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Hartman, Steven
Publications (10 of 18) Show all publications
Hartman, S., Ogilvie, A., Haukur Ingimundarsson, J., Dugmore, A., Hambrecht, G. & McGovern, T. (2017). Medieval Iceland, Greenland, and the New Human Condition: A case study in integrated environmental humanities. Global and Planetary Change, 156(September 2017), 123-139
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Medieval Iceland, Greenland, and the New Human Condition: A case study in integrated environmental humanities
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2017 (English)In: Global and Planetary Change, ISSN 0921-8181, E-ISSN 1872-6364, Vol. 156, no September 2017, p. 123-139Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

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 an integrated environmental-studies approach that draws on data, methodologies and analytical tools of environmental humanities, social sciences, and geosciences to better understand long-term human ecodynamics and changing human-landscape-environment interactions through time. One key goal is to apply previously unused data and concerted expertise to illuminate human responses to past changes; a secondary aim is to consider how lessons derived from these cases may be applicable to environmental threats and socioecological risks in the future, especially as understood in light of the New Human Condition, the concept transposed from Hannah Arendt's influential framing of the human condition that is foregrounded in the present special issue. This conception admits human agency's role in altering the conditions for life on earth, in large measure negatively, while acknowledging the potential of this self-same agency, if effectively harnessed and properly directed, to sustain essential planetary conditions through a salutary transformation of human perception, understanding and remedial action. The paper concludes that more long-term historical analyses of cultures and environments need to be undertaken at various scales. Past cases do not offer perfect analogues for the future, but they can contribute to a better understanding of how resilience and vulnerability occur, as well as how they may be compromised or mitigated.

Keywords
Environmental humanities, Global change, Historical climatology, Historical ecology, Icelandic sagas, Medieval Iceland, Political ecology, Zooarchaeology
National Category
Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-29678 (URN)10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.04.007 (DOI)000413280700012 ()2-s2.0-85029891824 (Scopus ID)ETOUR (Local ID)ETOUR (Archive number)ETOUR (OAI)
Available from: 2016-12-20 Created: 2016-12-19 Last updated: 2018-08-20Bibliographically approved
Hartman, S. (2016). Att avkoda det ekologiska minnet: Vad studier av medeltida litteratur kan berätta om historiska miljöförändringar. Biodiverse, 21(2), 4-7
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Att avkoda det ekologiska minnet: Vad studier av medeltida litteratur kan berätta om historiska miljöförändringar
2016 (Swedish)In: Biodiverse, ISSN 2002-3820, Vol. 21, no 2, p. 4-7Article in journal (Other academic) Published
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Uppsala: CBM Centrum för biologisk mångfald, 2016
National Category
Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-29680 (URN)ETOUR (Local ID)ETOUR (Archive number)ETOUR (OAI)
Note

Arikeln finns också tillgänglig på engelska under titeln "evealing Environmental Memory. What the study of medieval literature can tell us about long-term environmental change"

Available from: 2016-12-20 Created: 2016-12-19 Last updated: 2016-12-20Bibliographically approved
Hartman, S. (2016). Climate Change, Public Engagement & Integrated Environmental Humanities. In: Stephen Siperstein, Shane Hall, Stephanie LeMenager (Ed.), Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities: (pp. 67-75). Abingdon & New York: Routledge
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Climate Change, Public Engagement & Integrated Environmental Humanities
2016 (English)In: Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities / [ed] Stephen Siperstein, Shane Hall, Stephanie LeMenager, Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2016, p. 67-75Chapter in book (Refereed)
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2016
National Category
Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-29679 (URN)ETOUR (Local ID)9781138907157 (ISBN)ETOUR (Archive number)ETOUR (OAI)
Available from: 2016-12-20 Created: 2016-12-19 Last updated: 2020-09-03Bibliographically approved
Lethbridge, E. & Hartman, S. (2016). Inscribing Environmental Memory in the Icelandic Sagas and the Icelandic Saga Map. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 131(2), 381-391
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Inscribing Environmental Memory in the Icelandic Sagas and the Icelandic Saga Map
2016 (English)In: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, ISSN 0030-8129, E-ISSN 1938-1530, Vol. 131, no 2, p. 381-391Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Keywords
Old Norse literature, 400-1499, Íslendinga sögur, Icelandic landscape, colonialism, collective memory, environmental studies, digital technology, maps
National Category
Languages and Literature
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-28752 (URN)10.1632/pmla.2016.131.2.381 (DOI)000381657300013 ()2-s2.0-84982106363 (Scopus ID)ETOUR (Local ID)ETOUR (Archive number)ETOUR (OAI)
Available from: 2016-09-12 Created: 2016-09-12 Last updated: 2017-11-21Bibliographically approved
Hartman, S., Ogilvie, A. & Hennig, R. (2016). 'Viking' Ecologies: Icelandic Sagas, Local Knowledge and Environmental Memory. In: John Parham & Louise Westling (Ed.), A Global History of Literature and the Environment: (pp. 125-140). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Open this publication in new window or tab >>'Viking' Ecologies: Icelandic Sagas, Local Knowledge and Environmental Memory
2016 (English)In: A Global History of Literature and the Environment / [ed] John Parham & Louise Westling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, p. 125-140Chapter in book (Refereed)
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016
National Category
Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-29674 (URN)ETOUR (Local ID)9781107102620 (ISBN)ETOUR (Archive number)ETOUR (OAI)
Available from: 2016-12-20 Created: 2016-12-19 Last updated: 2018-01-10Bibliographically approved
Brewington, S., Hicks, M., Edwald, Á., Einarsson, Á., Anamthawat-Jónsson, K., Cook, G., . . . McGovern, T. H. (2015). Islands of change vs. islands of disaster: Managing pigs and birds in the Anthropocene of the North Atlantic. The Holocene, 25(10), 1676-1684
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Islands of change vs. islands of disaster: Managing pigs and birds in the Anthropocene of the North Atlantic
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2015 (English)In: The Holocene, ISSN 0959-6836, E-ISSN 1477-0911, Vol. 25, no 10, p. 1676-1684Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

The offshore islands of the North Atlantic were among some of the last settled places on earth, with humans reaching the Faroes and Iceland in the late Iron Age and Viking period. While older accounts emphasizing deforestation and soil erosion have presented this story of island colonization as yet another social–ecological disaster, recent archaeological and paleoenvironmental research combined with environmental history, environmental humanities, and bioscience is providing a more complex understanding of long-term human ecodynamics in these northern islands. An ongoing interdisciplinary investigation of the management of domestic pigs and wild bird populations in Faroes and Iceland is presented as an example of sustained resource management using local and traditional knowledge to create structures for successful wild fowl management on the millennial scale.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Sage Publications, 2015
Keywords
Anthropocene, IHOPE, island archaeology, local and traditional knowledge, Norse, North Atlantic
National Category
General Literature Studies History and Archaeology Earth and Related Environmental Sciences
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-26198 (URN)10.1177/0959683615591714 (DOI)000361495300015 ()2-s2.0-84941882930 (Scopus ID)
Projects
IHOPE
Available from: 2015-11-03 Created: 2015-11-03 Last updated: 2017-12-01Bibliographically approved
Hartman, S. (2015). Unpacking the Black Box: the need for Integrated Environmental Humanities (IEH).
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Unpacking the Black Box: the need for Integrated Environmental Humanities (IEH)
2015 (English)Other (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))
Abstract [en]

The circumstances that have given rise to the Anthropocene concept require that we reassess our assumptions about human agency and human effects on the earth system. Human activities, and thus human choices, clearly lie at the root of the great environmental predicament of our age, which is not primarily an ecological crisis, though its ramifications are far reaching within ecological systems. Rather, it is a crisis of culture. If the humanities "are a unique repository of knowledge and insight into the rich diversity of the human experience" from which we learn to make sense of our "responses, motivations and actions" in the face of challenges, then it is risky to omit humanities knowledge from scientific assessment and consultation processes informing environmental policy.

The complete article is available for free viewing on the Future Earth site: bit.ly/1QoHPeC .

Keywords
Environmental Humanities; climate change; Global Environmental Change; Social Sciences; Humanities; IPCC; Interdisciplinarity; climate assessment; Icelandic sagas; sustainable development
National Category
Specific Literatures Archaeology History Geosciences, Multidisciplinary Other Natural Sciences
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-25700 (URN)
Available from: 2015-08-20 Created: 2015-08-19 Last updated: 2015-10-12Bibliographically approved
Frei, K. M., Coutu, A. N., Smiarowski, K., Harrison, R., Madsen, C. K., Arneborg, J., . . . McGovern, T. H. (2015). Was it for walrus?: Viking Age settlement and medieval walrus ivory trade in Iceland and Greenland. World archaeology, 47(3), 439-466
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Was it for walrus?: Viking Age settlement and medieval walrus ivory trade in Iceland and Greenland
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2015 (English)In: World archaeology, ISSN 0043-8243, E-ISSN 1470-1375, Vol. 47, no 3, p. 439-466Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Walrus-tusk ivory and walrus-hide rope were highly desired goods in Viking Age north-west Europe. New finds of walrus bone and ivory in early Viking Age contexts in Iceland are concentrated in the south-west, and suggest extensive exploitation of nearby walrus for meat, hide and ivory during the first century of settlement. In Greenland, archaeofauna suggest a very different specialized long-distance hunting of the much larger walrus populations in the Disko Bay area that brought mainly ivory to the settlement areas and eventually to European markets. New lead isotopic analysis of archaeological walrus ivory and bone from Greenland and Iceland offers a tool for identifying possible source regions of walrus ivory during the early Middle Ages. This opens possibilities for assessing the development and relative importance of hunting grounds from the point of view of exported products.

Keywords
lead (Pb) isotopes, zooarchaeology, Walrus, Greenland, Norse, proto-world system, Iceland
National Category
History and Archaeology Humanities
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-25646 (URN)10.1080/00438243.2015.1025912 (DOI)000355197300005 ()2-s2.0-84930089598 (Scopus ID)
Available from: 2015-08-28 Created: 2015-08-18 Last updated: 2020-08-05Bibliographically approved
Hartman, S. (2014). Critical Introduction to "To Kill a Child" by Stig Dagerman: [The Art of Coming in Time]. The New York review of books
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Critical Introduction to "To Kill a Child" by Stig Dagerman: [The Art of Coming in Time]
2014 (English)In: The New York review of books, ISSN 0028-7504, E-ISSN 1944-7744Article in journal (Other academic) Published
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
New York: , 2014
Keywords
Stig Dagerman Short Story Ethics
National Category
Specific Literatures Specific Languages
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-22767 (URN)
Note

Published in New York Review of Book online / NYRBlog

Available from: 2014-09-06 Created: 2014-09-06 Last updated: 2018-01-11Bibliographically approved
Hartman, S. & McGovern, T. H. (2014). Integrating Humanities Scholarship within the Science of Global Environmental Change: The example of Inscribing Environmental Memory in the Icelandic Sagas (IEM), an IHOPE case study. In: : . Paper presented at "Framing Nature: Signs, Stories and Ecologies of Meaning" Joint conference of the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment (EASLCE) and the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES), Tartu, 29 April–3 May 2014. University of Tartu, Estonia: EASLCE & NIES
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Integrating Humanities Scholarship within the Science of Global Environmental Change: The example of Inscribing Environmental Memory in the Icelandic Sagas (IEM), an IHOPE case study
2014 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Inscribing Environmental Memory in the Icelandic Sagas (IEM) is a major interdisciplinary research initiative examining environmental memory in the medieval Icelandic sagas. The initiative brings together teams of historians, literary scholars, archaeologists and geographers, as well as specialists in environmental sciences and medieval studies, to investigate long-term human ecodynamics and environmental change from the period of Iceland’s settlement in the Viking Age (AD 874-930) through the so-called Saga Age of the early and late medieval periods, and well into the long period of steady cooling in the Northern hemisphere popularly known as the Little Ice Age (AD 1350-1850). In her 1994 volume inaugurating the field of historical ecology Carole Crumley argued in favor of a “longitudinal” approach to the study of longue durée human ecodynamics. This approach takes a region as the focus for study and examines changing human-landscape-climate interactions through time in that particular place. IEM involves multiple frames of inquiry that are distinct yet cross-referential. Environmental change in Iceland during the late Iron Age and medieval period is investigated by physical environmental sciences. Just how known processes of environmental change and adaptation may have shaped medieval Icelandic sagas and their socio-environmental preoccupations is of great interest, yet just as interesting are other questions concerning how these sagas may in turn have shaped understandings of the past, cultural foundation narratives, environmental lore, local ecological knowledge etc. Enlisting environmental sciences and humanities scholarship in the common aim of framing and thereby better understanding nature, the IEM initiative excludes nothing as “post- interesting” or “pre-interesting.” Understanding Viking Age first settlement processes informs understanding of 18th century responses to climate change, and 19th century resource use informs understanding of archaeological patterns visible at first settlement a millennium earlier. There is much to gain from looking at pathways (and their divergences) from both ends, and a long millennial scale perspective is one of the key contributions that the study of past “completed experiments in human ecodynamics” can make to attempts to achieve future sustainability. IEM is a case study of the Integrated History and future of People on Earth initiative (IHOPE) led by the international project AIMES (Analysis, Integration and Modeling of the Earth System), a core project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme; the initiative is co-sponsored by PAGES (Past Global Changes) and IHDP (The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change). This talk brings together two of the main coordinators from IEM’s sponsoring organizations, NIES and NABO, to reflect on the particular challenges, innovations and advances anticipated in this unprecedented undertaking of integrated science and scholarship, a new model for the scientific framing of nature.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
University of Tartu, Estonia: EASLCE & NIES, 2014
Keywords
Global Environmental Change, Literature and Environment, Historical Ecology, Integrated Science and Scholarship, Ecocriticism, Environmental Archaeology, Environmental History, Norse Sagas, Medieval Literature, Paleoenvironments
National Category
General Literature Studies Archaeology History Other Humanities not elsewhere specified
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-22111 (URN)
Conference
"Framing Nature: Signs, Stories and Ecologies of Meaning" Joint conference of the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment (EASLCE) and the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES), Tartu, 29 April–3 May 2014
Note

Keynote lecture, May 3, 2014.

Link to downloadable powerpoint document:

https://miun.academia.edu/StevenHartman

Available from: 2014-06-07 Created: 2014-06-07 Last updated: 2014-07-09Bibliographically approved
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