Welcome to this guest talk by dr. Johan Gärdebo on “Testing the ice: Sensing and shaping ice landscapes of the Baltic Sea, 1880-1939” . The talk is co-organized by the Environmental Media and Aesthetics research program and the Cultures and Practices of Digital Technologies research program at Aarhus University, School of Communication and Culture. For more info, contact: Dr Kasper Schiølin, imvksc@cc.au.dk or professor Jussi Parikka, parikka@cc.au.dk

The Western notion of mapping — describing a static territory — has in recent decades shifted towards focusing more on navigating through a dynamic terrain. On a macro-scale, this corresponds to our understanding of a changing environment, amidst anthropogenic changing climate. Theoretically, what needs to be grasped is the feedback loops between sensing and shaping environments, how tools for understanding a landscape have changed throughout history in relation to the needs and ability to traverse said landscape.

This more recent dynamic and navigational approach to environments is seen early on in modern mapping in and around the Baltic Sea from late 1800s onwards.

Before this, the Baltic Sea was long only seasonally hospitable for human exploration, with conditions changing vastly from summer to winter, as ice closed off navigation routes from navigation. In addition to the seasonal changes, the landscape was shaped also by sea currents, winds, and temperature. With the development of ice-capable vessels in late 1800s, mapping the winter sea was still risky, but you could begin testing the ice. What followed were new forms of nautical charts of the coastal and international waters,  instrumental not only for further demarcating national boundaries but also facilitated new forms of transportation of people and cargo, and of military strategies. 

This is a case study about the emergence of ice research in the Baltic Sea region from the 1880s until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. This was a period of development for steel-framed steamships and icebreakers, which enabled winter navigation. But sensing instruments were also developed to provide dynamic mapping of the sea ice and its dynamic transformation. These changes in the sensing of ice landscapes, as well as changes in shaping and traversing ways through ice landscapers were central to the formation of a transnational research community working on the collection of ice information, the standardisation of concepts and methods, and the communication of ice information for merchant marines.

As such, the case studied is one of technological changes and interplays in sensing and shaping the Baltic Sea environment during a historic period. Local observations, and experience-based knowledge, transformed into systematic scientific analysis. Similarly, previous national mapping projects were expanded through transnational cooperation. 

The study is in many respects envisaged as an account of various components in a system for sensing and shaping ice landscapes. For starters, technological development was a driver and enabler of this transformation since the then fledgling industrialisation called for extended navigation seasons, and marine engineering, as part of enabling a more reliable provision of materials and goods. These developments in marine movement developed in tandem with observation technologies — from human monitors and individual weather stations into systematic technology-aided data collections, involving the coordination of a number of units for sensing and shaping ice landscapes (e.g. icebreakers, airplanes, and radio transmission).

The research is based on primary sources from the collections of Meteorological institutes in Finland and Sweden. The study contributes to our understanding of how changes in technology changed both how the Baltic Sea region was sensed and eventually also shaped as sea routes could be kept open for longer periods and enable more advanced sensing operations in turn.

Bio

Johan Gärdebo is a Research Fellow of Clare Hall, an associate of the Cambridge Centre for History and Economics, and historian at the Department of History of Ideas and Science at Uppsala University. He studies climate knowledge and decarbonisation policies as these interplay in local, national, and transnational settings, from late 1800s to the present.

https://www.clarehall.cam.ac.uk/directory/johan-gardebo/