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.

摘要

本文评估了在北欧五国和爱沙尼亚进行的气候历史研究的发展和现状。过去气候变化可能对社会产生的影响在 20 世纪初已经引起了少数北欧历史学家的兴趣，但直到最近，缺乏过去气候波动的数据限制了该领域的学术研究。由于古气候学的进步，数据可用性在过去几十年中从根本上增加了。然而，这些进步带来了新的挑战，涉及在历史研究中利用自然科学数据的能力以及获取气候学的基础知识。在许多欧洲国家，气候史已成为一个强大的学术子领域，因此创造了如何克服一些主要陷阱的方法，如与该领域早期工作相关的气候决定论。这些认识论的进步刚刚开始在北欧历史研究中站稳脚跟。因此，本文最后提出了十项建议，以改进北欧气候历史的未来研究。