Wow! eBook
Weirding Landscapes: Arctic Glacier Extinction and Monsters of the Anthropocene (Arctic Encounters)
by: Vesa-Pekka Herva (Author), Aki Hakonen (Author), Roger Norum (Author), Oula Seitsonen (Author), Markus Fjellström (Author)
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Publication Date: 2025-03-29
Language: English
Print Length: 228 pages
ISBN-10: 3031850157
ISBN-13: 9783031850158
Book Description
This open access book investigates human-environment relations in the context of the anthropocenic Arctic. Through an archaeological and anthropological study of landscape, it wields “weirding” – a creative mode of engagement with the world – as a means of coming to terms with the stranger, experiential dimensions of a planet populated by diverse non-human entities often bearing monstrous characteristics. Such entities are exemplified by climate change itself, at once human-induced and a force of its own volition that maintains an elusive “presence” as a co-inhabitant of the Anthropocene. The book focuses on the landscape of Ritničohkka, a fjell in Sápmi, Finnish Lapland. Ritničohkka is erstwhile home to a diminutive “glacier”, whose “weird”, anomalous characteristics crowned the fjell until it several years ago melted into history. Taking a broadly autoethnographic approach, it considers perceptions of, and affective experiences in, this rough and relatively remote, “otherworldly” environment, discussing diverse ways of encountering and relating to the Arctic in the context of scientific fieldwork.
Editorial Reviews
This open access book investigates human-environment relations in the context of the anthropocenic Arctic. Through an archaeological and anthropological study of landscape, it wields “weirding” – a creative mode of engagement with the world – as a means of coming to terms with the stranger, experiential dimensions of a planet populated by diverse non-human entities often bearing monstrous characteristics. Such entities are exemplified by climate change itself, at once human-induced and a force of its own volition that maintains an elusive “presence” as a co-inhabitant of the Anthropocene. The book focuses on the landscape of Ritničohkka, a fjell in Sápmi, Finnish Lapland. Ritničohkka is erstwhile home to a diminutive “glacier”, whose “weird”, anomalous characteristics crowned the fjell until it several years ago melted into history. Taking a broadly autoethnographic approach, it considers perceptions of, and affective experiences in, this rough and relatively remote, “otherworldly” environment, discussing diverse ways of encountering and relating to the Arctic in the context of scientific fieldwork.
