Northern Worlds - Challenges and Solutions. Report from Workshop 2 at the National Museum, 1 November 2011

Description

On 1 November 2011 the National Museum’s cross-disciplinary research initiative 'Northern Worlds' held a workshop with a presentation and discussion of a number of projects which, under the heading 'Challenges and solutions', demonstrated the breadth of this initiative. A cross-disciplinary initiative like Northern Worlds, built up on the basis of projects that came in from seven of the museum’s ten research-conducting units, is thus not a project in itself. It is rather a concept that can concentrate and challenge thinking as long as one knows what 'the northern' actually is. However, there seems to be no doubt about this in the following presentations of the projects involved; and yet there is a search for another approach to the concept than geography and climate, both of which are postulated to constitute and determine 'the northern'. Challenges and solutions – status of Northern Worlds | Hans Christian Gulløv A sense of snow? Archaeology, weather and the conception of northernness | Bjørnar Olsen Research theme A: Climate changes and society: When climate boundaries move The landscape and climate of the early Mesolithic hunters of Lundby Mose, southern Zealand – The end of the last glacial period and the Preboreal warming | Catherine Jessen 'Small trees' from North East Greenland | Claudia Baittinger Kitchen middens and climate change – what happens if permafrozen archaeological remains thaw? | Henning Matthiesen, Jørgen Hollesen and Jan Bruun Jensen Conservation and drying methods for archaeological materials modified for use in northern areas | Martin Nordvig Mortensen, Inger Bojesen-Koefoed, Jan Bruun Jensen, Poul Jensen, Anne Le Boëdec Moesgaard, Natasa Pokubcic, Kristiane Strætkvern, David Gregory, Lars Aasbjerg Jensen, Michelle Taube and Nanna Bjerregaard Pedersen The Weather War: The German operation 'Bassgeiger' on Shannon Island 1943/44 | Tilo Krause and Jens Fog Jensen Depopulation of the Cape Farewell region | Einar Lund Jensen The whaler and the ostrich egg – Introduction to a project on life on the North Frisian Islands and whaling in the Arctic Ocean | Christina Folke Ax Research theme B: Farming on the edge: Cultural landscapes of the North Agricultural landscapes of Arctic Norway | Flemming Kaul Pioneering farmers cultivating new lands in the North – The expansion of agrarian societies during the Neolithic and Bronze Age in Scandinavia | Lasse Sørensen Shetland – the Border of Farming 4000-3000 B.C.E. | Ditlev L. Mahler Resources, mobility and cultural identity in Norse Greenland 2005-2010 | Jette Arneborg and Christian Koch Madsen Pastures Found... Farming in Greenland (re)introduced | Christian Koch Madsen Churches, Christianity and magnate farmers in the Norse Eastern Settlement | Jette Arneborg Greenland dietary economy | Jette Arneborg Agriculture on the edge – the first finds of cereals in Norse Greenland | Peter Steen Henriksen Research theme C: Networks in the North: Communication, trade and culture markers A common sea – the Skagerrak and the Kattegat in the Viking Age | Anne Pedersen Networks in the north – foreign artifacts in the hands of the Vikings | Maria Panum Baastrup Nørremølle – the largest Viking silver hoard of Bornholm – Interactions in the Baltic Sea | Gitte Tarnow Ingvardson Greenlandic runic inscriptions | Lisbeth M. Imer Skin Clothing from the North | Anne Lisbeth Schmidt Challenges of cultural and colonial encounters – European commodities in the Historical Thule Culture | Peter Andreas Toft Timber houses in Greenland – diffusion and innovation | Niels Bonde, Thomas S. Bartholin, Claudia Baittinger and Helge Paulsen Tunit and the birds – echoes of another world | Martin Appelt and Mari Hardenberg Memory of a myth – a unique Late Dorset ritual structure | Ulla Odgaard Pre-Christian Cult Sites – archaeological investigations | Josefine Franck Bican, Anna Severine Beck and Susanne Klingenberg Contributors