaeological studies and environmental science, valuable new perspectives can emerge on how these past societies may have understood and coped with such impacts. As climate and other environmental changes do not operate in isolation, vulnerabilities created by socioeconomic factors also beg consideration. The paper illustrates the benefits of ...