| Title | Chapter 9. Integrating Agricultural Vulnerability and Climate Extremes. Eighteenth-Century Norway through the Works of Jacob Nicolaj Wilse (1735– 1801) |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Ingar Mørkestøl Gundersen (author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.63308/63881023874820.ch09 |
| Landing page | https://www.whpress.co.uk/publications/2025/05/02/nordicclimatehistories/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed.en |
| Copyright | Ingar Mørkestøl Gundersen |
| Publisher | The White Horse Press |
| Published on | 2025-08-15 |
| Long abstract | In this study, I have made use of agricultural and meteorological data from late eighteenth-century pastor Wilse in Spydeberg, southeastern Norway, to analyse the impact of climate extremes on a premodern farming society. His farm records from the 1770s are used to improve an existing GDD model and then tested, by using his measured weather data, on the warm and cold sum- mers of 1783 and 1784 respectively. The improved GDD model demonstrates that the 1784 climate anomaly had the potential to severely affect the crops. Contemporary accounts from other parts of southeastern Norway support the model result by reporting widespread harvest failures. Even though Norway is particularly susceptible to climate variations, the importance of climate extremes for these events has been little discussed among Norwegian historians. However, an integrated approach can be used to move beyond mere correlation between climate and human proxies towards some level of causation and contribute with new insights on the role of climatic stress for sociopolitical changes in the past. |
| Page range | pp. 209–236 |
| Print length | 28 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
| Media | 7 illustrations |
Ingar Mørkestøl Gundersen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology, Conservation, and History at the University of Oslo. He has published on a range of topics on climate history and the Scandinavian Iron Age. Gundersen received his Ph.D. in 2022 with the thesis ‘Iron Age Vulnerability’, which investigated the archaeological evidence for a sixth-century climate crisis in eastern Norway. His doctoral research was part of the VIKINGS project (Volcanic Eruptions and their Impacts on Climate, Environment, and Viking Society in 500–1250 ce). Together with Dr Manon Bajard, he received the Inter Circle U. prize 2022 for outstanding examples of cross-disciplinary research. He is currently part of two research projects on the Nordic Little Ice Age (ClimateCultures, University of Oslo and The Nordic Little Ice Age (1300–1900) Lessons from Past Climate Change (NORLIA) at the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.