Northern Nordic Research Articles

Heritage with cows. Conserving Nordic human and nonhuman animals

ABSTRACT This paper takes a critical heritage approach to understanding the ways that the conservation of Nordic Mountain cows gets animated as a form of Nordic heritage. Today, Nordic Mountain cows are found in the Northern regions of Norway, Finland, and Sweden. Based on an archive of mediated material (websites, YouTube videos, and social media activism), policy documents as well as interviews with Nordic farm animal genetic resources directors, the paper analyzes how conservation becomes imagined. Viewing the conservation of Nordic Mountain cows as entangled with imaginaries of traditional ways of life, a Northern Nordic (endangered) landscape, and the potential for high quality, ethically sound Nordic heritage products; conservation gets imagined as a rescue technology preserving ‘native’ and ‘endangered’ breeds in the making of sustainable consumer goods and Nordic cultural heritage. The conservation of Nordic Mountain cows goes beyond the potentially endangered species, however, to the reiteration of Nordic exceptionalism and the promise of a pure (and white) Nordic biocultural refuge of human-nonhuman animal relations.

Eddies and the Distribution of Eddy Kinetic Energy in the Arctic Ocean

Mesoscale eddies are important to many aspects of the dynamics of the Arctic Ocean. Among others, they maintain the halocline and interact with the Atlantic Water circumpolar boundary current through lateral eddy fluxes and shelf-basin exchanges. Mesoscale eddies are also important for transporting biological material and for modifying sea ice distribution. Here, we review what is known about eddies and their impacts in the Arctic Ocean in the context of rapid climate change. Eddy kinetic energy (EKE) is a proxy for mesoscale variability in the ocean due to eddies. We present the first quantification of EKE from moored observations across the entire Arctic Ocean and compare those results to output from an eddy resolving numerical model. We show that EKE is largest in the northern Nordic Seas/Fram Strait and it is also elevated along the shelf break of the Arctic Circumpolar Boundary Current, especially in the Beaufort Sea. In the central basins, EKE is 100–1,000 times lower. Generally, EKE is stronger when sea ice concentration is low versus times of dense ice cover. As sea ice declines, we anticipate that areas in the Arctic Ocean where conditions typical of the North Atlantic and North Pacific prevail will increase. We conclude that the future Arctic Ocean will feature more energetic mesoscale variability.

Interannual variability in the 1990s in the northern Atlantic and Nordic Seas

A global fine resolution curvilinear ocean model, forced by NCEP Re-Analysis fluxes, is used to study changes in the circulation of the Nordic Seas and surrounding ocean basins during 1994–2001. The model fields exhibit regionally distinct temporal variability, mostly determined by atmospheric forcing but in regions of significant sea-ice longer timescale variability is found. Some abrupt circulation changes accompany the relaxation of the westerlies following the peak North Atlantic Oscillation Index phase of the mid 1990s. The Greenland gyre spins up over the following years, with the increased circulation partially exiting through the Denmark Strait into the northern Atlantic as well as re-circulating within the Nordic Seas. This resulted in a distinct freshening around northern Iceland and an increase in the East Icelandic Current. However, these latter increases steadied after 1998, as the increased Greenland Sea gyre circulation led to a greater proportion of water leaving through the Denmark Strait...