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Cryo-History: Narratives of Ice and the Emerging Arctic Humanities

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The New Arctic

Abstract

We have reached a ‘cryo-historical’ moment – cryo signifying ice and snow, directing our attention to the historical powers of human forcing in the Anthropocene. This is a moment that demonstrates humanity’s hegemony over Earth as manifested in a retreat of one of its elements as a result of human action. This paper presents a brief history of knowledge of ice in the Arctic in the light of recent science and scholarship. Its central claim is that ice has become historical, i.e., that ice is an element of change and thus something that can be considered as part of society and of societal concern. This idea is followed across a set of themes, such as the trope of an ice free Arctic Sea, ice as a systematic scientific endeavor, as a strategic element especially during the Cold War, as viewed by Arctic residents, and ice as a dimension of the emerging scholarly interest in a planetary consciousness, especially in the field of environmental humanities which in recent years have expanded into the Arctic.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The word itself derives from the Ancient Greek word ‘κρύος’ [cryos meaning ‘cold’, ‘frost’ or ‘ice’]). It is the term which collectively describes the portions of the Earth’s surface where water is in solid form, including sea ice, lake ice, river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets, and frozen ground (which includes permafrost). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryosphere.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment and the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, SE-100 44, Sweden

    Sverker Sörlin

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  1. Sverker Sörlin
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Correspondence to Sverker Sörlin .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Microbiology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Birgitta Evengård

  2. Stefansson Arctic Institute, Akureyri, Iceland

    Joan Nymand Larsen

  3. Department of Research Management, University of Bergen Bergen Marine Research Cluster, Bergen, Norway

    Øyvind Paasche

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Sörlin, S. (2015). Cryo-History: Narratives of Ice and the Emerging Arctic Humanities. In: Evengård, B., Nymand Larsen, J., Paasche, Ø. (eds) The New Arctic. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17602-4_24

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