Module Content and Indicative Topics

What is a landscape? How have conceptions of landscape been perceived, represented, modified and moderated in western European traditions, and in the Nordic region specifically? And further, what is the function of landscape/s today, and how have traditions of landscape and landscape perception influenced life in the Nordic region as it is constructed and lived today?

These are the question this module aims to ask as it takes as its starting point that any landscape never just is, but is continuously appropriated by inhabitants and observers though various agency, communicated and negotiated through art, literature, film, and music, as well as through activities such as tourism, policy making and general inhabitation. Grounding its analyses in key landscape theories, the module looks at examples of landscape from historical through to urban landscapes, and from romantic and national landscapes through to today’s environmental and global awareness, making use of a wide variety of possible texts – genres as diverse as literary texts, tourist brochures, paintings, films, monuments and music may all feature among other material. The module aims to consider both the physical space and mental concepts of landscape in the Nordic region, tracing representations of and rhetoric around landscape across times and regions. We will work with theoretical concepts used in landscape study and cultural geography, and exemplify them in concrete and local examples through written, visual, and aural texts, aiming to gain an understanding of not only the different approaches to the Nordic landscapes that exist and have existed, but also how these evolved and what impact they have had and still have today.

The module welcomes students from a diverse range of disciplines and programmes: Nordic pre-knowledge is not required and the module aims to be an introduction to landscape studies in general while drawing its case-studies primarily from the Nordic region.