By Northern Lights: On the Making of Geography in Sweden

Swedish society has recurrently shown a keen geographical sense, meticulously documenting all matters relating to environments, resources and human activities through space and time from the sixteenth century on. Throughout the twentieth century in particular, Sweden won international acclaim for its groundbreaking geographic work on spatial planning, climate change, time-space modelling and landscape history by the likes of Ahlmann, De Geer, Enequist, Hägerstrand, Kant, Olsson and William-Olsson. More recently, with the rising tide of post modernity and multiple processes of globalization, there has been a good deal of debate about novel lines of enquiry into nature and culture, issues of gender, identity and diversity, justice and environmental concern; all of these have sparked a renewed interest in the history and philosophy of the field. Following on from Anne Buttimer's renowned Geography and the Human Spirit, this book not only offers the first book length contextual account of the development of geographic thought in Sweden, but also provides a narrative thread which traces continuity and change in both cognitive styles and professional practices of geography in general.

Anne Buttimer is Professor Emeritus of Geography at University College Dublin, Ireland, and has previously held research and teaching positions in Belgium, Canada, France, Scotland, Sweden and the USA. She was invited to Sweden first in 1973 and her interactions with Swedish colleagues continue to this day. She was Visiting Fulbright Professor of Social Ecology at Lund University in 1976 and was full-time researcher there during 1977-1979 and 1982-1988. Tom Mels studied human geography and environmental science at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. He completed his doctoral thesis at Lund University in 1999 and is currently a lecturer of human geography at the University of Kalmar, Sweden. In the academic year 2001-2002, he visited the Geography Department at University College Dublin for post-doctoral research. His research interests include critical geographies of landscape and nature.