The timber frontier of Northern Sweden: a history of ecological and social transformation

Sweden is one of the largest timber exporters in Europe. The
country has been an exporter since at least the early modern
period. That is not surprising because pine and spruce forests
cover large parts of northern Sweden. These forests are part of
the single largest land biome on earth, stretching along the pole
circle of Eurasia and North America: the taiga


Not that long ago, the forests of northern Sweden were almost
untouched by human hands. That changed during the 19thcentury
when a timber frontier moved across northern Sweden, driven by
the demand for wood in the industrialising countries of Europe.
The timber frontier forged changes across the forests of northern
Sweden, not in the least the construction of tens of thousands of
kilometres of floatways. This transformed not only the ecological
structure of the forests, but also the social and economic
dynamics of Sweden and shaped the modern country that we see
today.


Erik Törnlund is a forest historian who studied the
transformation of the forests in northern Sweden and the
development of the floatway system. On this episode of the
podcast Erik examines the Swedish timber frontier and the
associated environmental, economic and social transformations
that have occurred in Sweden since the 19thcentury.