The research and educational projects promoted by the HfE Circumpolar Observatory aim to increase scientific and scholarly understanding of how human communities have responded in the past to extreme environmental events and variability, while also working to better understand these challenges as they unfold in the present, so that a fuller archive of knowledge can be mobilized for the benefit of human and non-human communities in the future.
Bifrost Online is an international, open-access channel promoting education for sustainability and climate change awareness.
ICECHANGE undertakes a systematic analysis of descriptions of the natural world drawn from the literature and history of Iceland for the period ca. AD 800-1800.
The North Atlantic Marine Mammal Project (NSF # 1503714, Assessing the Distribution and Variability of Marine Mammals through Archaeology, Ancient DNA, and History in the North Atlantic) uses the transdisciplinary tools of history, saga studies, archaeology, ancient DNA (aDNA), and marine mammalogy to reconstruct economic contributions of cetaceans and pinnipeds across premodern Iceland, Greenland, North America, and Orkney, ca. 800 – 1500 CE.
In 1909 a balloonist photographed the Mer de Glace in the Alps from the air, creating a uniquely detailed visual record of the glacier.
The observatory coordinates projects and activities closely with NIES (The Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies), NABO (The North Atlantic Biocultural Organisation), GHEA (The Global Human Ecodynamics Alliance), Future Earth and IHOPE (The Integrated History and Future of People on Earth), in particular the IHOPE subprojects Circumpolar Networks and Global Environmental Change Threats to Heritage and Long Term Observing Networks of the Past.
Global Humanities Projects
Global Humanities Affiliates
Global Humanities Partners