Climate in Nordic historical research–a research review and future perspectives

Abstract

This article assesses the development and current state of climate history research conducted in the five Nordic countries and Estonia. The possible societal impacts of past climatic changes already interested a handful of Nordic historians in the early twentieth century, but the lack of data on past climate fluctuations constrained scholarship in this field until recently. The data availability has increased fundamentally over the past decades due to the advances of palaeoclimatology. However, these advances have created new challenges, related to the ability to utilize data from the natural sciences in historical research as well as acquiring a basic knowledge on climatology. In many European countries, climate history has established itself as a strong academic subfield and consequently has created approaches as to how to overcome some main pitfalls, like climate determinism, related to the early works in the field. These epistemological advances are just beginning to gain a foothold in Nordic historical research. Thus, the article concludes with ten recommendations to improve future research in Nordic climate history.