Introduction

During the 1970s and 1980s, a number of research branches and social-spatial theories developed within global and Nordic geography, as demonstrated in the contributions to this book. Human geography became characterized by a multi-paradigm situation and a wealth of exemplars on which research became based. It became difficult to define geography as a science of synthesis. At the same time there was an increasing demand for research focusing on impacts of globalization and human’s role in transforming nature. The concept of sustainability, as defined by the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987), is multidimensional and has economic, social and environmental dimensions, well fitted for geography as a discipline based on geographical synthesis.

However, many geographers, such as Bjørn Terje Asheim (1990), have maintained it is utopian to believe that it is possible for an individual researcher to integrate physical and human geography. Asheim cites Ron Johnston (1986), arguing that the natural and social sciences cannot be integrated because they have different epistemologies and are different forms of science; an organizational split between human and physical geography at the universities may be preferable. Hansen and Simonsen (2005) maintain that to locate geography between the main fields of research (nature, culture and society) and to provide a synthesis between natural, social and cultural disciplines is problematic, with the danger of ending up in naturalism. In contrast we find an influential chain of philosophical arguments from Immanuel Kant to Alfred Hettner (1927), Richard Hartshorne (1939) and Robert Sack (1997) for a geography analyzing and explaining co-existing complexities, chorologically integrated in places and regions.

A world-wide survey of 61 leading geography departments showed that most departments provided specialization in physical, environmental and human geography (Dasgupta & Patel, 2017). But often there seemed to be limited interactions between physical and human geographers and their publication strategies, even in the same geography department. Furthermore, geography has no obvious position in the traditional classification of sciences by faculty in the universities. In Eastern Europe and in Finland, for example, geography is most often located in the faculty of natural sciences; in other countries we find geography in the faculty of social sciences or even arts. In Sweden, geography is in most universities split into departments of physical and human geography, administratively located at the faculties of natural and social sciences respectively.

In university politics it seems that cooperation between human, environmental and physical geography is necessary and profitable. But is it possible in research projects? To answer this question, we need to look at both the historic legacies and present research activities in the Nordic countries.

Geographical Societies and Institutionalization of Geography in Nordic Countries

The ancient term geography literally meant ‘earth description’, but from the Renaissance scholars preferred the term cosmography (the descriptive science of the globe and its relations to the universe). In Sweden, the Society for the Study of Cosmography was founded in Uppsala in 1738 and supported publications in cartography, physical geography and on the ‘customs and character of folk’ in different parts of the world (Buttimer & Mels, 2006, p. 19). Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) promoted the synthesis of climate, level of elevation, biogeography and human life, and, in exile in Paris, the Danish geographer Malthe Conrad Bruun (1775–1826) followed this up in his eight-volume Précis de Géographie Universelle (1810–1829), focusing on regional descriptions of the continents. In 1821, Bruun took the initiative to establish the world’s first geographical society, Société de Géographie in Paris. Bruun promoted cosmography and the further development of geographical societies (Illeris, 1999a).

Geographical societies were established in many countries from the 1830s onwards, and these societies played an important role in supporting scientific expeditions in a wide range of disciplines. They also supported imperialism and colonialism, and they had a key role in national identity building. The Royal Danish Geographical Society was founded in 1876 and the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography (SSAG) in 1877. Both published reports on research travels and expeditions. Adolph E. Nordenskiöld (1832–1901) was an explorer who in his ship Vega sailed through the North-East Passage north of Russia and back to Sweden around Asia and Europe between 1878 and 1880. This stirred immense popular enthusiasm. SSAG every year celebrates ‘Vega Day’ on 24 April, attended by the Royal family. The Norwegian Geographical Society was founded in 1889 after Fridtjov Nansen (1861–1930) had crossed Greenland on skies from east to west. Nansen gave a lecture on the Greenland crossing at the first meeting of the society and was its chairman 1903–1905. He was an acknowledged Norwegian scientist with a broad field of interest and could be called a cosmographer. He became ambassador to the United Kingdom when Norway split from the union with Sweden in 1905 (Nystad, 2012).

Michael Jones (1989) points out that the geographical societies in Finland and Norway played an important role in the ‘spatial socialization’ of the nations. In both countries there was a process of building national identity, in Finland from 1809 as Grand Duchy under the Russian Tsar, in Norway in the union with Sweden 1814–1905. In Finland, the poet, historian and geographer Zachris Topelius (1818–1898), who regarded geography as the basis for history, played an important role as professor of history. Topelius distinguished between the political border and the ‘natural’ border between Finland and Russia.

In Finland two competing national geographical societies were founded in the 1880s. Suomen Maantieteellinen Seura/Sällskapet för Finlands Geografi (the Society for Finland’s Geography) became a scientific academy for researchers from many disciplines and maintained the cosmographic view that geography was a collection of different sciences and not a science by itself. A main task for the society was the first edition of the Atlas of Finland, published in 1899. Maps of landscape and language promoted spatial socialization among the Finnish people and became expressed in an aggressive Finnish nationalism in the 1920s and 1930s (Paasi, 1994, 1996). Suomen Maantieteellinen Yhdistys/Geografiska Föreningen i Finland (the Geographical Association in Finland) was established to give geography an independent position in schools and universities as a science analyzing the relations between nature and humans (Granö, 1986). Ragnar Hult (1857–1899), who had a background in botany, became first reader in biogeography and later geography professor. His aim was to make geography a discipline based on the natural sciences. Regional geography, based on synthesis between human and physical geography, was regarded as ‘real’ science through its natural science basis (Vartiainen, 1994).

The initial period of institutionalization involved geography largely as a pedagogic subject, often taught in schools by teachers with very different backgrounds. The leaders of the geographical societies regarded more and better geography teaching in schools as a political aim, consequently demanding chairs in geography at the universities. However, a multidisciplinary cosmography became outdated when geography was established as a university discipline.

Environmental determinism, the belief that human activities and cultures are profoundly influenced and constrained by the natural environment, long dominated Nordic geography. In Denmark, Ernst Løffler (1835–1911) became the first professor in geography at the University of Copenhagen in 1888, with a dissertation in physical geography. He regarded each region as a unit with a personality developed through human adaption to the natural conditions, and this should be studied through regional geographical synthesis. Regional geography should be the main field, as geographers otherwise could stray into other disciplines (Buciek, 1999; Löffler, 1891).

In Sweden, the first professors were primarily trained in both physical and human geography. Helge Nelson (1882–1966) submitted his doctoral dissertation in geomorphology and became an influential professor in Lund (1916–1947). Focusing on regional geography, he stressed ‘a genetic approach’ whereby nature and historical processes over time create a unity (Åquist, 1994, p. 4). Sten De Geer (1886–1933) was another influential geographer with qualifications in both physical and human geography. For him population studies formed the basis for a more empirically grounded approach to regionalization at different scales and he provided population maps that became important tools for later projects in planning. In the 1920s and 1930s, there was tension between geographers like Nelson, who favoured a focus on humanity’s relationships to the biophysical environment in regional studies, and those such as De Geer who believed scientific work should focus on analysis and comparison of spatial distributions (Buttimer & Mels, 2006, pp. 40–44).

In Norway, Werner Werenskiold (1883–1961) became geography professor in 1925. His research was in physical geography, and in his inaugural lecture he stressed that geography is the study of how human livelihood depends on the natural conditions. He acknowledged that geography’s various themes ranged from geology to political geography but emphasized that regional geography tied them together. Axel Sømme (1899–1992), who in 1936 became reader in economic geography at the Norwegian School of Business Economics, had gained a doctorate in regional social geography from the Sorbonne and could freely choose lecture themes and reading lists for his students. He felt that even business economics students needed some education in geomorphology, meteorology and biogeography, provided by guest lecturers (Sømme, 1969).

To some degree, political geography became a theme in Nordic human geography. This often determinist perspective was particularly developed in Sweden by Rudolph Kjellén (1864–1922), who taught political science and geography in Gothenburg and later in Uppsala. Kjellén focused on international studies at a time when most Swedish geographers were engaged in local studies. He propounded geopolitics and analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of the major powers, their degree of racial supremacy and resources, based on a view of the state as a social-geographical ‘organism’. Similar views were pursued by Gudmund Hatt in Denmark and some Finnish geographers (Björk & Lundén, 2021; Larsen, 2011; Paasi, 1990; in this book, see also Larsen & Marklund, 2022).

Exemplars for Research Projects in Regional Geography

The early university professors needed to develop a scientific base for their projects. New academic journals were founded in contrast to the journals and yearbooks of the geographical societies, which to a large extent had printed reports on explorations and expeditions. In Norway, for instance, Norsk Geografisk Aarbog (Norwegian Geographical Yearbook) was discontinued and Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift (Norwegian Journal of Geography) published its first issue in 1926, with Werenskiold’s inaugural lecture as its opening article (Werenskiold, 1926). Academic geographers set out to justify geography as a science and establish research projects which students could use as exemplary models in their projects.

The new professors with scientific training in geology had to find research themes not already covered in that discipline. Research in geomorphology gave such an opening. Many Nordic geographers became inspired by Albrecht Penck (1858–1945) and his main work Die Alpen in Eisalter (Penck, 1901–1909). Penck’s exemplary model for research-initiated studies on the effects of glacial periods in Nordic landscapes. For a long time, research in physical geography explained natural landscapes using natural science methods, whereas descriptive presentations and environmental determinism dominated publications in human geography.

In Denmark, regional and landscape geography was initially based on the influence of landscape morphology, but later became based on the functions of culture and economic processes (Hansen, 1994). This focused on three different types of landscapes: physical, biological and cultural. It was supposed that the categories used to describe physical landscape forms were useful in analysis of human uses of the physical landscape. Starting with studies in geography and natural history, the Danish geographers Axel Schou (1902–1977) and Niels Nielsen (1893–1981) provided important insight into synthesis of the natural and human processes that form Danish landscapes (Illeris, 1999b, c). Nielsen became particularly interested in the regional land-forming processes on the west coast of Jutland and established a research field station on the Skallingen peninsula west of Esbjerg. Here it was possible to observe the physical forces of sea currents and wind as well as land use in the coastal human settlements. Reclamation of agricultural areas from this wetland created a link between applied physical geography and human geography (Schou, 1945).

On the west coast of Denmark, the sea level is rising, whereas along the Finnish west coast the land area has increased by more than 1000 km2 in 50 years, in both cases as an aftermath of the Ice Ages. These landscape changes create challenges for local settlements and have provided research topics for Finnish geographers. Michael Jones followed this up in his dissertation, Finland, Daughter of the Sea (Jones, 1977), in which he analyzed the physical processes, their influences on settlements and the juridical issues related to land ownership on the rising land area.

In Finland, Johannes Gabriel Granö (1882–1956), in his theoretical study Reine Geographie (1929, translated as Pure Geography in 1997), tried to give landscape geography a strong scientific fundament. In Granö’s work the landscape is identical with the physical elements we can recognize through our vision, elements of nature as well as of human settlement and activities we can factually observe. Taking as starting point the perceived environment, and developing a code of landscape symbols for delimiting and mapping regions, this provided a practical approach in his regional study of Estonia. A synthesis is provided by juxtaposing morphological, vegetation and settlement maps. The regions are delimited where the different mapped borders correspond. Granö developed a landscape formula characterizing each region. Granö did not regard the regions as obvious objects of geographical study in their own right, as all regional information is relative, bound to the human agent who observes, experiences and records it. Regional geography should focus on the coexistence and interrelations characterizing a region. Landscape and regional research combining geography and natural history continued to dominate Finnish geography. Granö believed that geography and sociology – both spatially bound – should be regarded as constituting between them the field of human ecology (Granö, 2003; in this book, see also Germundsson et al., 2022; Paasi, 2022).

Possibilism and Local Subsistence Economy

Granö and other leading geographers declared that in dealing with the influence of nature upon human beings, we are only dealing with possibilities, not certainties. Coined as possibilism, this was fundamental for the French school of regional geography, as developed by Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845–1918), which sought to analyze historical relations between land and humans that over time created specific regional characteristics of preindustrial landscapes in Europe. However, industrialization, global trade and international trends in building styles etc. made the regional exemplar gradually outdated. Vidal became aware of this situation in La France de l’Est (Vidal de la Blache, 1917), which studied the development of the landscapes and agricultural settlements in Alsace–Lorraine over a period of 2000 years. The finely balanced interplay or synthesis between humanity and nature was profoundly disturbed in the 1850s, when the traditional local, self-sufficient economy declined. The vertical dependence of humans on local natural resources dwindled.

The Norwegian Axel Sømme followed up the regional study in Alsace–Lorraine in his doctoral thesis La Lorraine Métallurgique (Sømme, 1930), which explored the socio-spatial transformation from an agricultural to an industrial region. He included elements of Vidal’s study of human-land relations as remnants of past rural agriculture and settlements that could be traced in present landscapes. But Sømme’s main findings related to the changing socio-geography of the region, including the new industrial settlements and migrations of the workforce.

My regional master’s project (Holt-Jensen, 1963, 1968) started with an approach to trace the dependencies between natural conditions (climate and moraine deposits) and human settlement in a mountain farm district in Telemark. I was inspired by studies that the Swedish geographer Sten Rudberg (1957) had made in peripheral settlements in Northern Sweden. Farms were located where the local climate was most favourable for growing grains and potatoes, which meant south-facing hillsides and particularly slopes down to lakes that were less prone to frost in the autumn. I used this to define mountain farm districts in South Norway (Holt-Jensen, 1963). But in the 1960s the dependence of farm settlements on climate could only be traced as historical remnants and the results of inertia. When visiting the district again in 2017, I found the historical remnants were of little importance, whereas new activities and settlement were linked to tourism and service institutions. The French regional exemplar could not be used, as local settlements and industries to a very limited degree depended on local natural resources. Jones (1988) has stated that to analyze the cultural landscape we need three modes of explanation: functional, structural and intentional. Only the functional mode is properly covered in traditional regional studies, which suppose that land use is closely related to local natural resources. Julian Wolpert (1964) showed in a study of agriculture in Central Sweden that farmers are not ‘optimizers’, but ‘satisfiers’, based on personal intentions and influenced by the structures of the market and agricultural policies.

As pointed out by Anne Buttimer (1978), an important lasting value of Vidal’s approach was the focus on understanding the region and its inhabitants from the ‘inside’; that is, the local perspective rather than the perspective of the researching ‘outsider’. Bob Sack in his book Homo Geographicus (Sack, 1997) underlines that the researcher must focus on the ‘somewhere’ in the local place or region, integrating forces from the realms of nature, meaning and social activities. Sack relates this to embodied phenomenology through which the practically oriented body continuously weaves meaning throughout its life course. From a different approach, this is also developed in analyses by Kirsten Simonsen (in this book, see Simonsen, 2022). Sack provides a philosophical approach to and support for geographical synthesis. But the philosophical arguments do not provide an exemplary model for how to carry out an integrated research project. Granö (1929) makes a distinction between the observer’s immediate surroundings, or proximity, and the broader landscape or region. The immediate surroundings are a complex of phenomena including visual, acoustic and tactile sensations, from which a unitary impression can be formed, similar to the relations between place and self in Sack’s model. This can also be linked to new ideas on non-representational theory, the idea that the world around us is experienced before it is represented.

Critical of geographers’ longstanding quest for synthesis between the human and the natural, Hansen and Simonsen (2005, p. 106) claim that most suggestions for geographical synthesis in research have resulted in naturalism, whereby humans are reduced to ‘things’, robbed of intentions, reflexivity, meaning and social relations. Their answer is to emphasize contextuality, that is, to seek the articulation of the natural on the one side and the social and cultural on the other, not on the ontological and epistemological levels, but rather on the practical level. This is about time-space; on articulation in specific temporal and spatial contexts, and on possible clashes between the different temporalities and spatialities of social and natural processes respectively (Hansen & Simonsen, 2005, p. 193–196).

The study of living conditions and welfare became, in response to a demand for social relevance, an important field in Norwegian geography from the 1970s (Aase & Dale, 1978; Dale & Jørgensen, 1986). This illustrates how relations between themes and processes, which other disciplines isolate, are emphasized in geography. Living conditions in a neighbourhood are partly dependent on physical factors (architecture, housing standard, access to nature, service provision such as shops, schools, transport etc.) and partly on social factors (roots, local social capital, symbolic environment, ethnic and age structure etc.). To get a complete understanding, there is a need for local case studies and acceptance that places are linked to external forces and are always becoming (Dale, 2015). This can be linked to research on modes of life (in this book, see Simonsen, 2022).

Transitions and Different Nordic Profiles

After the Second World War, the vernacular definition of geography changed, demonstrated through the closing of geography departments in the American Ivy League universities. The president at Harvard came to the conclusion that geography was not a university subject. The claim that regional synthesis constituted geography’s identity lent the subject a dilettante image in the 1950s (Livingstone, 1992). The idiographic regional paradigm based on synthesis between physical and human features seemed outdated. In the Nordic context, systematic studies in physical and human geography with nomothetic aims were grasped particularly by Swedish geographers.

Most professorships in Sweden until 1950 were advertised for teaching in an integrated field. All students had a primary training in physical geography and at every institution the discipline was undivided. This opened for research initiatives over a broad field. Hans W. Ahlmann (1889–1974) and William William-Olsson (1902–1990) became very influential in the 1940s. Ahlmann focused initially on glaciology, but covered a broad field and became a public figure and pioneering theorist on global warming. He also started a comprehensive investigation of Stockholm’s metropolitan area. This was followed up by William-Olsson’s analyses ‘from within’, focusing on people and their uses of the city. These studies were based on analytical and deductive reasoning in contrast to traditional regional geography. William-Olsson became actively involved in planning issues in Stockholm and Sweden (Buttimer & Mels, 2006, pp. 54–56). The first female Swedish geography professor, Gerd Enequist (1903–1989), was instrumental in bridging classical regional geography and the new post-war worlds of regional science. She inspired further work on the economic basis of settlements and urban development (Enequist, 1951; see also Buttimer & Mels, 2006, pp. 68–69; Forsberg, 2021).

The Swedish school system changed in the 1950s. Geography no longer exists as a separate discipline and geographic themes are only partly represented within ‘social science’ or ‘natural science’. Geography was split up at the universities in 1948, with separate departments in physical and human geography. Within the Nordic countries, university geography developed different profiles, which has led to varying approaches to the question of geographical synthesis.

Olof Wärneryd (1987) presented a simple overview of the internal structure of the discipline in the Nordic university system in the 1980s. He pointed out that there had developed a clear difference between the way geography was taught and organized in Finland compared with Sweden. Finnish geography was seen as focusing on human–nature synthesis, as can be studied by empirical natural science methods, and on ‘core’ regional studies. Swedish geography had gone far in research specialization and in a division between physical and human geography. Denmark and Iceland remained, according to Wärneryd, linked to synthesis, but more prone to specialization in some fields, such as the physical geographical projects connected to Skallingen coastal landscapes, but also turns to critical social science, particularly at Roskilde University. In Norway, university geography at University of Oslo has been split into physical geography and human geography, as in Sweden, whereas geography in Bergen and Trondheim exists in integrated departments.

New projects on services and the welfare state along with international inspiration created institutional growth, most notably in Sweden. J.G. Granö’s pupil, Edgar Kant (1902–1978), was one of the first to make use of Walter Christaller’s (1933) central place theory in a study of Estonian central places. As a refugee in Sweden after the Second World War, he brought the theory to Lund. He inspired Torsten Hägerstrand (1916–2004) and thus those Swedish geographers involved in developing spatial science and model building (in this book, see Wikman & Mohall, 2022). The 1960s was an optimistic period for geographical innovators in the Nordic countries. In connection with the International Geographical Union (IGU) conference in Stockholm in 1960, a seminar in Lund led to a breakthrough for spatial science research in the Nordic countries (Norborg, 1962). At the same time, the number of students grew very fast as the ‘baby boomers’ entered the universities.

Spatial Science Models and Geographical Synthesis

Hägerstrand made a clear break with the regional tradition. He stated in the first sentence of his dissertation (1953) that although his material threw light on processes in a single area, this should be regarded as a regrettable necessity rather than a methodological subtlety. This was a deliberate provocation aimed at traditional regional geographers.

Spatial science involved models, quantitative methods and a demand for a paradigm shift from an idiographic to a nomothetic discipline. But it was much more than this; it also threw open the hitherto introvert discipline, as methods and theories were openly borrowed from geometry, physics, economics and other social sciences. Haggett (1965) argued that there are three traditional disciplinary associations in geography: earth sciences, social sciences and geometrical sciences. ‘Much of the most exciting geographical work in the 1960s is emerging from applications of higher order geometrics’, maintained Haggett (1965, pp. 15–16). The aim for Hagget was to develop models and through these provide a new form of geographical synthesis, demonstrated in his undergraduate textbook Geography: A Modern Synthesis (Haggett, 1972, 1983). In many ways, geographical research became regarded as the art of the mappable. But did this provide a clear synthesis of physical and human geography? Experience with my doctoral research project may illustrate this problem.

Changes in settlement over time in relation to natural conditions could be linked to new methods of quantitative mapping and the spatial science focus on models. With this in mind, I started on a doctoral project that took me 20 years to finish (Holt-Jensen, 1986). The theme was settlement and population changes 1900–1980 in the Kristiansand region. My maps showed settlement changes with the help of computer cartography. I had intended to develop a model for settlement change that could provide some general understanding. But settlement growth could only to a limited degree be explained by suburban development and settlement decline explained by long distance or poor communication to urban centres. Maps of changing settlement patterns could not in themselves explain these patterns, even if I added my knowledge of the physical landscape, land and human resources. I had to add many local case studies to finalize the dissertation! The empirical mapping could describe the transition from agricultural to industrial and service livelihoods. But most interesting were the deviations. Christaller’s (1933) central place theory had been used to investigate a central part of Norway by Peter Sjøholt (1981) in his doctoral dissertation. The interesting conclusions were linked to deviations from the model and local activities that could explain these. However, the problem was that spatial science models became, particularly in Sweden, used in planning in a normative way to organize service development in the welfare state (in this book, see Wikman & Mohall, 2022).

There are definitely important structures that are global, but even economic globalization and global warming are met with local answers or adapted to through contingencies at particular localities. For a physical geographer studying global warming, for example, the interesting thing could be how and why retreat (or growth) of glaciers differs from place to place and is contingent on the type of glaciers. Sayer (1984) recommends intensive concrete research that on the basis of abstract considerations of some structures and mechanisms analyzes their possible effects in limited empirical case studies to achieve an understanding of the functions of necessary and contingent relations. This provides an opening for new regional geography. But does this mean synthesis of physical and human geography?

A United or Split Discipline?

Although an organizational split in the universities between physical and human geography had strong advocates in the Nordic countries, especially in Sweden from the 1950s, the international congresses of the IGU and geography in most countries continue to accommodate both human and physical geography within the same department. In Norway, the Norwegian Association of Human Geographers was established in 1974, and physical geographers split off to attend meetings together with geology. But in 1991, human and physical geographers once again united in the Norwegian Geographical Association (Norsk Geografisk Forening, NGF) and finally, in 2000, NGF and the Norwegian Geographical Society were amalgamated (Dale, 2021). Both physical and human geographers are welcome to the Nordic Geographers Meeting (NGM), held every second year since 2005. Even Johnston (2002), in contrast to his viewpoint cited in the introduction (Johnston, 1986), came to the conclusion that physical and human geography need each other academically, institutionally and politically for holding on to a market for geography and geographers, warning that a definite split would slay both. What are the reasons now for keeping the discipline united?

I think the main reason is that we have a discipline traditionally bridging the gap between social and natural sciences. Actor-network theory has given a new basis for breaking down the nature–culture binary and providing for a new form of geographical synthesis. A growing number of geographers resist talking about ‘socially constructed nature’, and one of the most interesting critical steps in recent years has been the acknowledgement of the agency of things. The world is not solely socially constructed; natural phenomena are to a large extent actants, playing an important role in human life and development. An example is the increasing land area on Finland’s west-coast, a development which is not induced by humans, but which creates challenges for land use and planning (Jones, 1977).

Lave et al. (2013) point out that we are now in a new geological period, the Anthropocene, in which the most fundamental global processes are dominated by human activities. They argue that we need an active integration of critical physical geography and a more physical critical human geography.

It has become clear that it is not possible to provide research exemplars providing a full synthesis of human and physical geography, as was earlier intended in regional geography. But it could be possible to stick to particular (or partial) synthesis in physical geography, environmental geography (or eco-geography) and human geography, as illustrated in Holt-Jensen (2018, p. 191). A study of desertification in the Sahel region by Danish geographer Anette Reenberg (1982) provided a system analysis including many human and physical actants and processes. Hence, as argued by Hansen and Simonsen (2005, p. 106), geographical research is not defined by a particular phenomenon, as in most systematic sciences, but analyzes the spatial relations of different phenomena. As shown by Paasi (2022) in this book, locality studies have inspired a ‘new regional geography’; the region can be seen as an entity that is dynamic and connected to the spatial division of labour.

A very interesting research trend is found in political ecology, which focuses on power in environmental governance (Benjaminsen & Robbins, 2015; Widgren, 2015). The research themes that have developed in Nordic political ecology took inspiration from research in developing countries that focused on tensions between local inhabitants, the state and capitalist companies, including discourses on sustainable land use: ‘The Nordic landscape tradition, which includes a strong emphasis on landscape-scale analysis, suggests a potentially useful bridge between political ecology and land change science’ (Benjaminsen & Robbins, 2015, p. 195). Good examples are found in conflicts over reindeer herding in Sámi regions (Benjaminsen et al., 2015) and on negotiable boundaries in conservation-production landscapes (Dahlberg, 2015). A similar project in socio-economic geography analyzes the effects of tar sand extraction in Alberta, Canada, which dramatically transforms the landscape and leads to loss of traditional land use practices (Wanvik, 2016). Using assemblage theory, the project examines power structures in which governance instruments are delegated to industry from the outside and indigenous communities have poor bargaining power.

Sustainability – A Major Research Focus

There really is something special about geography. Geography is by tradition and evolution a jumping-off point and basis for research and activism on global sustainability, which provides the most challenging tasks in politics and research today. Geography in all its specialties is in a good position to provide documentation and research in this crucial field. We can exemplify this looking at ongoing Nordic geographical research projects based on teamwork which aims at:

Analyzing what is happening (global warming and its causes, natural resource mapping). There are many such projects within physical geography. Methods and instruments used to monitor geomorphological processes over thousands of years have been applied to study contemporary processes. Projects at the Geography Department in Bergen have documented changes in the Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets and provided prognoses of sea-level changes in different parts of the world (Vasskog et al., 2015). Another project (Robson et al., 2016) has used remote sensing techniques to map changes in glacial development in Himalaya and the Alps, which in both cases may have serious effects on water supply and agriculture in the lowlands.

Analyzing the effects of what is happening and what this means for different regions and social groups. There are many relevant projects within development geography, biogeography and economic geography. In Bergen, projects in biogeography in Nepal aim at providing sustainable use of forests, assessing both needed use, ownership effects and biodiversity. A moderate use of forests is often a crucial part of widespread land-use in the hills of the Himalayas and at the same time this practice will facilitate high biodiversity (Vetaas et al., 2010). Projects in Himalaya are summed up in Climate Change and the Future of Himalayan Farming (Aase, 2017).

Analyzing the ability of public and private organizations to carry out necessary actions (as in urban planning). There are an increasing number of projects within applied geography. In the Bergen department, we have established a Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET) that also integrate researchers from other disciplines such as political science and psychology. A project on possibilities for urban low-carbon transition is connected to a European network of cities that cooperate to reduce carbon dependencies. The compact city is an ideal, but also often in conflict with regional policies promoting settlement dispersal, as demonstrated by Røe et al. (2022) in this book. Recently, the Norwegian Journal of Geography published a special issue on climate change and natural hazards, focusing on the geography of community resilience; that is, the ability to meet and adapt to environmental change (Setten & Lujala, 2020).

Analyzing the economic costs and priorities needed to sort out the best local, regional and global actions. In economic geography, several projects could be mentioned. One example is Grønn omstilling: norske veivalg (Green transitions – Norwegian pathways) (Haarstad & Rusten, 2018). A particularly relevant theme during the Covid19 pandemic is the global production network, in which many products rely on parts and raw materials being transported for assembly close to the market. Some strange networks occur in food production, as when Norwegian cod is sent by air to China, fileted and sent back to Europe. Or when Danish pig farmers send their piglets to Poland to be fattened and sent back to slaughterhouses in Denmark to be marketed as Danish bacon. We need to investigate whether it is possible to find economically sustainable means to develop ‘short travelled food’.

Research following the identification of anthropogenic climate change began with the atmospheric sciences. Then came the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and research concentrated on mitigation, particularly in the energy sector. As an afterthought, and largely as a result of pressure from the developing countries, the need for adaptation was recognized. The periodic assessments provided by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have increasingly emphasized the latter, as it has become clear that it is unrealistic to stop ongoing climate change at the present pace of mitigation. Again, this is a highly relevant arena for synthesis, as illustrated by Karen O’Brien from University of Oslo. Her research particularly concerns vulnerable populations that suffer a double exposure to climate change and globalization. The two processes not only overlap but also create feedback that can accelerate or diminish them. The vulnerability of the population to climate change depends not only on climate but also directly on social and political measures. In many cases, adaptation is more directly needed than mitigation. The challenge is physical, social and cultural (Leichenko & O’Brien, 2019) and highly relevant for synthesis between physical and human geography.

Conclusion

Synthesis between physical and human geography has been regarded by many geographers as giving the discipline its meaning and identity. Others have derided the concept as superficial, unobtainable or a barrier to scholarship. ‘Our standpoint, a middle position, is that the objective of geography is not to provide a total synthesis of geographical phenomena,’ Aase and Jones (1986, p. 18) argue, ‘but that the broadness of the subject gives full scope for working on the borderlines between several disciplines and sub-disciplines’. I agree with this conclusion. The synthesis between physical and human geography can be philosophically supported, but it is difficult to provide exemplary models for research that can be used in all branches of the discipline. However, it seems suicidal to split up the organizational unity of the discipline that is still found in most countries and universities. There are many indications that the nature–culture binary is fading as research projects across the traditional divide have become increasingly important. This does not mean that the methods used are the same, but that both physical and human geographers try to analyze and provide critical answers to the contemporary natural and social factors affecting the sustainability of humanity and environment.