Reinhard Hennig - Nordic Narratives of Nature and the Environment: Ecocritical Approaches to Northern European Literatures and Cultures

i Nordic Narratives of Nature
and the Environment

ii Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Series Editor: Douglas A. Vakoch, METI

Advisory Board:

Bruce Allen, Seisen University, Japan; Zlia Bora, Federal University of Paraba, Brazil; Izabel Brando, Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil; Byron Caminero-Santangelo, University of Kansas, USA; Simo Farias Almeida, Federal University of Roraima, Brazil; George Handley, Brigham Young University, USA; Steven Hartman, Mlardalen University, Sweden; Isabel Hoving, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Idom Thomas Inyabri, University of Calabar, Nigeria; Serenella Iovino, University of Turin, Italy; Daniela Kato, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan; Petr Kopeck, University of Ostrava, Czech Republic; Serpil Oppermann, Hacettepe University, Turkey; Christian Schmitt-Kilb, University of Rostock, Germany; Heike Schwarz, University of Augsburg, Germany; Murali Sivaramakrishnan, Pondicherry University, India; Scott Slovic, University of Idaho, USA; J. Etienne Terblanche, North-West University, South Africa; Julia Tofantuk, Tallinn University, Estonia; Cheng Xiangzhan, Shandong University, China; Hubert Zapf, University of Augsburg, Germany

Ecocritical Theory and Practice highlights innovative scholarship at the interface of literary/cultural studies and the environment, seeking to foster an ongoing dialogue between academics and environmental activists.

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iii Nordic Narratives
of Nature and the
Environment

Ecocritical Approaches to Northern
European Literatures and Cultures

Edited by

Reinhard Hennig, Anna-Karin Jonasson, and
Peter Degerman

iv Published by Lexington Books

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

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Some quotations in are from Kjersti Viks Mand (2009), reprinted with permission from H. Aschehoug & Co.

is an updated and translated version of the Finnish article Tarina suuresta vedenpaisumuksesta. Risto Isomen Sarasvatin hiekkaa ilmastofiktiona, published in Joutsen / Svanen special issue Pakkovaltiosta ekodystopiaan. Suomalainen nykydystopia, edited by Saija Isomaa and Toni Lahtinen, 2017. Translated into English by Anne Ketola.

Some lines of poetry in originally came from Inger Elisabeth Hansen, resirkulere lengselen, avrenning foregr (2015) reprinted with permission from Oslo Literary Agency.

Some quotations in are from Frida Nilssons The Ice Sea Pirates (2017), reprinted by kind permission of Grace Thomas, Gecko Press.

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging -in-Publication Data

ISBN 978-1-4985-6190-7 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4985-6191-4 (electronic)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

v Table of Contents

Reinhard Hennig, Anna-Karin Jonasson, and Peter Degerman

Lauren E. LaFauci

Anna Sofia Rossholm

Jrgen Bruhn

Katie Ritson

Toni Lahtinen

Jenna Coughlin

vi

Beatrice M. G. Reed

Hanna Samola

Nina Goga

Frederike Felcht

Kari Haarder Ekman

Cheryl J. Fish

Introduction

Nordic Narratives of Nature and the
Environment

Reinhard Hennig, Anna-Karin Jonasson,

and Peter Degerman

In the Nordic countries, people use bicycles instead of cars. They live in carbon-neutral cities, where all electricity is derived from renewable sources. They practice urban farming, growing and consuming their food locally and in sustainable ways. From an early age, they educate their children to become equally responsible eco-citizens. The political leaders in the region, however, are not content with governing the planets most environmentally aware and eco-friendly population. They also altruistically offer to the rest of the world the Nordic model for building ecologically sustainable societies.

Northern Europe seems to be the Ecotopia from Ernest Callenbachs novel with that same title turned into a reality. This, at least, is the impression that the Nordic Council of Ministers (a state-financed body facilitating cooperation between the Nordic countries) conveys in a promotional film for its recently launched campaign Nordic Solutions to Global Challenges (Nordic Council of Ministers 2017a). However, the green image of the Nordic region depicted in this video is not an unmediated representation of socioecological facts. It is based on a narrative that probably says at least as much about how Nordic governments wish to present their countries to the world as about the actual lived realities in these countries. It tells one particular story, and in doing so, omits other narratives that might nuance or even contradict this story. As with all narratives, it is culturally constructed and derived from and embedded in broader cultural and historical contexts. However, that does not mean that it is irrelevant.

Narratives help us make sense of the world by structuring our perception of reality and sometimes even by guiding our actions. Many may look on Nordic Solutions to Global Challenges as an attempt at greenwashing politics and lifestyles whose ecological sustainability in many respects can be called into question. However, in constructing and telling an idealizing narrative of Nordic greenness, those who present this narrative also put some pressure on themselves to at least to some extent achieve this ideal in reality. What sorts of narratives we tell about nature, the environment, and our relation toward them is therefore highly relevant. This makes these narratives themselves an important subject for environmental research, especially when considering the immense challenges that we are facing today in the form of, among other things, climate change, ecosystem degradation, and the global reduction of biological diversity.

The natural sciences deliver ever more detailed insights into the origins, characteristics, and possible consequences of these ongoing ecological and climatic transformations. However, since environmental change in most cases is directly or indirectly caused by human activity, it is also inextricably linked to social and cultural questions. Against this background, there is a growing insight that not only the natural sciences, but also the social sciences and the humanities can and should substantially contribute to environmental research. As a consequence, the so-called environmental humanities are currently emerging as a new field of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research that examines the complex ways in which social and cultural aspects form and influence human-environment interrelations (Emmett and Nye 2017).