Finsk Ph.D. ritgerð um føroysk og grønlendsk viðurskifti

Lotta Numminen frá Deildini fyri Geografi við Universitetið í Helsinki vardi 14. mai 2010 Ph.D. ritgerð sína við heitinum: "The interplays of histories, economies and cultures in human adaptation and settlement patterns: the cases of the Faroe Islands and Greenland."

Markku Löytönen, professari, hevur verið vegleiðari. Lotta Numminen hevur í fleiri umførum verið í Føroyum og Grønlandi í sambandi við gransking sína.

Í innganginum skrivar Lotta Numinnen, at ritgerðin er ein kanning av, hvussu tvey samfeløg í Norði gjøgnum tíðinar hava møtt avbjóðingunum, sum eru komnar av samspælinum millum broytingar á umhvørvisøkinum, politiska økinum og socio-økonomiska økinum. Serligu dentur er á búsetingsetingarmynstur og tilpassing í hesum sambandi.

Ritgerðin, sum er skrivað á enskum, er tøk á netinum í PDF

Les um Lotta Nimminen her.


Enskur samandráttur:
This doctoral dissertation is an investigation into how two northern societies, the Faroe Islands and Greenland, have responded to challenges caused by the interplay of environmental, political, and socioeconomic changes throughout history. Its main contribution is that, in addition to recounting narratives of human adaptation, it shows how adaptation has been connected with the development of the settlementpattern in the two societies.

Adaptation affecting certain characteristics in settlement patterns of the earliest Norse societies in the Faroe Islands and Greenland included new land management practices, changes in livestock composition and diversified subsistence activities. The character of the adaptation was “learning-by-doing”.

Before the 20th century, adaptation of the Inuit to Greenland consisted of both short-term responses, such as shifts between settlement sites and mobility, and long-term strategies, including new hunting techniques and well-defined societal rules and practices. Temperature rise during the early 1900s spurred an economic transition from seal hunting to cod fi shing, which led to the concentration of people in the large settlements of West Greenland. This concentration was reinforced by Danish settlement policies in the 1950s and 1960s. In South Greenland, where sheep-rearing was the main economic activity, the settlements were smaller and located in a more scattered manner. In North and East Greenland the settlement pattern remained dispersed because seal hunting required a larger radius of action. In the 1970s and 1980s, cooling of sea temperatures led to a decline in cod stocks. Thus shrimp fishing replaced cod, which also meant a shift from in-shore to off-shore fishing, which together with settlement policies of the Home Rule caused increasing centralization of Greenlandic population in the fishing towns of West Greenland. At the present, there is an on-going process of diversification in Greenland’s economy, which seems to give some settlements located close to the new resources a more active role in the economy, leading to an increase in their population.

In the Faroe Islands, the settlement pattern was initially dictated by the dominant economic activity,sheep-rearing, which led to a dispersed settlement that reflected the importance of land laws and land management systems. The economic transition from a farming society to fishing nation began in the 18th century. Several factors played a role in the transition: population growth, favourable market conditions, large number of natural capital (fish stocks), production skills, and somewhat later, industrialization in other countries. Fishing was conducted predominantly from rowing boats in in-shore areas in the 1800s,and villages located at sites with good landing opportunities had remarkable population growth. The industrialization of fishing in the late 1800s and early 1900s caused a concentration of population in the largest fishing settlements and in the capital Tórshavn. The modern Faroese society suffered economic crises in the 1950s and the 1990s, which were caused by a major decline in fish catches and problems of profitability. The crises caused massive migration abroad and enforced the previous migration trends.

Globalization has been the central development affecting the settlement pattern development of the two societies since the early 2000s. Migration of young people, especially women, from smallest villages to bigger settlements or abroad has increased. This new trend can not be explained by previous developments but indicates that the northern societies, the Faroe Islands and Greenland, are closely integrated in the worldwide systems.