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Coverage on https://www.medieval.eu/icebergs-in-the-black-sea-in-ad-763/ on the findings of the paper “Decadal-to-centennial increases of volcanic aerosols from Iceland challenge the concept of a Medieval Quiet Period”, Imogen Gabriel, Gill Plunkett, Peter Abbott, Melanie Behrens, Andrea Burke, Nathan Chellman, Eliza Cook, Dominik Fleitmann, Maria Hörhold, William Hutchison, Joseph McConnell, Bergrún Óladóttir, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Jakub Sliwinski, Patrick Sugden, Birthe Twarloh, and Michael Sigl, Nature Commun Earth Environ, 2024 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01350-6
Doctoral thesis in archaeology
Iron Age Vulnerability. The Fimbulwinter hypothesis and the archaeology of the inlands of eastern Norway2021 •
A growing body of climate data points towards a significant climate cooling in the northern hemisphere during the 6th century AD. Linked to multiple explosive volcanic eruptions between AD 536-547, the cooling event is the coldest that has been documented for the last 2000 years and seems to have persisted, to varying degrees, well into the latter half of the 6th century. Several researchers have claimed that the 6th-century cooling must have resulted in extensive crop failure throughout Scandinavia, followed by famine, plagues, and social unrest. One hypothesis suggests that the population of the Scandinavian Peninsula may have been halved as a result. The combination of prolonged cooling and presumed crop failure is often compared to Norse myths about the Fimbulwinter, but critics argue that the Fimbulwinter hypothesis is rife with the uncritical use of climate data, a lack of source criticism and deterministic conclusions. In many ways, the ongoing discourse follows in line with previous discourses in archaeology, revolving around an artificial dichotomy between crisis and continuity. In this thesis, I examine the climatic and archaeological premises for the Fimbulwinter hypothesis and discuss it against developing theoretical frameworks within the environmental humanities. By using vulnerability and resilience as analytical tools, the subsistence and settlement patterns of selected landscapes are analysed against the possibility of crop failure and famine, with emphasis on the Gudbrandsdalen valley and the Lake Mjøsa region in the inlands of eastern Norway. I conclude that climate cooling had the potential to critically impact some areas, while others were seemingly less affected. These results suggest significant regional diversity in the consequences and adaptations in relation to the 6th-century cooling event. The hypothesis of a halving of the population is up for revision, but the crisis narrative still cannot be fully discounted.
Climate Dynamics
Unprecedented low twentieth century winter sea ice extent in the Western Nordic Seas since A.D. 12002010 •
Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology
Schmölcke, U., Endtmann, E., Klooss, S., Meyer, M., Michaelis, D., Rickert, B.-H., Rößler, D. (2006): Changes of sea level, landscape and culture: The south-western Baltic area between 8800 and 4000 BC.The global warming at the end of the last glacial period led to a sea level rise, which induced substantial long-term landscapechanges in the southwestern Baltic Sea. During the Preboreal and Boreal periods, this region, bordering on the Ancylus Lake in theeast, was dry land with numerous lakes and rivers. However, with the beginning of the Littorina Transgression around 6700BC,during the Atlantic period, the area became connected to the ocean. People settling along the coast of the former Ancylus Lake,Mesolithic hunter–gatherers, continuously had to adapt to rapid changes.The Littorina Transgression made a new source available to man: the young Baltic Sea. Important settlement sites were foundedin the coastal regions, and were consumed one by one by the constantly rising sea level. At the time of the decline of the sea levelrise and the beginning consolidation of the coast lines, a socially motivated turn towards a productive economy started. Huntingand fishery were widely replaced by agriculture and stock farming.To understand the interplay between all of these developments, it is necessary that scientists from a variety of disciplinesundertake collective investigations. This paper presents first culture-historical, palaeozoological, palaeobotanical, palaeoecologicaland palaeogeographical results yielded by from the multidisciplinary research group SINCOS (Sinking Coasts) and uses these tocreate a new comprehensive picture of the development of the south-western Baltic Sea region during the Ancylus Lake andLittorina Sea stages.
To be published in: Martin Bauch - Gerrit J. Schenk (eds.), The Crisis of the 14th Century: ‘Teleconnections’ between Environmental and Societal Change? (Das Mittelalter, Beihefte), forthcoming 2018 (peer reviewed) Based on a survey of written and palaeo-environmental evidence, this paper explores various aspects of possible interplays between climatic and socio-economic change in the Byzantine Empire as well as beyond in the Eastern Mediterranean in the period from between the collapse and “restoration” of Byzantine rule in Constantinople (1204-1261 CE) to the beginning of enduring Ottoman expansion in the Balkans in 1352 CE respectively the outbreak of the first wave of the “Black Death” in 1347 CE. For this purpose, various older scenarios of “fatal” social and political developments in Byzantine history will be confronted with new proxy data from regions across the Balkans and Asia Minor and compared with developments in other polities of the region during the transformation from the “Medieval Climate Anomaly” to the “Little Ice Age”.
2018 •
The Norwegian ‘courtyard sites’ have variously been interpreted as special cultic, juridical, or military assembly sites, which served at more than the purely local level. Previously, on the basis of studies of artefacts and finds of pottery from these structures, the principal period of use of the courtyard sites in Rogaland has been dated to the early and late Roman Iron Age (AD 1–400) and the Migration Period (AD 400–550) through c. AD 600. To test the validity of this date range, the Avaldsnes Royal Manor Project has commissioned thirty new radiocarbon datings of material from three courtyard sites in Rogaland that Jan Petersen had excavated in 1938–50. These are Øygarden, Leksaren, and Klauhaugane; the latter is one of the largest courtyard sites in Norway. Øygarden has not previously been radiocarbon dated. For Klauhaugene, only a few radiocarbon dates had been obtained prior to this study. Leksaren was radiocarbon dated in the 1990s, with the results rather surprisingly indicating that its use continued into the 7th century. The present study demonstrates that the three investigated sites were in use during the Merovingian Period (AD 550–800) – a finding that both confirms and develops previous chronological frameworks. The courtyard sites in Rogaland fell out of use earlier than in other areas along the western coast of Norway. It is therefore suggested that their abandonment was connected to the emergence in the 8th century of royal power accompanied by greater control over jurisdiction – a royal power that subsequently expanded within the coastal zone.
SETTLEMENT CHANGE ACROSS MEDIEVAL EUROPE OLD PARADIGMS AND NEW VISTAS
The mid-6th century crises and their impacts on human activity and settlements in south-eastern Norway2019 •
AD 536 is a poignant date in European history and marks the advent of a series of documented environmental changes that affected societies across Europe in various ways. Sudden and severe climate deterioration led to vast crop failures and was followed by plague epidemics in the following decades. In this article, we examine the timing of the changes in human activity with a detailed investigation of 855 radiocarbon determinations from Vestfold, Norway. The modelled radiocarbon data show a decrease in activity concurrent with the climatic events and plague epidemics that took place in the mid-6th century, and provide another proxy for the significant changes that occurred during this time. The results may support the idea that fimbulvetr was the start of a long-lasting cooling period combined with severe population declines and a dramatic decrease in cultural activity. In the past and present, the investigated area represents a heartland of rural production and settlements in Scandinavia. The time span of the crises is fundamental to our academic understanding of the character and societal impacts of the crises, and this study examines it more precisely than previous work.
Environmental Research Letters
Medieval Irish Chronicles Reveal Persistent Volcanic Forcing of Severe Winter Cold Events, 431–1649 CE2013 •
Explosive volcanism resulting in stratospheric injection of sulfate aerosol is a major driver of regional to global climatic variability on interannual and longer timescales. However, much of our knowledge of the climatic impact of volcanism derives from the limited number of eruptions that have occurred in the modern period during which meteorological instrumental records are available. We present a uniquely long historical record of severe short-term cold events from Irish chronicles, 431–1649 CE, and test the association between cold event occurrence and explosive volcanism. Thirty eight (79%) of 48 volcanic events identified in the sulfate deposition record of the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 ice-core correspond to 37 (54%) of 69 cold events in this 1219 year period. We show this association to be statistically significant at the 99.7% confidence level, revealing both the consistency of response to explosive volcanism for Ireland's climatically sensitive Northeast Atlantic ...
The Crisis of the 14th Century
The Little Ice Age and Byzantium within the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 1200–1350: An Essay on Old Debates and New Scenarios2019 •
SETTLEMENT CHANGE ACROSS MEDIEVAL EUROPE OLD PARADIGMS AND NEW VISTAS
Solheim, Steinar & Iversen, Frode (2019). The mid-6th century crises and their impacts on human activity and settlements in southeastern Norway. In Brady, Niall & Theune, Claudia (eds.), SETTLEMENT CHANGE ACROSS MEDIEVAL EUROPE OLD PARADIGMS AND NEW VISTAS. Sidestone Press, pp. 423–434.2019 •
Imagined Communities on the Baltic rim
Transient Borders The Baltic Viewed from Northern Iceland in the Mid- Fifteenth Century2021 •
Bericht der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission 92 - 2011
Hartz, Jöns, Lübke, Schmölcke, Carnap-Bornheim, Heinrich, Klooss, Lüth, Wolters 2014 - Prehistoric Settlements in the south-western Baltic Sea area and Development of the Regional Stone Age Economy. Final report of the SINCOS-II-subproject 4.2014 •
2000 •
Current Swedish Archaeology
New Research Programme: Crisis, Conflict and Climate: Societal Change in Scandinavia 300-700 CE2023 •
1984 •
2013 •
Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology
Changes of sea level, landscape and culture: A review of the south-western Baltic area between 8800 and 4000 BC2006 •
International Journal of Maritime History
The ‘Last Ice Age’ in maritime history: An introduction2022 •
2020 •