Swedish environmental history of the Baltic Sea

Abstract

In Western culture, oceans have traditionally been perceived as timeless, separate from society and practically boundless in resources and absorptive capacity. As a result, the entangled histories of people and marine environments have largely been neglected in historical research. This is changing with the development of marine environmental history together with increasing recognition of oceans’ vulnerability and importance in earth systems. Against this background, we review the current state of historical knowledge of how different actors within Swedish society have perceived and impacted the Baltic Sea environment, as well as discovered and responded to marine environmental change. We find that this environmental history, as distinct from other forms of historical research, has so far received limited attention. While the environmental histories of terrestrial resources in Sweden – including forests, agriculture, minerals and energy – have been thoroughly studied, there is little comparative knowledge about the formation and development of the major scientific institutions and public agencies involved in Baltic Sea governance. In light of this, we discuss how knowledge about Sweden’s marine environmental history can be improved, and the importance this may have for the future sustainability of the Baltic Sea.

Keywords:

• Baltic Sea
• marine environmental history
• marine governance
• institutional history
• environmental history

1. Introduction: marine environmental history

This review examines the state of knowledge about historical interactions between Swedish society and the Baltic Sea environment, and what impact this has had on Baltic marine ecologies as well as Swedish society. We find that this subject has only been examined in a few studies of limited scope. We compare our results with research into Sweden’s terrestrial environmental history, as well as to the broader field of marine environmental history.

The perception of seas as timeless, separate from society and practically boundless in resources and absorptive capacity has been enduring in Western thinking. The 19th-century philosopher and natural scientist Henry David Thoreau noted that ‘We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always’.¹ The historical persistence of this view can be explained partly by its legitimization of large-scale exploitation of ocean resources, but also by physical restrictions of the human body. To humans, the seascape is deceptive. Its vast and opaque surface easily appears as eternal and intangible. Movements in and on the seas leave no apparent trace; historical changes in pelagic (the free water masses) and deep water benthic (seafloor) environments are more difficult for the human senses to observe and comprehend than changes in forests, agricultural landscapes or urban settings.² As industrialization processes accelerated within the wider Baltic region from the late 19th century onwards, this culturally widespread perception of seas was at the heart of decisions to release untreated sewage and dump oil and waste into the marine environment. It also permitted unlimited exploitation of fish resources, pushing some species, such as the Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrhinchus) or the European eel (Anguilla anguilla), to the brink of extinction.

For a long time, this perception of seas also informed a terrestrial mindset within the historical discipline. When and where human maritime activities have been recorded, it has been with a focus on humans – such as the role of overseas trade routes or dependency on fish resources in human history – while conditions and various forms of living inhabitants within the marine environment have generally not been studied as interdependent parts of human histories.³

The research field of environmental history initially adopted the terrestrial tendency established within the broader historical discipline. The first 30 years of environmental history publications, starting in the 1970s, were almost solely concerned with developments in agriculture, forests, terrestrial nature reserves, and air- and land-based species, while studies of aquatic spaces generally focused on lakes, rivers and groundwater.⁴ The seas are barely mentioned in some of the most influential publications in the field of environmental history, many of which set out to provide overviews of the history of human interactions with nature.⁵ The journal Environmental History, from its first issues to the early 21st century, only contains a few articles addressing the oceans and seas. Considering that approximately two-thirds of the surface of the earth and 99% of its three-dimensional living space is marine, and the dominant role of the ocean in earth systems, this low presence of the seas within environmental history is unjustified and requires explanation and some historical inquiry.⁶

By the 1990s, rising societal awareness of anthropogenic impacts on seas spurred some historians to begin researching marine environmental histories.⁷ Since then, a growing number of studies have unfolded historical interactions between humans and marine conditions.⁸ Environmental history is not the only research field in which this shift can be observed. Historians of science have, for example, in parallel begun to pay more attention to the history of marine science.⁹ Two history of science journals, Earth Sciences History and Isis, have each published special issues about marine science, in 1993 and 2001 as well as 2014, respectively.

The emerging field of marine environmental history seems, however, not to have yet reached the Baltic Sea in any substantial way.¹⁰ To our knowledge, no comprehensive review of what we know of the marine environmental history of the Baltic region has been published to date, although the specific topic of the history of marine pollution and protection has been briefly summarized.¹¹ The aim of this review is to provide a detailed picture of the current state of historical knowledge of how different actors within Swedish society have perceived and impacted the Baltic Sea environment, as well as discovered and responded to marine environmental change. Moreover, we will point to some directions in which future inquiries into the environmental history of Sweden and the Baltic Sea may contribute with especially valuable perspectives and understanding.

2. Materials and method

We designed our review to identify existing historical studies of interactions between Swedish society and the Baltic Sea environment. We chose to focus on Sweden, rather than the Baltic region as a whole, as one of our starting points for undertaking this review was the impression that a marine perspective is lacking in Sweden’s environmental history, especially considering the extensive amount of knowledge of its terrestrial history. Our second geographical delimitation was to focus on the Baltic Sea rather than on all coastal seas surrounding Sweden. This choice was made on the basis that the Baltic Sea – often called the most polluted sea in the world – is sufficiently distinct from other Swedish coastal seas in terms of both ecology and management to warrant its own review. From its current format, the present review could be extended in either direction – towards the Baltic Sea as a whole or towards an encompassing Swedish marine environmental history – both of which we would find interesting.

While defining a wide-ranging and multifarious field such as environmental history is perhaps not theoretically possible, our working definition and delimitation of environmental history as a research area or perspective is focused on historical studies that specifically address interactions between human societies and the marine environment, including environmental as well as social and cultural drivers of change, interdependencies and mutual impacts. According to that definition, we only found a few studies that could clearly be recognized as marine environmental histories. We therefore also searched for studies bordering on environmental history carried out under other historical sub-disciplines, primarily institutional history and history of science, which focus on marine institutions involved in Baltic Sea governance. We also included social science research when it offered longer historical perspectives on either the research, governance and management of the Baltic Sea or the marine institutions surrounding the Baltic Sea.

Research within neighbouring fields such as maritime history, marine historical ecology and social-ecological evolution is not central to our review. Scholars covering maritime history have primarily focused on social and cultural aspects on human interactions with Swedish seas, including human cultures and enterprises at sea and coastal areas and overseas cultural contacts as well as divisions.¹² Interactions between humans and environmental conditions below the surface are, however, not significantly addressed in this field. Marine science studies in marine historical ecology and social-ecological evolution have added important perspectives to our knowledge of past conditions in seas and oceans, including recognition of the problem of ‘shifting baselines’ – that reference points used to measure environmental change tend to shift over time – which originated in marine biology.¹³ Several studies along these lines have been carried out on Swedish seas, examining what conditions in marine environments used to look like, and how and why ecological and social-ecological systems have changed over time.¹⁴ However, these studies are distinct from marine environmental history in that they focus primarily on ecological conditions, and while this sometimes includes impact from human activities, they are less occupied with the driving forces, cultures and traditions that form the background to that impact.¹⁵ Environmental scientists have, moreover, carried out studies on the history of marine governance and management in Sweden, but these studies are also limited in their treatment of the surrounding historical context.¹⁶

The body of literature examined after these delimitations were established was collected through searches in scientific journals and academic databases, containing works mainly in Swedish and English.¹⁷ We identified 17 scientific journals relevant to our study and searched them for publications of research articles between 1979 and 2019. In parallel, we searched scientific articles in international databases as well as research publications in Swedish databases. As research publications were collected for review, we also searched their reference lists for relevant publications. Furthermore, we examined some of the most influential collections and overviews of marine environmental history. A detailed methodology as well as bibliography is available as supplementary material.¹⁸

Research that has been conducted on the history of interactions between Swedish society and the Baltic Sea environment predominantly focus on the modern period, from the mid-19th century onwards, and this is also the timeframe for our review.¹⁹ By summarizing this heterogenous research area – which is rooted in different research disciplines and covers a quite wide range of research subjects – we aim to provide a more overarching historical perspective on how interactions between the Swedish society and the Baltic Sea have evolved than has been published before. We discuss the results of our review by pointing to significant knowledge gaps in the current state of literature as well as offering explanations to this current lack of knowledge. We conclude by suggesting possible directions for further investigations, and the importance that such research may have for the future sustainability of the Baltic Sea.

3. Sweden and the Baltic Sea: a review of historical studies

In this section, we provide an overarching description of what is known about the history of the anthropogenic impact on – and perceptions of – the Baltic Sea environment within Swedish society, scientific discoveries of marine environmental change and subsequent societal responses to this, based on the studies we have identified. While we have prioritized a narrative overview rather than a detailed account of all relevant literature, we account for the studies we have identified in the references provided throughout this section and in the thematic bibliography we include as supplementary material.

3.1. Water pollution in the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries

Research focusing on water pollution and protection throughout the period between the mid-19th century to the 1960s indicates how a perception of the sea as immune to human impact and separate from society dominated political and institutional framing of this problem. From this body of literature, we know that the second half of the 19th century saw increasing pollution of rivers, lakes and canals, and that the main political strategy to combat this was to promote the engineering of water recipients and extending pipes to pump sewage to the sea, as restrictions towards pollutants and enforced constructions of treatment plants were considered to harm economic development. National water protection policies progressed slowly, and were largely reactive to environmental stress rather than proactive. These policies and practices were based on the assumption that emissions into rivers, canals and other waterways – as well as direct emissions into the Baltic – could not possibly impact the hydrography and ecosystems of the Baltic or, hence, its surrounding societies.

A pioneering study giving insights to this topic was conducted by Lundgren in 1974, focusing on Swedish national debates about water pollution between 1890 and 1921. Lundgren examines a period in which accelerating industrial production and construction of water supply and sewer systems put aquatic spaces under increased stress. In the 1890s, Sweden lacked a coherent legislation for water protection, and towns and cities were autonomous as codifiers of the scattered regulations. Moreover, institutional control mechanisms were weak. As concerns grew over the deterioration of waterways all over the country, a committee was established in the beginning of the 20th century to investigate how laws and institutions could become more effective. A forthcoming proposal included the establishment of a national public agency monitoring the implementation of pollution laws and assessing potential contaminants from planned factory and sewer constructions, as well as strengthened legal restrictions towards pollutants. When the proposal was presented to the Swedish parliament in 1921 it was, however, turned down. Lundgren concludes that decision-makers, under pressure from industry, perceived restrictions to hinder industrial development, while enforcement of municipal construction of purification methods was also estimated to be too costly. Instead, a proposed solution to increased pollution during the studied time period was to extend pipes and dump sewage into seas, which were regarded as self-purifying.²⁰

This perception and treatment of Swedish seas was also at the heart of local water management in the early history of water protection policies. In a study of such policies in Malmö, Olsson shows that decision-makers, after decades of opposing policies restricting industries from polluting the city canal, in 1905 built a sewer system without purification leading out to Öresund.²¹ It soon transpired that pollution problems had only been moved from the city to the coastal zone, but how the authorities dealt with that problem is not further researched. Similarly, Hallström reveals how decisions to allow and later promote water closets in Norrköping between the mid-19th and the early 20th century were taken with reference to estimates that the river Motala Ström, the main recipient for wastewater, was fast enough to dissolve contaminants and carry discharged matter to the Baltic Sea.²²

A study by Löwgren et al., examining paradigm shifts in abatement strategies against water pollution, added to Lundgren’s previous research by revealing how national strategies over the first half of the 20th century were continually aimed at effects rather than causes, as arguments of cost calculations prevailed. Hence, the dominant strategy among politicians, scientists and engineers was to adjust emissions of wastewater to the perceived self-purifying capacities of the receiving water and, if needed, engineer waterways to improve those capacities or extend water pipes to the open sea, perceived as an ultimate sink immune to pollution. Löwgren et al. show that this paradigm truly shifted only in the 1950s, as politicians at the national level began to address more urgently the need to combat pollution at the source with the construction of wastewater treatment plants. At this time, accelerating water closet use and industrial production put rivers, canals, lakes and coastal waters under increasing environmental stress. Moreover, it was a time of growing demands for cleaner water for leisure activities. However, the progression of effective protection policies remained hindered throughout the 1950s by limited administrative capacity as well as decision-makers’ unwillingness to pay for reforms.²³

Research conducted by Laakkonen on how national legislation and institutions for water protection evolved in the wider Baltic region from the late 1800s to the 1960s provides a historical background to why national administration of water protection in Sweden was weak well into the 1950s.²⁴ Laakkonen shows that progress was made within the area during the first half of the 20th century, but at a slow and patchy rate. As researched earlier by Lundgren, the parliament turned down a proposal to establish a national water law and public agency in 1921. Although national laws and institutions for water protection were later established, in 1942 and 1937, to combat growing problems with water pollution, Laakkonen reveals that they lacked authority in relation to municipalities and factories.²⁵ Moreover, responsibility for water protection remained scattered. The 1950s saw a debate about the vague guidelines and administrative fragmentation that municipalities and involved institutions were operating under. However, the establishment of a coordinating institution was delayed until 1967, when the Environmental Protection Agency (Statens Naturvårdsverk) was created for that purpose.²⁶

Another study by Laakkonen demonstrates that the evolution of water protection could be slow also at a local level.²⁷ When experts and decision-makers in Stockholm decided what measures were needed to combat deteriorating water quality in the 1920s–1930s, they opted to build mechanical treatment plants instead of the more expensive and efficient biological alternative. This solution was not as durable as estimated, and a comprehensive reform of the sewage system had to be undertaken in 1954, when the city chose to purify all emitted wastewater with biological treatment plants. Laakkonen states that water protection policies in Stockholm lagged behind other Nordic capitals; biological treatment plants had been present in Oslo since 1931 and in Helsinki from a year later.

The history of water pollution and protection policies has important implications for the eutrophication of the Baltic Sea. In the early 1960s, 80 out of Sweden’s 133 towns and cities still completely lacked wastewater treatment plants, while many of the existing plants were reported to not function properly.²⁸ State policies for water protection were substantially strengthened only in the 1960s and 1970s, in parallel with economic development as well as rising societal awareness of environmental problems related to industrial societies.²⁹ However, old sins are still affecting the marine environment, as eutrophication remains a serious environmental problem in the Baltic Sea. Moreover, the societal gains from constructing treatment plants ought to be weighed against the continued increase in the use of artificial fertilizers from the postwar period onwards. A smaller study by Mårald demonstrates that this development has escalated eutrophication processes in the Baltic Sea, as many nutrients in artificial fertilizers are not easily absorbed by the agricultural environment and instead travel with waterways towards the sea.³⁰ In parallel, the last 200 years have seen increased transformation of aquatic spaces on land – including drainage of wetlands and ditches as well as construction and straightening-out of waterways – which has sped up the transportation of nutrients from agricultural farms to the sea, as winding aquatic spaces provide barriers for nutrients travelling towards the coast. Agricultural research, governance and management has, however, to our knowledge not been studied in detail from a marine environmental history perspective.

3.2. Resource management by the turn of the 20th century

Research that has been carried out on the establishment of marine scientific institutions surrounding the Baltic Sea around the turn of the 20th century points to how these institutions evolved in a more interacting relation to Swedish seas compared to water protection institutions. Although this research shows that awareness of how humans could overfish single species was one of the main motives behind institutional establishments – counteracting the perception of the sea as boundless in resources – it nevertheless suggests that the prime reason was to increase the catch capacity for fisheries.

A study by Wråkberg brings overarching perspectives to how this tension between interest in resource use versus protection of fish species was present as marine sciences became institutionalized. Although marine currents, marine zoology and marine chemistry had been studied by scientists for a long time, the end of the 19th century marked the institutionalization of marine science.³¹ This institutional establishment was, according to Wråkberg, primarily motivated by decreasing fisheries catches all over northern Europe due to the growing efficiency of the fisheries industry and consequent overexploitation of fish stocks. In Sweden and elsewhere, these developments created a need for scientific mapping for extraction of fish resources as well as for how the recovery of fish populations could be secured with protective measures. In 1901, the Swedish Hydrographic-Biological Commission (Svenska Hydrografisk-Biologiska Kommissionen) was established, through which scientists would conduct research on Swedish seas in close collaboration with other North Atlantic marine scientists organized within the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), founded in 1902.³²

A later study by Nornvall on the establishment of the Hydrographical Commission (Hydrografiska Kommissionen, 1893–1901), predecessor to the Swedish Hydrographic-Biological Commission, sheds further light on this topic. Nornvall shows that the scientists behind the Commission, as they first applied for financial support from the state, mainly promoted their work as beneficial for the fisheries industry.³³ In line with this reasoning, scientists could argue that a scientific basis for fisheries would contribute to the continued rise of the Swedish nation, and that Sweden, without rational fisheries, would lag behind other nations in the competition for fisheries resources. Nornvall suggests that there was an interlinked emergence of institutionalized marine sciences and the modern Swedish state in the late 19th century, and discusses whether marine sciences possibly became even more subordinated to the state than other natural sciences at the time because of the need for relatively substantial resources for practical work.

How the tension between resource use and protection of species has been balanced through political and practical action has, however, only been addressed through brief remarks. These indicate that there was a strong belief in the resilience of fish populations in Swedish seas – probably along with hopes for future advancements in aquaculture – in relation to expanding the capacity of the fisheries sector. For example, Eriksson notes in an overview of how natural resources were mapped in Sweden from 1870 to 1914 that prominent oceanographer Otto Pettersson recommended policies promoting techniques for trawl fishing and large ships in Swedish fisheries.³⁴ Moreover, Söderqvist points out in a sociological history of the institutionalization of ecological ideas that the Swedish Hydrographic-Biological Commission set out to understand ‘the economy of nature’ and ‘the production capacity of the sea’.³⁵ This research, Söderqvist states, was conducted in close collaboration with an emerging fisheries administration within the Board of Agriculture, in which Filip Trybom was a leading figure conducting research on marine fisheries in the 1890s and 1900s. The research, governance and management of Baltic Sea fish populations in particular have, however, not been subject to historical studies.

3.3. Rising of environmental awareness in the mid-20th century

The perception of the Baltic Sea as immune to human impact was only substantially challenged in the late 1960s, following the rise of environmental awareness in Western societies. Research into the process of when and how the Baltic Sea went from being regarded as timeless and pristine ‘nature’ outside of society to endangered ‘environment’ of societal concern in Sweden is scarce and patchy, but points to scientific discoveries of how anthropogenic hazardous substances and additions of nutrients impacted ecosystems of the Baltic Sea, as well as its entire hydrography, as pivotal moments. Research in this field also states that these discoveries of anthropogenic impact on marine environments were groundbreaking in a global perspective.

Two studies by Räsänen focus on such pivotal knowledge developments within pollution research during the 1950s and 1960s.³⁶ The earlier of these concerns the origins of environmental consciousness in Finland, but also partly covers knowledge developments of the Baltic Sea’s vulnerability to toxic pollutants in Sweden. In the 1950s, suspicion grew within scientific communities over the impacts of toxic substances on bird species. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) contributed to rising anxiety throughout Western societies about the effects of toxic substances in the environment, not only on animals but also on humans. In Sweden, this led to research projects initiated by universities as well as the newly established Toxic Board (Giftnämnden). Räsänen highlights how the sea was eventually embedded in such research projects. In 1969, chemist Sören Jensen and colleagues discovered that fish in the Baltic Sea carried alarmingly high levels of the toxins PCB and DDT, as the relatively small size of the Baltic Sea and its limited inflows of water had caused toxic substances to accumulate in the marine environment. Räsänen points out that this was pioneering, as science had never before shown that people could impact entire marine environments in ways that created conditions that were potentially threatening to their own future existence.³⁷ Räsänen’s main focus is, however, on Finland, and his interest in Swedish actors is limited to the extent that they caused a rise of environmental awareness in Finland as well as inspired Finnish scientists to conduct similar research.

Räsänen has also described the discovery of impacts of human-induced nutrients on the Baltic Sea, unfolding parallel to insights about the effects of toxins.³⁸ This study also mainly concerns Finland, but partly traces events in Sweden. In the 1960s, hydrographic conditions in the deeper parts of the Baltic Sea were thought to be immune to human impact. According to contemporary theory, the volumes of nutrients near the surface never changed. Although sudden rises of nutrient levels were thought to temporarily increase biological production, hydrographic conditions would revert to a state of balance as stratification would cause decaying biomass to eventually end up buried in the sediments. Räsänen shows that this view was challenged in 1969 by hydrographer Stig H. Fonselius, who suggested that increased volumes of decaying biomass consumed oxygen at the sea bed, causing phosphorous in sediments to release and well up to the surface layer, which in turn caused further accumulation of biological production and decaying of biomass. This feedback mechanism of oxygen deficit and eutrophication had, according to Fonselius, been promoted by nutrients from industrial and municipal emissions. Fonselius’ theory still forms the basis for our present-day understanding of eutrophication processes in the Baltic Sea, and Räsänen concludes that his work marked a paradigmatic shift in scientific perceptions of the sea, as it was one of the very first studies to show how people could affect the hydrography of entire oceans and seas.

These groundbreaking scientific discoveries marked a shift in mentality, as demonstrated by Löwgren et al. The issue of water pollution had, before the 1960s, been regarded mainly as a problem of local, sanitary and economic character; a concern over water quality handled by medical doctors and fisheries inspectors and institutions.³⁹ The scientific discoveries of the 1960s proved, however, how contaminants impacted marine ecosystems and that this impact was not restricted in time and space.

The discoveries were, in turn, part of a wave of rising concern for the Baltic environment with origins in the mid-1960s, which transformed public perception of the Baltic, as is shown in Söderqvist’s study of how marine ecological research evolved and eventually became institutionalized in Sweden. An investigation of natural resources in 1964 (1964 års naturresursutredning) addressed marine pollution and, in 1969, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Statens Naturvårdsverk) was given responsibility to promote research of environmental problems in the Baltic Sea. Söderqvist reveals that the mid-1960s saw the first studies addressing food-webs and productivity, in contrast to single species and particular conditions. The decisive moment for the institutionalization of marine ecosystem research was, according to Söderqvist, the undertaking of the large Baltic Ecosystem Project (Östersjöprojektet) in 1971, approved by state authorities to conduct comprehensive research of the Swedish Baltic coast with the aim of strengthening society’s capacity to combat environmental problems.⁴⁰

In light of this outlined historical background, it is also worth noting that Bernes and Lundgren, in an overview of Sweden’s environmental history, write that the effects of oil pollution on marine species and human recreational areas in the mid-20th century can be regarded as an early predecessor to the discussion of marine environmental problems.⁴¹ Due to increased oil use within the shipping industry and virtually non-existent regulation towards release of oil residues and oil-polluted water into international waters, problems with oil-covered coasts accelerated after the Second World War. How this rising environmental awareness, together with the forthcoming institutionalization of environmental research and governance, impacted already established marine and water institutions surrounding issues like fisheries, water protection and shipping has not to date been issued by historians.

3.4. Environmental governance and management in recent history

Despite growing awareness of a need to combat environmental problems in the Baltic from the 1960s onwards, research covering contemporary history indicates that the formation of the regional Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) in 1980, set up to monitor and govern environmental conditions in the Baltic Sea, was still in some ways rooted in the enduring perception of seas as separate from surrounding societies, as scientific estimations and technological end-of-pipe solutions dominated strategies rather than more overarching societal perspectives. This field of research also provides perspectives on the role of geopolitical relations in the establishment and early history of HELCOM. Sweden is implicated in such research, as it is one of HELCOM’s member states.

Since HELCOM was established, its policies have, unsurprisingly, been shaped by geopolitical relations. Räsänen’s and Laakkonen’s study of the negotiations for establishing an organization for international environmental protection of the Baltic Sea shows how geopolitical relations played a decisive role in HELCOM’s history from the start.⁴² The first attempt to coherently combat degradation of the Baltic marine environment on a regional level, discussed in Visby in 1969 and addressing the issue of oil pollution from ships, failed due to the geopolitical context of the Cold War and a divided Germany. Räsänen and Laakkonen show that, as tensions began to ease in 1972, an international convention for the protection of the Baltic Sea environment was regarded as a window of opportunity for both communist and capitalist states to strengthen diplomatic relations and improve security conditions in northern Europe. At the same time, individual nations wanted to promote themselves as taking responsibility for their environments. The Helsinki Convention was agreed in 1974, and officially enforced in 1980.

Research has also revealed how geopolitical relations have shaped HELCOM’s policy-making. Larsen has studied how HELCOM has framed the Baltic Sea environment throughout its history in partly a geopolitical context. The study reveals an exclusion of land-based pollution sources in HELCOM’s first two decades of policy-making.⁴³ In the original convention, member states agreed that internal waters would not be deemed a shared concern. Policies for pollution from land were restricted to two and a half pages, while 35 pages were devoted to policies regarding pollution from ships and dumping at sea. Thus, internal waters largely remained a responsibility for national governance and management. Larsen shows how this framework was challenged in earnest only in the early 1990s, as policies were more often directed towards pollutants ashore and in the catchment area. One of the major factors behind this development was, according to Larsen, the Soviet Union’s progressively eased stance towards the inclusion of territorial waters.

Two social science studies by Hjorth suggest that the marine environment was not seen as a sphere of holistic concern, or a concern for society at large, in the early years of HELCOM.⁴⁴ Initially, HELCOM’s convention and related policies were mainly rooted in scientific research and technological solutions to reduce pollutants from point-sources. This mindset shifted in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as the scope of HELCOM’s domain widened to incorporate a stronger emphasis on societal and ecological dimensions, by introducing environmental management, integration of environmental issues and economic reform, and the establishment of national and international action plans aimed at improving environmental conditions within certain time frames. Hjorth shows how eased diplomatic relations between Eastern and Western countries following the gradual breakdown of the Soviet Union facilitated the shift. At the same time, the renewal of HELCOM’s strategy was part of a larger paradigm shift in international environmental politics emphasizing sustainable development, as well as a reaction to increased public pressure following seal deaths and worsened problems with algal blooms in the late 1980s.

However, other researchers have questioned if the gradual emergence of this more holistic view has yet been put into institutional practice. A political science study by Valman on institutional change within HELCOM points to slow progress within this realm. In 2007, HELCOM launched the Baltic Sea Action Plan as a basis for its work in the Baltic region. The plan stressed the need for a shift from traditional management, based on a sectoral and top-down approach, to ecosystem management, based on a holistic and adaptive approach to understanding and handling complex ecological conditions. However, Valman’s study reveals that cooperation and coordination between different bodies within HELCOM has not substantially changed according to the principles of the plan and that its recommendations and declarations rarely have responded to sudden shifts in eutrophication processes.⁴⁵

4. Discussion

Our summary of the state-of-the-art of the history of Sweden’s historical relationship with the Baltic Sea environment provides knowledge about the environmental and institutional history of water pollution and protection, the early institutional history of marine sciences, the rise of environmental awareness and marine ecosystem research, and the institutional history of HELCOM. However, there are significant gaps in our knowledge from an environmental history point of view. In the studies reviewed above, perspectives on the history of societal and cultural interactions with the Baltic environment – emphasizing human marine endeavours as pivotal for the course of human and marine history – are markedly limited. The few studies we have identified that are explicitly framed as environmental histories of Sweden and the Baltic Sea are small, and almost solely concern sewage and industrial pollution. They focus primarily on sectors and institutions with an impact on marine environments, rather than human-nature interactions in a broader sense.⁴⁶ Particular as well as overarching environmental histories of marine resource use, management and reliance – ranging from fisheries, shipping, aquaculture, climate change and coastal use to nature conservation and human relationships with species living in marine areas – are yet to be substantially explored, although institutional histories about fisheries and coastal use have been published.⁴⁷ Environmental histories of marine pollution in the form of litter, oil spills and hazardous substances – as well as environmental impacts from agriculture, forestry and hydropower – are also uncharted.

Studies of how marine institutions surrounding the Baltic Sea have taken shape in Sweden is, likewise, limited. Although smaller histories have been written about national institutions for water protection and marine science, there are few historical perspectives on the broader development of marine institutions in Sweden. A range of prominent institutions have barely been subject to historical studies at all, including the Swedish Hydrographic-Biological Commission (Hydrografisk-Biologiska Kommissionen 1901–1948), the Institute of Marine Research in Lysekil (Havsfiskelaboratoriet i Lysekil, 1929–), the Fisheries Board (Fiskeristyrelsen, 1948–1991) and the Board of Fisheries (Fiskeriverket, 1991–2011). These institutions and their prominent personalities have, rather, been addressed by scientists and managers writing their own histories.⁴⁸ The scarcity of marine institutional histories is especially evident when compared to the environmental, institutional and knowledge histories of terrestrial resources in Sweden; the histories of forests, agriculture, minerals and energy have been thoroughly studied, including details of most of its major organizations, ranging from public agencies to research institutions, knowledge dissemination and the formation of expertise.⁴⁹

The shortage of studies seems to apply to the Baltic marine environment overall, as has been pointed out by scholars.⁵⁰ Our parallel searches for Swedish as well as English articles about marine institutional and environmental history in the wider Baltic region, carried out by the same methods as stated above, support this impression. The most prominent studies seem to mainly cover issues of pollution,⁵¹ while a few historical studies have been conducted on marine institutions⁵² and fisheries.⁵³ The most comprehensive study we have found is a dissertation in Finnish covering the rising awareness of the deterioration of the Baltic Sea in Finland during the 1960s and 1970s.⁵⁴

The lack of historical research on the Baltic marine environment is especially notable considering the unique conditions of the Baltic Sea and its governance. The Baltic Sea is around four times smaller than its catchment area, which has put its conditions under heavy pressure from the populated and highly industrialized societies surrounding it in modern history. The shallow depths and limited inflows have increased pressures by making the sea susceptible to pollution and hazardous substances, whereas biodiversity has been relatively low and fragile due to the brackish water. While marine environmental history emerged as a research field following rising awareness of anthropogenic impact on oceans worldwide in the 1990s, changes in Baltic Sea ecosystems were observed as early as the late 1960s, the earliest of any seas. This is demonstrated, for example, by the fact that the Helsinki Convention was the first comprehensive international agreement reached on marine pollution, and would later serve as a model for similar international conventions, such as the Convention for the Protection of the Mediterranean Sea against Pollution.⁵⁵ Despite these early developments in research and governance, the first studies of the environmental history of the Baltic Sea were not undertaken until the late 1990s and early 2000s.⁵⁶

One explanation that has been aired for the apparent lack of studies is the combination of a rather weak stronghold of environmental history in the wider Baltic region and the practical difficulties of studying archival sources in different languages and locations.⁵⁷ The rather unique international dimension of the Baltic Sea, as a relatively small semi-enclosed sea bordered by nine states, may have discouraged or hindered environmental historians from researching multilingual publications and archival sources at many different places. This can only be a partial explanation, however, as research barriers between, for example, the Nordic countries are quite easily bridged, considering the close cultural and historical ties between them. Specific academic traditions may also have played a part, as environmental history research in the Nordic countries has rarely crossed national boarders, despite the transboundary nature of ecosystems and environmental concerns, and most of the history writing typically has taken place within state boarders according to the principle of ‘methodological nationalism’.⁵⁸ A related explanation may be that the transboundary character of the Baltic Sea can make it easily deferrable to international or regional politics, away from the nation state. As discussions of political environmental challenges often revolve around international issues, the environmental politics of the state has sometimes been overlooked in political science research of environmental governance, despite its key roles on national, regional and global scales.⁵⁹ This mindset may also have influenced historians.

The small size of the Baltic Sea may also have played a part. In Norway, for comparison, the state controls aquatic areas six times the size of its terrestrial areas and fisheries constitute a much larger part of the economy than in any of the countries in the Baltic region.⁶⁰ Stronger incentives may thus exist there for developing marine environmental history as a field, which may explain why the seas around Norway and their institutions have been subject to several comprehensive studies.⁶¹ Within the Baltic region, marine environmental history has primarily developed in Denmark, perhaps also because of the geographical location, bordering the North Sea.⁶²

The scarcity of research about marine institutions and marine environmental history in Sweden is nevertheless remarkable. With the farthest-stretching coastline towards the Baltic Sea of all countries in the region, Sweden has played a key role in its environmental history, with comparatively strong incentives for using its natural resources as well as protecting it. Swedish scientists were the main driving forces behind the internationalization of marine scientific research in northern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, initiating the establishment of ICES in 1902. At this time, Swedish scientists were internationally renowned, and their methods for studying relations between fish fluctuations, climate and currents were influential in ICES for a significant time period.⁶³ More than half a century later, Swedish scientists were also at the forefront in discoveries of marine degradation in the Baltic Sea, while Swedish politicians were pushing for strengthened environmental protection of the Baltic.⁶⁴ Hence, histories of marine institutions in Sweden might contribute to explaining regional and international developments as well.

5. What environmental histories of the Baltic Sea might hold for the future

To date, the task of framing environmental problems and sustainability targets for the Baltic Sea has primarily been assigned to natural scientists and policy experts. Despite recent efforts to implement an ecosystem approach, including social dimensions, both management and research often remain focused on one or a few parameters at a time, usually centred around measurable targets in the physical environment.⁶⁵ In our time of environmental and climate challenges – in relation to the world at large as well as the Baltic Sea in particular – environmental history carries the capacity to widen people’s imagination to perceive marine environmental problems as not only scientific and technological but also historical, political and cultural.

Environmental historians can, for example, situate perspectives in contemporary marine governance and management.⁶⁶ Historical studies have revealed how a set of human activities – ranging from fishing to aquaculture, mining, dredging, logging and urbanization – have been major factors behind decline of Pacific salmon.⁶⁷ The unfolding of similar histories in the Baltic region could highlight what contemporary political and institutional strategies might gain from more overarching perspectives on how social and cultural driving forces can impact fish stocks and related conditions in the marine environment.

Marine environmental history can, moreover, provide long-term perspectives on broader processes of environmental change in contemporary times, as well as on the interaction between anthropogenic and natural driving forces of such changes. One of the most complex marine environmental problems to understand and combat in the Baltic Sea is eutrophication. Anthropogenic drivers of eutrophication processes have a long history, going back to the introduction of agriculture in the region. To a certain extent, it also has a predetermined future, as nutrients added in the past can be stored in bottom sediments to be released long after they were first added to the sea. This means that effects of improvements in treatment plants and regulation take time to show up; it may be centuries before some parts of the Baltic Sea recover from past emission. Historical perspectives could clarify these dimensions of temporal delay and displacement and their implications for management. Environmental historians could also contribute with overarching and long-term understanding of the social, cultural and ecological causes and effects of eutrophication, as well as examination of conflicting scientific and political narrations. Such histories could investigate, for example, to what extent Western marine scientific methods for actively increasing nutrients in unproductive sea areas reached the Baltic region, when and how attitudes towards marine water’s abilities to dilute waste added to them shifted, and to what extent environmental scientists, managers and other actors have thereafter evoked environmental policies on land-based sectors impacting the marine environment.⁶⁸ The role of the national fisheries agencies might hold a special place in this history, as we know they perceived open-sea eutrophication as beneficial to fisheries until the 1990s.⁶⁹

This broad field can also include research into national institutions that have produced knowledge as well as policies for the Baltic Sea, and identify potential cultural and organizational obstacles in contemporary marine management. Both nationally and internationally, marine and maritime management is rooted in a history of sectoral division. Although several efforts have been made to achieve cross-sector integration and coherent national marine policies, management is still largely marked by short-term interests and institutional fragmentation. Shipping and fisheries, for example, are ruled by respective legislations and their authorities are weakly equipped to enforce policies for environmental protection, while marine managers lack authority to implement environmental regulation on terrestrial activities with impact on marine areas.⁷⁰ Clarification of historical trajectories of Swedish institutions surrounding the Baltic Sea and the contemporary validity of their distribution of targets, tasks and responsibilities may inform suggestions for new ways to organize marine governance and management.

Histories of marine institutions located in other parts of the world may prove inspirational in this quest. Research has, for example, shown how several Western institutions managing and researching fish resources are rooted in a history of serving the interests of the fisheries industry to maximize profit, and how this has been an obstacle for research and management guided by sustainability targets and ecosystem knowledge. During the first half of the 20th century, such institutions aimed to strengthen national economies by improving the efficiency and scope of fisheries, including of fishing technologies. Research models were constructed for optimum catches, often based on the perception of the ocean as endless in resources, while a subordinated and often overlooked target was to investigate what caused overfishing.⁷¹ The perception of a static marine nature was only challenged by gradually rising environmental awareness after the Second World War, with new knowledge and perspectives on the complexities of ‘environmental change’. However, research conducted on conditions in Norway, for example, reveal that the implementation of sustainability frameworks and environmental consideration into existing management models was slow and remained second to economic consideration.⁷²

Looking to Sweden, the current overcapacity of the fisheries sector stems from a long history of policies aiming to rationalize fisheries. That this posture has prevailed in Sweden even through the crises of fisheries economics from the 1990s onwards has been explained by the close interlinkages between the Fisheries Board (later the Board of Fisheries) and the fisheries industry, through the National Association of Fishermen (Sveriges Fiskares Riksförbund), a relationship which goes back to their contemporaneous establishment in the late 1940s. In recent decades, especially following the rise in societal awareness of the environmental impact of fisheries in the 1990s, the association often successfully opposed proposals to protect species and establish marine protected areas.⁷³ Problems with overcapacity and implementation of ecosystem management for fisheries have, moreover, been explained by obstructing research and management models historically established to rationalize fisheries, such as the Total Allowable Catch System (TAC) and Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY).⁷⁴ However, there is a lack of studies addressing how research and management models in the Baltic region have been shaped by historically situated relations between scientists, the fisheries industry and civil servants, revealing the motives, economic priorities and scientific ideas that have driven human interactions with the Baltic.⁷⁵ Historical research into factors that impact how optimum resource use, sustainability management and marine protection have been viewed and balanced in the Baltic region, and how this has shaped marine management as well as Baltic environments, could inform targets for sustainable fisheries and marine ecosystems in the future.

Other lines of research for marine environmental history in the Baltic region could address distribution and conflicts around marine resources as well as exposure to environmental harms. This may include, for example, how social and cultural groups relying on the Baltic salmon (Salmo salar) as a source of nutrition, trade or tourism – like the Samis, the Tornedalians or inhabitants of rural coastal societies – have viewed and been impacted by overfishing, hydropower constructions, aquaculture strategies and other anthropogenic impacts on this species.⁷⁶ Emissions of waste and potential toxins and the reactions and exposure of different social groups to such hazards could be investigated.⁷⁷ Such histories could open for widened discussions of ethical implications of anthropogenic changes in the Baltic marine environment.

Improved understanding of the interdependent environmental history of the Baltic region and the Baltic Sea can reform contemporary narratives surrounding marine policy-making. For the past half-century, policy and public perceptions of the Baltic Sea, at least in Sweden, have been dominated and shaped by a narrative of decline, centred around pollution, toxic substances, eutrophication and overall environmental degradation. Detailed and itemized environmental histories could untangle how trends and developments of conditions in the Baltic Sea demonstrate several different trajectories, including also recovery and mitigation of ill effects.⁷⁸ This can challenge oversimplified narratives of decline, which may obscure how protective actions have improved conditions in the past, and therefore be counterproductive to incentives for vigorous action in the present. The Baltic region’s relationship with its marine component is considerably older and more entangled than the contemporary narrative of decline reflects. Transdisciplinary environmental histories of Baltic societies and marine ecologies would highlight the long-term history of human impact as well as dependence on Baltic marine resources. Both of these perspectives are important for framing future goals for Baltic Sea governance, as they highlight the extent to which the Baltic Sea is integrated with the societies surrounding it, and that how and to what end it should be managed is a question for regional citizens to debate and decide; there is no ‘natural’ state that may function as a baseline and goal for governance.

Acknowledgements

Johan Cederqvist is supported by a grant from the J. Gust. Richert Foundation (Grant Number 2018-00428). Susanna Lidström is supported by a Mobility Grant from the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (Grant Number 942-2015-1643). Sverker Sörlin is supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Grant Agreement No. 787516 for the project: “Study of the Planetary Human-Earth Relationship (SPHERE): The Rise of Global Environmental Governance” (the text reflects only the author’s views and the ERC is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Johan Cederqvist

Johan Cederqvist (corresponding author) holds a Master’s degree in History of Ideas and was hired for six months as a research engineer at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology to examine the current state-of-the-art of the environmental history of Sweden and the Baltic Sea and co-author a literature review on this topic. His research interests include marine environmental history and the history of green political ideas. Address: Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm SE-100 44, Sweden. [email: [email protected]]

Susanna Lidström

Susanna Lidström is a researcher at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Since 2015, she has been a visiting scholar at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego. Her research interests include environmental literature, environmental history and regional as well as international marine policy. Address: Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm SE-100 44, Sweden. [email: [email protected]]

Sverker Sörlin

Sverker Sörlin is a professor at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. His research interests include the history of environmental sciences, the modern science politics of climate change and the historical transformation of resource based industries. Address: Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm SE-100 44, Sweden. [email: [email protected]]

Henrik Svedäng

Henrik Svedäng is an associate professor at the Baltic Sea Centre, Stockholm University, and a scientific coordinator at the Swedish Institute for the Marine Environment (SIME), Gothenburg University. His research interests include marine fish ecology and population dynamics, history of fish populations, fisheries and their management. Address: Gothenburg University, Swedish Institute for the Marine Environment (SIME), Box 260, Göteborg SE-405 30, Sweden. [email: [email protected]]

Notes

1 Bolster, Opportunities, 572.

2 Bolster, Opportunities; Rozwadowski, Vast Expanses.

3 Armitage, Bashford, and Sivasundaram, Oceanic Histories; Bolster, Opportunities; Gillis and Torma, Fluid Frontiers; Rozwadowski, Vast Expanses; Schwerdtner Máñez and Poulsen, Perspectives.

4 Armitage, Bashford, and Sivasundaram, Oceanic Histories; Schwerdtner Máñez and Poulsen, Perspectives.

5 For further reading, see Bolster, Opportunities.

6 Rozwadowski, The Promise; Rozwadowski, The Sea.

7 McEvoy’s study on California fisheries, 1850–1980, published in 1986, is an often referred example of seminal work paving way for such research. See McEvoy, The Fisherman’s Problem.

8 E.g. Armitage, Bashford, and Sivasundaram, Oceanic Histories; Gillis and Torma, Fluid Frontiers; Poulsen, Global Marine Science; Rozwadowski, The Sea; Rozwadowski and van Keuren, The Machine; Rozwadowski, Vast Expanses; Schwerdtner Máñez and Poulsen, Perspectives. For historiographical perspectives on marine environmental history, see e.g. Bolster, Opportunities; Poulsen, “Marine Environmental History”.

9 Rozwadowski, Science.

10 See e.g. Laakkonen, “Waves”; Räsänen, “Alarmism”. Historians working in the field of maritime history have also highlighted limited historical knowledge of the importance of seas in Sweden’s history on a more general level. See Ekström and Müller, Angöringar; Müller and Lundblad, “Tema maritim historia”.

11 Laakkonen, “Beauty on the Water?”; Laakkonen, “Waves”.

12 E.g. Gerner, Karlsson, and Hammarlund, Nordens Medelhav; Hasslöf, “Svenska västkustfiskarna”; Hårdstedt, “Nordsjön och Östersjön”; Hinkkanen and Kirby, Baltic.

13 Pauly, “Anecdotes”.

14 E.g. Sterner and Svedäng, “A Net Loss”; Cardinale and Svedäng, “Mismanagement of Fisheries”; Eero, “Reconstructing”; Elmgren, Blenckner, and Andersson, “Baltic Sea Management”; Engelhard et al., “ICES”; Lade et al., “An Empirical Model”; Hentati-Sundberg, Sea Change; Ojaveer et al., “Swedish Baltic Sea Fisheries”.

15 Bolster, Opportunities, 579.

16 E.g. Grip, “Establishing Marine Protected Areas”; Grip, Marine Environmental Governance.

17 We limited our searches to studies in Swedish and English, assuming that no significant studies about the Swedish context in particular would have been published in another language and then not mentioned in any of the Swedish or English works we reviewed.

18 See “Detailed methodology” and “Thematic bibliography”, attached to the digital version of this review.

19 One notable exception is a study by Awebro of the governance of commercial fisheries 1745–1755. See Awebro, “Ett bottennapp för Sverige”.

20 Lundgren, Vattenförorening; see also Bernes and Lundgren, Bruk och missbruk.

21 Olsson, “The Struggle”.

22 Hallström, Constructing a Pipe-Bound City; Hallström, “Historical Perspectives”.

23 Löwgren, Hillmo, and Lohm, Water Pollution Perspectives; cf. Bernes and Lundgren, Bruk och missbruk.

24 Laakkonen, “Waves”.

25 Cf. Bernes and Lundgren, Bruk och missbruk.

26 Laakkonen, “Waves”.

27 Laakkonen, “Beauty”.

28 Bernes and Lundgren, Bruk och missbruk; Laakkonen, “Waves”.

29 Löwgren, Hillmo, and Lohm, Water Pollution Perspectives; cf. Bernes and Lundgren, Bruk och missbruk.

30 Mårald, “Environmental History”.

31 Wråkberg, “Om djuphavets gåvor”. The first Swedish research project aiming to understand the chemical and physical composition of the entire Baltic Sea was conducted in 1877 by Fredrik Laurentz Ekman, a chemist at the Technological Institute in Stockholm. For a description of knowledge developments within marine sciences around this time, see Nornvall, Svensk havsforskning.

32 Ibid.

33 Nornvall, “Reasons for Marine Science”; Nornvall, Svensk havsforskning.

34 Eriksson, Kartläggarna.

35 Söderqvist, The Ecologists, 60. In this context it should also be mentioned that research has been carried out on the inheritance of academic positions within oceanographic institutions in the early twentieth century. See Bergwik, “Father”.

36 Räsänen, “Converging Environmental Knowledge”; Räsänen, “Alarmism”.

37 Räsänen, “Converging Environmental Knowledge”.

38 Räsänen, “Alarmism”.

39 Löwgren, Hillmo, and Lohm, Water Pollution Perspectives. For the role of medical experts and fisheries inspectors, see also e.g. Lundgren, Vattenförorening; Laakkonen, “Waves”; Olsson, “The Struggle”.

40 The leading role of the Askö Laboratory, a Stockholm University field station in the Trosa archipelago established in 1961, when ecosystem research was institutionalized in Sweden, has been highlighted by Söderqvist as well as, later, by Tunlid. See Tunlid, “The Askö Laboratory”. Tunlid’s study also reveals that the striving for a comprehensive understanding of Baltic ecosystems within the Baltic Ecosystem Project fostered international, collaborative and transdisciplinary research.

41 Bernes and Lundgren, Bruk och missbruk.

42 Räsänen and Laakkonen, “Cold War and the Environment”.

43 Larsen, “Scaling the Baltic Sea”.

44 Hjorth, Building International Institutions; Hjorth, “Baltic Sea Environmental Cooperation”.

45 Valman, “Institutional Stability”; Valman, Three Faces of HELCOM; Valman, Duit, and Blenckner, “Organizational Responsiveness”.

46 See e.g. Hallström, “Historical Perspectives”; Laakkonen, “Waves”; Olsson “The Struggle”.

47 For research about the institutional history of coastal use, see Segrell, Den attraktiva kusten.

48 E.g. Ackefors, Lindquist, and Svansson, 100 years of ICES; Fonselius, “History of Hydrographic Research”; Svansson, Otto Pettersson; Ask and Westerberg, Staten och fisket; Ask, Gustavsson, and Westerberg, Varför har fiskeförvaltningen.

49 E.g. Sörlin, Framtidslandet; Östlund, Exploitation; Jakobsson, Industrialisering av älvar; Mårald, I mötet; Mårald, Jordens kretslopp; Eliasson, Skog, makt och människor; Lisberg Jensen, Som man ropar; Antonsson and Jansson, Jordbruk och skogsbruk.

50 Laakkonen, “Waves”; Holm, “Commercial Sea Fisheries”; Räsänen, “Alarmism”.

51 E.g. Engberg, Det heles vel; Laakkonen and Laurila, “The History”; Leino-Kaukianien, “Cleaning”; Finni, Laurila, and Laakkonen, “The History”. Similar conclusions have been drawn by Laakkonen, “Waves”; Räsänen, “Alarmism”.

52 E.g. Nyhart, “Civic and Economic Zoology”; Räsänen, “Alarmism”.

53 E.g. Lajus, Ojaveer, and Tammiksaar, “Fisheries”; Lajus, Kraikovski, and Lajus, “Coastal Fisheries”; Tüür and Stern, “Atlantic Herring”; Holm, “Commercial Sea Fisheries”; Søndergaard and Schwach, “The Nordic Shrimp Industry”.

54 Räsänen, Itämeren ympäristökriisi; see also Räsänen, “Engendering an Environmental Crisis”.

55 Bager and Holm, “Havet som forskningsfelt”; Räsänen, “Converging Environmental Knowledge”; Laakkonen, “Waves”; Valman, Three Faces of HELCOM; Räsänen, “Alarmism”; Räsänen and Laakkonen, “Cold War and the Environment”.

56 Räsänen and Laakkonen, “Cold War and the Environment”.

57 Laakkonen, “Waves”.

58 Jørgensen et al., “Entangled Environments”; Neunsinger, “Cross-over!”.

59 Duit, “Understanding Environmental Performance”; Hjorth, “Baltic Sea Environmental Cooperation”.

60 Harvard, “Det nya Norden”; Bager and Holm, “Havet som forskningsfelt”.

61 E.g. Christensen, “Fiskeriorganisasjonens plass”; Schwach, Havet, fisken og vitenskapen; Schwach, “An Eye into the Sea”; Schwach, The Sea Around Norway; Schwach, “A Sea Change”; Schwach, Til havs med vitenskapen; Grytås, Motmakt og samfunnsbygger.

62 See e.g. Holm, Byskov, and Hansen, Proteiner fra havet; Poulsen, Fiskeri, forskning og forvaltning; Poulsen, An Environmental History; Poulsen, Dutch Herring; Poulsen, Global Marine Science; Holm “Commercial Sea Fisheries”.

63 Nornvall, Svensk havsforksning.

64 Räsänen, “Converging Environmental Knowledge”; Räsänen, “Alarmism”; Hjorth, Building International Institutions.

65 Cf. Valman, Three Faces of HELCOM; Gilek et al., Environmental Governance; Österblom et al., “Tinkering with a Tanker”; Pedersen et al., “Trends in Marine Climate Change”.

66 Bolster, “Opportunities in Marine Environmental History”.

67 Cf. Taylor, Making Salmon.

68 Cf. Rozwadowski, The Sea; Räsänen, “Alarmism”.

69 Elmgren, “Understanding Human Impact”.

70 Gilek et al., Environmental Governance; Grip, “International Marine Environmental Governance”; Österblom et al., “Tinkering with a Tanker”.

71 E.g. Finley, All the Fish; Schwach, “The Sea Around Norway”; Schwach, “A Sea Change”; Hubbard, “In the Wake”.

72 Schwach, “The Sea Around Norway”.

73 Hasselberg, “Mål och makt”; Elmgren, “Understanding Human Impact”; Grip, “Establishing Marine Protected Areas”; Bernes and Lundgren, Bruk och missbruk; Lövin, Tyst hav; Österblom et al., “Tinkering with a Tanker”.

74 Gilek et al., Environmental Governance.

75 Cf. Schwach, “The Sea Around Norway”.

76 Bernes and Lundgren, Bruk och missbruk; cf. Taylor, Making Salmon.

77 Cf. Nixon, Slow Violence; Langston, Toxic Bodies.

78 Lidström, Sörlin, and Svedäng, “Decline and Diversity”.