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Moving Nature
Towards a Scandinavian Anthropocene
Edited by Marit Ruge Bjærke, Frida Hastrup and Kyrre Kverndokk
234 pages, bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-80768-048-0 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (January 2027)
Reviews
‘[This book] provides valuable examples on how to approach the Anthropocene as a humanities scholar, and it takes an approach to the Anthropocene as a productive concept that itself moves and mobilizes humanities questions, study cases, ways of research and disciplinary collaborations.’ — Sabine Höhler, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Description
Moving Nature explores the Anthropocene in Scandinavia through the movement of organisms, substances and ideologies, from the mid-eighteenth century to the present. Case studies explore the Pacific oyster and wild boar as alien species, the production of Arctic animal museum specimens, changing Nordic livestock regimes, the afterlives of Swedish copper production, eighteenth century attempts to combat ‘evil herbs’, and clearing of Argentinian rainforest by Swedish migrants. Collectively, they show how the Anthropocene in Scandinavia can be characterised by such movements, and how they promoted progress and related to the welfare state, whilst remaining entangled with transgressive and colonial forms of intervention.
Marit Ruge Bjærke is a Researcher in Cultural Studies at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen, Norway. Her research focuses on how environmental issues are understood and acted upon. She recently published Nature Gone Wild? Alien Species and We who Move Them (2025, in Norwegian).
Frida Hastrup is Professor in Ethnology at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, where she directs the Centre for Sustainable Futures. Her current research focuses on livestock agriculture, climate change and environmental crisis, with special interest in the knowledge production and exchanges that underpin the intensified Danish livestock sector.
Kyrre Kverndokk is Professor of Cultural Studies at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen, Norway. He has published on the practice and politics of Second World War memory, the cultural history of natural disasters and climate change temporalities. He was PI of the interdisciplinary project ‘Gardening the Globe’.
Subject: Environmental Studies (General)Sustainable Development Goals
Area: Northern Europe
Contents
Of Related Interest
Changing the World, Changing Oneself
Political Protest and Collective Identities in West Germany and the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s
A European Memory?
Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance
Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation
Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation
