Historic seascape characterisation and the North Atlantic

Abstract

In this chapter, the North Atlantic is explored through the lens of historic seascape characterisation principles. While there is an explicit focus on Viking, or Norse, lands and sea spaces, it looks at time less specifically and instead examines the past and the present. The North Atlantic area in this chapter lies between the land masses of Iceland and Greenland, the Northern Isles (Orkney and Shetland) and the East of England. And through three case studies in each of these areas, historic seascape characterisation principles, as well as Historic Seascape Characterisation method, human-marine relations are problematised. The sea, far from a passive backdrop, or somehow apart from human culture, is considered to be highly active in shaping cultural responses, and in which there are clear examples of collaboration. But the challenge that is asked and addressed in this chapter is to develop ideas and practices that retain the sense of collaboration and togetherness that existed in the past between nature and culture, as well as sea and land, and to examine the sea at the heart of the North Atlantic culture.