Coastal Cosmologies: Long-Term Perspectives on the Perception and Understanding of Dynamic Coastal Landscapes in the Northern Baltic Sea Region

Abstract

This paper addresses long-term perceptions and meanings of coastal landscapes, particularly of coastal islands, in the northern Baltic Sea region from the Neolithic to the early modern period. Instead of identifying specific meanings attributed to particular landscape elements, the aim here is to explore similarities and continuities in the ways of relating with coastal landscapes across centuries and millennia, with an emphasis on how meanings of coastal landscapes and broader cosmological concepts would have been linked to environmental changes stemming from post-glacial land uplift and associated processes. While some socio-cultural impacts of land uplift have been addressed especially in the context of Stone Age archaeology, the broader and longer-term implications of living in dynamic coastal to environmental perception and cosmological concepts remain to be appreciated. A series of interlinked cases from the Neolithic to the early modern period will be employed to discuss those wider issues.

Keywords:

• coastal landscapes
• cosmology
• environmental change
• Baltic Sea
• islands

Acknowledgements

Several people have kindly commented on, or otherwise helped us with this paper, whether or not they have agreed with the views we have taken, and we are pleased to express our gratitude to Antti Lahelma, Stephen Mrozowski, Thomas Wallerström, Christer Westerdahl and Risto Nurmi.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vesa-Pekka Herva

Vesa-Pekka Herva is assistant professor in heritage studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He has studied various aspects of material culture, human-environment relations, and cosmology in north-eastern Europe from the Neolithic to the modern times.

Timo Ylimaunu

Timo Ylimaunu is senior lecturer in historical archaeology at the University of Oulu, Finland. His research focuses on the historical-period northern Baltic Sea world in a wider European and global context, with a special emphasis on urban archaeology.