Introduction

How to Use This Course

The Little Ice Age in the Nordic Countries is a free public online course targeted at high school and undergraduate students. It explores interactions between historical societies and their environments during a period of colder climate ca.1300–1850CE, known as the “Little Ice Age” (LIA). It encourages students to investigate how stories of disasters, adaptations, and resilience in the face of past climate variability and extreme weather might help us prepare for global warming in our own times.

The course’s six lessons may be completed either separately or together as a single course. The content is suitable for both history and natural science courses as well as interdisciplinary courses on environment or sustainability.

Each lesson consists of six parts:

1. A brief introduction to the content

2. A video presentation of about 8–10 minutes exploring a theme in the history of the LIA

3. A question and answer section explaining some topics in more depth

4. Additional videos, including interviews with experts in climate science and history

5. A list of suggested class activities and discussions

6. A list of references and further readings

The complete course is freely accessible on this website, where all six lessons can be explored sequentially or individually.

Instructors may download the full course content formatted for the Canvas learning management system. This allows teachers to adapt the material for their own online or in-person courses. The Canvas version of the course is available here.

This course and all material therein is licensed under a CC BY-NC agreement. Users may distribute the material for non-commercial purposes, use it in a classroom, and modify it for their own purposes. However, they may not distribute any content in a modified format. All use of this material should acknowledge the original source and creators.

About the Authors

This course was created by Sam White (University of Helsinki, Finland), Scott Bremer (University of Bergen, Norway) and Dominik Collet (University of Oslo, Norway) for the Oslo Centre for Advanced Study Project “The Nordic Little Ice Age”.

Acknowledgements

Development of this course was supported by the Oslo Centre for Advanced Studies and the University of Oslo. Sam White acknowledges the support of the University of Helsinki and the participation of the Past Global Changes (PAGES) Climate Reconstruction and Impacts from the Archives of Society (CRIAS) working group. This course features material used in the Klimahuset exhibition "The Little Ice Age: How did we handle the last climate crisis?." created by the ClimateCultures. project at the University of Oslo. [MORE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS].