Call for papers: Second Environmental History Day of Finland, University of Helsinki

Finland has often been labelled a ‘green superpower’, lauded as one of the world’s cleanest and greenest countries. In general, Nordic countries have tended to be idealized as ‘pristine and green’, in contrast to the rest of the rapidly contaminating world where the race for markets and profits has enormously accelerated consumption. This has imposed on the environment an alarming level of extraction and commerce, and a wide array of new and old forms of pollution. Environmental historians, however, can show  that the reputed ‘greenness’ of the Nordic countries is partly an illusion. We therefore invite scholars to analyze and tell the environmental histories of Finland, and how it has evolved into a green superpower at the cost of considerable environmental problems

Papers on the following themes are welcome (but not excluding other relevant topics): 

- colonization and indigenous communities 

- intensive forest farming for lumber and pulp industries; 

- wetland drainage for agriculture, 

- forest cultivation and peat extraction; 

- wild animal populations and their decimation; 

- pollution of the Baltic Sea; 

Please kindly submit your short abstract by 15.10.2023 to the organizers (Matti O. Hannikaiken and Viktor Pál) via the following email: helsinkienvhum@gmail.com;