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Among the most prominent prehistoric features in the boreal forests of northern Sweden are trapping pits or pitfalls used for hunting elk and/or reindeer. Even if often ascribed to the Viking Age and its trade in furs and other animal products, the chronology of these features has long been a matter of debate. In this article, a database of 370 dated radiocarbon samples from excavated pitfalls has been compiled and analysed using Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) modelling to create the most elaborate chronology of Swedish trapping pit systems so far. The analysis shows that the most intensive period of construction of trapping pits was in the centuries before the Viking period. This challenges previous interpretations of Viking Age resource exploitation but is in line with several other recently published studies concerned with resource exploitation, non-agrarian production, and trade connecting northern Scandinavia with inter-regional trade networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-border cooperation is increasingly practised as a spatial planning strategy in health care. This observation is emphasized in numerous reports on transboundary agreements in European border regions. While the projects hint at an ongoing contestation and reconfiguration of nationally bordered health care pathways, they have rarely been subject to critical geographical inquiry. Departing from contemporary border studies debates, the article addresses this gap by providing a nuanced perspective on the socio-spatial complexity of health care practices across Europe's internal borders. The author demonstrates this empirically by focusing on a framework for emergency care assistance in the northernmost regions of Scandinavia. He uses a heuristic approach to borderscapes as assemblages, and conceptually argues that the strategic reconfiguration of emergency care provision through cross-border cooperation is not adequately captured by a narrative of dissolving topographically bordered sovereignty (i.e. the commonplace notion of overcoming national boundaries). Based on a qualitative analysis of motives, procedures and hurdles, the author concludes that the attempt to cope with demography and distance in rural northern health care formats a socio-spatial arrangement in its own right, a case-specific geography of emergency care that is characterized by a complex interplay between different sites and their multiple bordering trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seal hunting and whaling have played an important part of people's livelihoods throughout prehistory as evidenced by rock carvings, remains of bones, artifacts from aquatic animals and hunting tools. This paper focuses on one of the more elusive resources relating to such activities: marine mammal blubber. Although marine blubber easily decomposes, the organic material has been documented from the Mesolithic Period onwards. Of particular interest in this article are the many structures in Northern Norway from the Iron Age and in Finland on Kökar, Åland, from both the Bronze and Early Iron Ages in which these periods exhibited traits interpreted as being related to oil rendering from marine mammal blubber. The article discusses methods used in this oil production activity based on historical sources, archaeological investigations and experimental reconstruction of Iron Age slab-lined pits from Northern Norway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Age-related alternation in the sensitivity of tree-ring width (TRW) to climate variability has been reported for different forest species and environments. The resulting growth-climate response patterns are, however, often inconsistent and similar assessments using maximum latewood density (MXD) are still missing. Here, we analyze climate signal age effects (CSAE, age-related changes in the climate sensitivity of tree growth) in a newly aggregated network of 692 Pinus sylvestris L. TRW and MXD series from northern Fennoscandia. Although summer temperature sensitivity of TRW ( r All = 0.48) ranges below that of MXD ( r All = 0.76), it declines for both parameters as cambial age increases. Assessment of CSAE for individual series further reveals decreasing correlation values as a function of time. This declining signal strength remains temporally robust and negative for MXD, while age-related trends in TRW exhibit resilient meanderings of positive and negative trends. Although CSAE are significant and temporally variable in both tree-ring parameters, MXD is more suitable for the development of climate reconstructions. Our results indicate that sampling of young and old trees, and testing for CSAE, should become routine for TRW and MXD data prior to any paleoclimatic endeavor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large number of structures, primarily pits, dating to the Bronze Age / Early Metal Period and Iron Age are situated along the coasts of Sweden, Finland, Åland Islands and Norway. The article discusses a series of examples of such structures thought to be genuine fat-rendering structures located in the Counties of Troms and Finnmark (northern Norway), the Åland Islands (Finland), and Västerbotten (Sweden), and compares them to contemporary pits from Sweden and Finland, the interpretation of which is less certain. Results from archaeological excavations and experimental reconstructions of north Norwegian slab-lined pits form the basis for discussing the interpretations given to the structures in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines autobiographical documentary film produced in the northern parts of Scandinavia, a multiethnic region which also belongs to a contending political cartography: Sápmi, the transnational land of the Sámi people. In this way, it is not just being defined by the multicultural ethics precariously maintained in mainstream Scandinavian politics, but also by the Sámi claim to autonomy, embodied in parallel political and cultural institutions. The related inscription of non-Sámi northerners as ‘settlers’ in an ‘Indigenous’ narrative, at once local and transnational, is nourishing a resentment based on a parallel sense of invisibility, misrepresentation and exploitation, assuming a colonial experience common to all northerners regardless of ethnicity. Like settler postcolonial spaces elsewhere, the current cultural moment is thus defined by intense discursive strife concerning the basic moral coordinates of the political drama, and by a narrative predicament where in principle intertwined collective histories remain separate. For a critical view, I apply Jacques Rancière's ideas on the aesthetics of political change to examine ways in which a common northern sensorium is subject to dissensual events and strategies, meaning that powerful ethnic and national distributions of the sensible jointly define our moment, but less in a complementary way than litigiously, competing for narrative and visual space. Peculiar attention is given to the narrative and visual operation of faces, especially in moments when they are to testify to life stories which, in turn, are articulated in terms of ethnic or local narratives of belonging. Displaying what Rey Chow has called ‘being-looked-at-ness’, such faces are trusted to provide subjective testimony to the victimhood of exploitation and its postcolonial overcoming, but also to provide evidence of a history of visual objectification and misrepresentation which they need both to signify and resist, as potential figures of both subjection and subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This article examines summer vacationers’ perceptions of weather conditions in Scandinavia. Against the background of an expanding literature on tourism, weather and climate change, the study aims at understanding the relations between weather expectations, weather perceptions, and adaptive tourist behavior. Evidence from a survey in an archipelago north of the Arctic Circle shows that most tourists considered weather conditions during their stay to be fairly good and that weather aspects have relatively small behavioral impacts. Results demonstrate that when evaluating weather with respect to suitability for tourism, one should take into account traveler motives and intentions in addition to aspects such as comfort or well-being. In this respect, summer weather conditions in Northern Scandinavia are satisfactory or acceptable to many tourists. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In order to extend our knowledge of glacial relief production in mountainous areas new methods are required for landscape reconstructions on a temporal resolution of a glacial cycle and a spatial resolution that includes the most important terrain components. A generic data set and a 50 m resolution digital elevation model over a study area in northern Sweden and Norway (the present day landscape data set) were employed to portray spatial patterns of erosion by reconstructing the landscape over successive cycles of glacial erosion. A maximum-value geographic information system (GIS) filtering technique using variable neighbourhoods was applied such that existing highpoints in the landscape were used as erosional anchor points for the reconstruction of past landscape topography. An inherent assumption, therefore, is that the highest surfaces have experienced insignificant down-wearing over the Quaternary. Over multiple reconstruction cycles, proceeding backwards in time, the highest summits increase in area, valleys become shallower, and the valley pattern becomes increasingly simplified as large valleys become in-filled from the sides. The sum of these changes reduces relief. The pattern of glacial erosion, which is to 60% correlated to slope angle and to 70% correlated to relative relief, is characterized by (i) an abrupt erosional boundary below preserved summit areas, (ii) enhanced erosion in narrow valleys, (iii) restricted erosion of smooth areas, independently of elevation, (iv) eradication of small-scale irregularities, (v) restricted erosion on isolated hills in low-relief terrain, and (vi) a valley widening independent of valley directions. The method outlined in this paper shows how basic GIS filtering techniques can mimic some of the observed patterns of glacial erosion and thereby help deduce the key controls on the processes that govern large-scale landscape evolution beneath ice sheets. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A palaeoecological study was performed in the northern Scandinavian mountain range in Sweden. The aim was to study vegetation changes and shifts in forest limit altitudes during the last 5000 years in a tree-less archaeological site (Adamvalta) situated below the regional forest limit, and in a forested reference area with similar geological features but without archaeological evidence of human presence (Ajdevaratj). The suitability of uncritically using forest limit changes as indicators of climate change is also discussed. The study included analyses of pollen, pollen accumulation rates (PAR), macrofossils and loss-on-ignition. The results indicate vegetation changes in both areas plausibly caused by climate c. 3800 BP and c. 500–400 BP. However, at Adamvalta, settlements were established c. 1300–750 BP, close to the mountain birch (Betula pubescens ssp. czerepanovi) forest limit. About 800 BP, the birch forest cover at Adamvalta decreased and the vegetation developed into an alpine heath, as a result of human-induced deforestation. The following ‘Little Ice Age’, in combination with human impact from the sixteenth century onwards, prevented forest recovery, and the site remains treeless. Such vegetation changes were not recorded at Adjevaratj. It is deduced that the present position of the forest limit at Adamvalta is governed by a combination of factors where previous human impact and climate have been the major driving forces determining the long-term vegetation development. Hence, a thorough knowledge of the site history is important when forest limits are used as a proxy for climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on lacustrine and morpho-stratigraphical evidence from Lyngen in Troms, northern Norway, 13 marginal moraines have been mapped in front of Lenangsbreene in Strupskardet. Moraines M1 – M13 are inferred to represent glacier halts or advance/readvance taking place during the Lateglacial and Holocene. The presence of collapse depressions suggests that some of them were ice cored (M1 – M3). A chronological framework, taking into account a combination of former shorelines and related glacier-meltwater channels, lichenometry and AMS radiocarbon-dated lacustrine sediments spanning the last 20 000 cal. yr BP, has been established. The distal glacier-fed lake Aspvatnet was isolated from the seac. 10 300 cal. yr BP, and the lacustrine sediments have been investigated by use of loss-on-ignition (LOI) magnetic susceptibility, water content, wet and dry bulk density (DBD), and the magnetic parameters anhysteretic remanent magnetization (ARM) and saturation remanent magnetization (SIRM). There is, in general, good agreement between physical sediment parameters and magnetic parameters. DBD, a combination of medium and fine silt and the two statistical parameters 'sorting' and 'mean' have been used to construct a high-resolution glacier-fluctuation curve for the last 3800 cal. yr BP. Based on an accumulation-area ratio (AAR) of 0.6 and an ablation-accumulation balance ratio (ABR) approach, a continuous temperature–precipitation–wind equilibrium-line altitude (TPW-ELA) curve for the last 20 000 cal. yr BP has been constructed. Using an established exponential relationship between mean ablation-season temperature and mean annual solid precipitation at the ELA of Norwegian glaciers, variations in mean winter precipitation (snow) are quantified using an independent proxy for summer temperature. Mean annual winter precipitation varied from 500 to 5000 mm water equivalent, and on average, Holocene estimates are c. 50% higher than similar figures from the Lateglacial. The two driest periods occurred during Heinrich events 1 (H1) (17 500–16 500) and 0 (H0) (13 000–12 200), whereas freshwater pulses to the North Atlantic had apparently no systematic impact on mean winter precipitation. Based on the winter precipitation curve from Lyngen, the atmospheric circulation responded to the sea surface temperature (SST) lowering associated with H1 and H0. The dry and cold climate during the events led to formation of talus-derived rock glaciers at sea level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we describe the dynamic behaviour of Salajekna, a valley glacier, over the last 200 years using terrestrial observations, in situ measurements, remote sensing observations and glacier reconstructions. The response time of the glacier was calculated using analytical models and field measurements. We were subsequently able to attribute specific dynamic responses to climate trends in the available climate record. The glacier's historical maximum extension was reached around 1880–1910 and was the result of a more continental climate with multi-modal airflows in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A transition to more maritime conditions in the mid-19th century resulted in a near-continuous 20th century retreat before the glacier adjusted to a near-steady state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]