Climate and Environmental History Seminar: Benjamin Schmidt (University of Washington)
Skating Through Climate Change: Ice, Snow, and Patria in the Little Ice Age
Seminar
Date:
Wednesday 11 June 2025Time:
15.00 – 17.00Location:
Department of History, room D900 and on Zoom.
Hendrick Avercamp, Enjoying the Ice Near a Town (c. 1620), oil on canvas, 47 x 89 cm (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam [on loan from private collectors]).
Abstract
The climax of the Little Ice Age overlapped with a European revolution in media, which afforded new ways to describe, represent, and picture—in short, to see—the effects of climate change.
This talk, which derives from a larger cultural history of the Little Ice Age, revisits winter scenes painted (and printed) in the early modern Netherlands. It proposes that Dutch images of the bitter cold conditions of seventeenth century not only reflect the experience of climate change but also demonstrate the Dutch capacity to assimilate, domesticate, and even celebrate the frigid conditions of northwest Europe.
Cold and winter are branded as Dutch—they are essential components of the landscape of patria.
About the presenter
Benjamin Schmidt is the Jon Bridgman Endowed Professor in History at University of Washington, Seattle. His publications include The Globalization of Netherlandish Art (with Thijs Weststeijn, 2024) and Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World (2015).
About the seminar
Conveners: Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist (Stockholm University), Charlotta Forss (Södertörn University), and Martin Skoglund (Stockholm University).
Commentator: Cecilia Sjöholm, Södertörn University
Zoom link:https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/63456175050
For information about the seminar, e-mail: fredrik.c.l@historia.su.se
Last updated: 2025-05-25
Source: Department of History