Thorkel Farserk Goes for a Swim: Climate Change, the Medieval Optimum, and the Perils of Amateurism
Thorkel Farserk Goes for a Swim: Climate Change, the Medieval Optimum, and the Perils of Amateurism
This chapter examines the role of amateurism in shaping scholarly, popular, and political representations of the Medieval Optimum, a centuries-long warming era prior to the early modern period. Beginning with an Icelandic account in the Landnámabók of a swim by Thorkel Farserk across a frigid fjord, an account that played an important role in Hubert Lamb’s development of the science of paleoclimatology, the chapter goes on to survey a wide variety of materials relating to the use and abuse of the Medieval Warm Period in subsequent decades, from United Nations climate reports and scientific articles to home school curricula and congressional debates.
Keywords: Medieval Optimum, Medieval Warm Period, Hubert Lamb, amateurism, Landnámabók, Thorkel Farserk, paleoclimatology, medievalism
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