Many contemporary environmental risks and global environmental changes occurring today are unprecedented in the history of human life on earth. However, the images and narratives through which humans relate to these phenomena are built on existing cultural tropes and narrative models. Cultural, social, and historical contexts strongly influence how we construct images and narratives of nature and the environment. It is therefore highly important to study such narratives in works of literature, film, and other forms of cultural expression in relation to the specific circumstances from which they arise.

Nordic Narratives of Nature and the Environment is the first English language anthology that presents ecocritical research on northern European literatures and cultures. The contributors examine specifically Nordic narratives of nature and the environment, with a focus on the cultures and literatures of the modern northern European countries Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, including Sápmi, which is the land traditionally inhabited by the indigenous Sami people.

Covering northern European literatures and cultures over a period of more than two centuries, this anthology provides substantial insights into both old and new narratives of nature and the environment as well as intertextual relations, the variety of cultural traditions, and current discourses connected to the Nordic environmental imagination. Case studies relating to works of literature, film, and other media shed new light on the role of culture, history and society in the formation of narratives of nature and the environment, and offer a comprehensive and multi-faceted overview of the most recent ecocritical research in Scandinavian studies.

Reinhard Hennig is associate professor of Nordic literature at the University of Agder.

Anna-Karin Jonassonis junior lecturer in the Department of Humanities at Mid Sweden University and PhD candidate at Åbo Akademi University.

Peter Degerman is senior lecturer of comparative literature, Mid Sweden University.

Introduction: Nordic Narratives of Nature and the Environment

Reinhard Hennig, Anna-Karin Jonasson, and Peter Degerman

Part I: Nordic Anthropocene Narratives

1. The Safest Place on Earth: Cultural Imaginaries of Safety in Scandinavia

Lauren E. LaFauci

2. Moving Mountains: Cinema, Deep Time, and Climate Change in Hanna Ljunghs I am Mountain, to Measure Impermanence

Anna Sofia Rossholm

3. Visionary Cartography: The Aesthetic Mediation of the Anthropocene in Kaspar Colling Nielsens Mount Copenhagen

Jørgen Bruhn

4. Nordic Nature on the Edge of the North Sea: Kjersti Viks Mandø

Katie Ritson

5. The Tale of The Great Deluge: Risto Isomäkis The Sands of Sarasvati as Climate Fiction

Toni Lahtinen

Part II: Language, Aesthetics, and the Non-Human in Nordic Environments

6. Of Wildflowers and Butterflies: Interrogating Species Names in Norwegian Poetry from the National Romantic to the Anthropocene

Jenna Coughlin

7. From Anthropomorphism to Ecomorphism: Figurative Language in Tarjei Vesaas Fuglane and Stina Aronsons Hitom himlen

Beatrice G. Reed

8. Botanics in Dystopian Environments: Human-Plant Encounters in Contemporary Finnish-language Dystopian Fiction

Hanna Samola

9. Interspecies Encounters An Eco-Ethical Approach to Frida Nilssons Ishavspirater

Nina Goga

Part III: Environmental Justice and the Postcolonial North

10. The Nature of Hunger: Karl August Tavaststjernas Hårda tider

Frederike Felcht

11. Scandinavian Wilderness and Violence: Two Women Travelling in Sápmi 19071916

Kari Haarder Ekman

12. Extractivism in Sápmi: Elegiac Ecojustice in Liselotte Wajstedts Film Kiruna Space Road and Marja Helanders Silence Photographs

Cheryl J. Fish