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- Convenors:
-
Áki Guðni Karlsson
(University of Iceland)
Amy Skillman (Goucher College)
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Short Abstract
To brave the elements or be caught in a natural disaster: to outrun the wildfires or the flood; to be caught in a storm, in the mountains or out at sea, make a narrow escape and live to tell the tale. We explore disaster narratives, tales of life-threatening situations and fierce nature.
Long Abstract
A classic literary and journalistic genre, as well as an important feature of everyday storytelling, disaster narratives convey an understanding, a moral reassurance, and a sense of being able to survive when faced with our deepest fears. At a time when weather events are becoming more extreme, our awareness of nature is heightened, and our stories offer insights into our that relationship. They can affirm previously unrecognized embodied knowledge or confirm the embodiment of new knowledge. They can also be a coping or healing strategy, turning personal traumatic experiences into a good story for the right crowd. Sometimes honed through repeated retellings as both first- and third-person narratives, disaster narratives tell of people taking high-stakes risks when dealing with the elements, and many have a formative event where the sense of identity of the heroine is irrevocably changed through the experience. The narratives help us articulate and understand our own relationship to risk-taking, and they express an identity forged by a personal experience of risk and danger. In the telling, disaster narratives may also redefine our relationship to nature and offer new ways of addressing fear of disaster in all its forms. We invite contributions about disaster tales, danger narratives, and stories of life-threatening risks, in any shape, form or context, whether in natural or man-made calamity situations.
Accepted papers
Session 1 Saturday 13 June, 2026, -Paper short abstract
Exploring unnatural disaster in George Griffith’s (1898) and Emilio Salgari’s (1907) turn-of-the-twentieth-century tales, this paper contrasts a British dystopian warning against capitalist hubris with an Italian ambivalent fantasy of technological mastery.
Paper long abstract
This paper contrasts two visions of technological risk from the turn of the twentieth century: George Griffith’s “A Corner in Lightning” (1898) and Emilio Salgari’s Le meraviglie del 2000 (1907, The Wonders of the Year 2000). This comparative and transnational analysis reveals how fin-de-siècle anxieties were filtered through distinct national contexts, yielding a dystopian warning from industrial Britain, alongside an ambivalent fantasy of mastery from a recently unified Italy, still forging its modern identity.
Griffith’s story depicts technological risk as a hubristic gamble that results in a global disaster: a capitalist’s scheme to monopolize the Earth’s natural supply of electricity leads to a catastrophic climate collapse, framing nature as a punitive and violent force. By contrast, Salgari’s work presents a more nuanced and prophetic vision. While it celebrates technological hegemony, depicting a future society that confidently manages both theoretical planetary threats and immediate natural challenges, its optimism is undermined by the unforeseen psychological consequences of this very progress: the 19th century protagonists are awakened into the hyper-electrified environment of 2003 that might eventually drive all of humanity mad.
By comparing Griffith and Salgari’s narratives, this paper argues that early SF was already articulating profoundly ambivalent attitudes towards techno-capitalistic progress. Griffith warns of an apocalypse born of greed, while Salgari foreshadows a disaster unwittingly born of success itself. Together they offer a complex premonition of modernity’s tangled relationship with technology, revealing how narratives of risk fundamentally redefine the boundaries between human ambitions and the natural world.
Paper short abstract
Speculative literature explores the nature/culture divide and ecological decline. French dystopian novels of the 19th and 20th centuries depict degraded landscapes as signs of crisis, linking entropy and anthropisation, critiquing unchecked ambitions, and hinting at possible future solutions.
Paper long abstract
Speculative literature deeply engages with the nature/culture divide and the ecological consequences of the Anthropocene. Although recent scholarship has identified climate fiction and ecofiction as genres that address these issues, futuristic fiction had already explored them long before science fiction emerged. Within this tradition, many works adopt a dystopian approach, depicting communities in decline where the state of the natural environment is a key indicator of social breakdown. Degraded or vanishing landscapes often signal worsening conditions.
This “dysphoric poetics” of landscape manifests in multiple ways. Souvestre’s Le Monde tel qu’il sera (1846) envisages hygienic urban planning, Verne’s Les Cinq Cents Millions de la Bégum (1879) denounces industrial devastation, and Chousy’s Ignis (1883) illustrates the economic exploitation of natural energies. Farrère’s Les Condamnés à mort (1921) depicts forced urbanisation under social Darwinism, Barjavel’s Ravage (1943) portrays survival after catastrophe outside the city, and Langlais’s L’Île sous cloche (1946) illustrates unintended consequences of eugenic excess. Entropy and anthropisation appear intrinsically connected across these narratives, leaving the landscape as a fragile remnant of unchecked collective ambition.
The central hypothesis is that such representations of altered natural spaces occupy a structural role in dystopian fiction. By depicting hostile or degraded environments, these works deliberately cultivate anxiety to critique, satirise or caricature their sociocultural contexts. This paper offers a cross-sectional analysis of French dystopian novels from the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on their depiction of anthropised landscapes and on solutions for the future discernible from these worst-case scenarios where nature is mistreated and endangered.
Paper short abstract
Secondary catastrophic narratives unfold from some online transhumanist users: dystopian futures tied to AI and the Singularity, fears of marginalization, salvation through destruction. Nature and climate change emerge as both backdrop and protagonists in hybrid scenarios between real and virtual.
Paper long abstract
How captivating can a story be when it involves the narration of a disaster, even on a global scale? This paper is based on a research conducted through a netnographic study of social channels related to transhumanism. The research revealed some secondary aspects: narratives of catastrophe linked to technological development and AI, highlighting a dimension where concrete and physical possibilities (or dangers) emerge for humanity as it evolves toward its final stage – sometimes envisioned in the narrative of the Singularity – highlighting the marginalization of the individual, who risks becoming trapped within their own narrative. These scenarios include dystopian or catastrophic futures in which AI could become a tool for saving humanity, Earth, and Nature by means of humanity's own destruction (rather than salvation).
These narratives reveal a perception of danger that is more accurately described as a drift or a loss of reference in contemporary times, which becomes a threat to a future where the real risk lies in predictions not coming true: exposing conspiracy theories that don’t exist or yet another delay in the arrival of the Singularity.
In the background, yet the true protagonist, is Nature. the setting where these stories of trauma and disaster unfold. These accounts transition from the virtual world into our contemporary reality. Extreme climate changes and nature's demands become foundational elements for disaster narratives, where climatic, sociopolitical, economic, and ontological references complete a sometimes alienated and alienating scenario: in which the dichotomies online/offline, real/virtual and natural/artificial fade in a while.
Paper short abstract
This study explores how boundary violations between human, nature and the supernatural in the legends of Turkish world link sacred or cursed places, taboos, and rituals to disasters, highlighting their role in shaping identity and ecological memory.
Paper long abstract
Every society, much like individuals, constructs boundaries between itself and the external world in order to sustain harmony in physical and spiritual life. These boundaries regulate relations with the “other”—whether other communities, nature, or the supernatural. In the ancient Turkish belief system, such boundaries are guarded by "Tengri Bayülgen" and the "yer-su"(earth) spirits entrusted with protecting the earth. Within this system, transgressions of sacred rules—such as entering forbidden places, violating taboos, or neglecting ritual obligations—are not regarded as mere individual faults but as collective threats, believed to cause disasters that affect the entire community.
This paper examines how these boundary transgressions are narrated in the disaster legends of the Turkish World and how they are dramatized within cultural memory. Legends of earthquakes, floods, droughts, etc. not only as accounts of unusual natural events but also as moral commentaries on broken boundaries between the human, natural, and supernatural domains. These narratives operate in two significant ways. On the one hand, they delineate identity and belonging by reinforcing the distinction between “us” and “the other.” On the other hand, they serve as ecological warning systems, transmitting behavioral norms that protect natural resources: do not pollute sacred waters, do not cut the forest, respect the silence of the mountain.
By analyzing these legends, the paper shows how the threat of supernatural punishment shapes human–nature relations, reinforces social order, and contributes to ecological awareness in the cultural memory of the Turkish World.
Paper short abstract
This study explores the role of women in the disaster legends of the Turkic World, analyzing the construction of female identity through Eagly’s Social Role Theory and a feminist perspective, revealing its cultural reflections, impact on society, and the gender-based challenges faced by women.
Paper long abstract
Every society develops gender stereotypes concerning the roles of women and men, defining the differences between the sexes at the social level. Within gender theory, these differences are largely explained by the Social Role Theory, which highlights the function of gender roles defined by society and taught to individuals in maintaining the continuity of the social order. An important means of transmitting these norms across generations is folk narratives, which serve as a significant cultural tool, enabling individuals to internalize social norms and adapt to them. This study focuses on the disaster legends of the Turkic World, which stand out for fulfilling this function. Based on Eagly’s gender theory within the Social Role Theory framework and adopting a feminist perspective, it examines the construction of female identity in these legends, its cultural reflections, and its impact on contemporary society. Legends, which gain meaning within the cultural and social contexts of the societies that produce them, act as powerful instruments for conveying the roles attributed to women and men and transmitting the behavioral patterns societies intend to perpetuate. Characterized by their claim to reality, their association with specific places and times, and their strong elements of belief, these legends are not merely remnants of the past; they play a crucial role in shaping contemporary social values and behavioral patterns. Accordingly, this study reveals how disaster legends in the Turkic World reflect historical gender stereotypes, demonstrate the social construction of female gender, and highlight the gender-based challenges faced by women.
Paper short abstract
The Grímseyjarvísur (Grímsey Verses) from ca. 1632–1634 recount the events of an ill-fated ocean crossing between the remote island community of Grímsey and the Icelandic mainland. This paper examines them as the earliest known Icelandic poem to give a detailed first-hand account of disaster at sea.
Paper long abstract
Icelandic poet and parson Guðmundur Erlendsson (c. 1595–1670) was sent in disgrace to the isolated fishing community of Grímsey following a drunken quarrel in 1631. He authored several poems describing his experiences on the tiny island, which in his day could be reached from the mainland only by rowing across the open ocean in a precariously small boat. His Grímseyjarvísur (Grímsey Verses) from ca. 1632–1634 recount the events of one such crossing, which proved nearly fatal for the entire crew, including the poet himself.
Guðmundur Erlendsson was no stranger to calamity, and his poetry serves as a chronicle of the horrors of the seventeenth century from the perspective of an inquisitive rural minister on the periphery of Europe: smallpox and measles epidemics, the 1627 slave raid on the Westman Islands, a catastrophic earthquake in Italy, bitter religious conflicts in mainland Europe, the English Civil War and the execution of King Charles I of England. In this paper, I argue that Guðmundur Erlendsson rejects the battles of saga-heroes and monsters in favour of the human struggle for survival in a hostile environment at world’s end. In Grímseyjarvísur, he offers his audience an innovative first-person account of seafaring at its most dangerous. Heavily influenced by the language of disaster ballads, his poem served as an inspiration and a model for later generations of Icelandic poets to tell the stories of ordinary Icelanders forced to face the seas at their most terrifying.
Paper short abstract
What remains when landscapes burn? This paper examines online poetry as a form of collective memory after the 2025 wildfires in Greece, showing how Facebook became a "digital memorial square" where grief and solidarity transformed catastrophe into cultural continuity.
Paper long abstract
Natural disasters do not only destroy material landscapes. They also reconfigure the symbolic terrain of memory, grief and expression. Poetry, as one of the most enduring forms of cultural articulation, often emerges in the aftermath of catastrophe as a vehicle for collective remembrance and a means of giving voice to the unspeakable. This paper explores the role of poetry in shaping and sustaining collective memory after disaster, focusing on its intersections with folklore, ritual lament and digital culture.
The case study centers on the wildfires of 2025 in Greece, which sparked an outpouring of poetic responses on social media, particularly on Facebook. In these digital spaces, users shared verses, ranging from personal laments and improvised rhymes to adaptations of traditional mourning tropes that circulated rapidly within communities and across networks. These texts functioned as both individual acts of mourning and collective gestures of solidarity.
By analyzing selected posts, this paper demonstrates how Facebook acted as a contemporary mnemonic site, a "digital memorial square" where grief, protest and remembrance converged. Poetry, in this context, does not remain confined to aesthetic appreciation but becomes a vital cultural practice that bridges personal trauma and collective memory.
Methodologically, the paper proposes reading digital texts on Facebook after disasters not only as literary texts but also as ethnographic evidence, traces of how communities narrate, negotiate and endure loss. In doing so, it positions poetry as a dynamic folkloric response that transforms catastrophe into memory and memory into cultural continuity.
Paper short abstract
Imbued with legend, sea storms are liminal moments of uncertainty, except that change is inevitable. Drawing on the narratives of women sea captains who have faced storms and wrestled with fear, this paper explores the role of agency in storytelling to sustain identity and share embodied knowledge.
Paper long abstract
A key element of any day on the water for a sailor is the storytelling that takes place after the boats have returned to port. Having been at sea, sometimes for days, in the elements, the safe return is nothing more than the culmination of the stories that got you there. The storm story is central to the genre of sea-going tales. These are stories about facing fear in heightened weather conditions. They demonstrate a sailor’s resilience, competence, humility, and, most importantly, their ability to adapt and learn. They reinforce membership in the community of sailors. It is the Fresnel lens that illuminates the essence of the broader experience and who you are, as a sailor. But they also reinforce our relationship to the elements. Literary scholar Camilla Brudin Borg argues that our stories are co-created with nature and place as a way of mapping our lives onto the ancient myths and legends already a part of the landscape.
Storms at sea are imbued with legend. They are also liminal moments with much uncertainty except that you will be a different person on the other side. Such times test our values and sense of self. They push us into new and often unknown realms of risk-taking. We struggle to balance risk and safety. Drawing on the narratives of women sea captains who have faced storms and wrestled with fear, this paper explores the role of agency in storytelling to sustain our sense of identity and share embodied knowledge.
Paper short abstract
A snow avalanche struck the farm Goðdalur in Strandir 1948, killing six and leaving the farm abandoned. This paper explores how the story of an álagablettur (“enchanted spot”) and media coverage shaped powerful disaster narratives and how it reshaped the identity of the local community to this day.
Paper long abstract
In December 1948, a massive snow avalanche struck the remote farm Goðdalur in Bjarnarfjörður, Westfjords, killing six household members and forcing the farm into permanent abandonment. This lecture approaches the catastrophe through a folklorist’s perspective, examining how disaster narratives are created, circulated, and remembered, and how they shape both local and national identities.
Central to the narrative is an álagablettur (“enchanted spot”), where a new farmhouse had been built shortly before the avalanche. In subsequent accounts, the disaster was interpreted through the lens of this place of enchantment, blending traditional folklore with collective attempts to explain the violence of nature. National newspapers emphasized uncanny motifs and supernatural explanations, while within the local community and the people close to the family of Goðdalur the tragedy was marked by silence, unease, and fragmented remembrance. Two parallel narrative strands thus emerged: one projecting myth and enchantment, the other defined by grief, guilt, and muteness.
By analyzing media coverage, oral accounts, and local memory, this lecture demonstrates how folklore offered cultural frameworks to interpret and cope with the trauma of the avalanche at a time when no institutional physiological support existed. The Goðdalur tragedy highlights how narratives of fierce nature are never only about the event itself, but also about identity, belonging, and the struggle to make meaning in the aftermath of a catastrophe.
Paper short abstract
Alpine disaster narratives, from geomyths to mining folklore, act as transgenerational archives of hazard knowledge. Through storytelling, experiences of avalanches, floods, and mining accidents are embedded in cultural memory, fostering awareness, preparedness, action, and community resilience.
Paper long abstract
Disaster narratives in Alpine regions, from geomyths to mining folklore and first-person accounts, function as transgenerational archives of hazard knowledge. Through narrative forms such as storytelling, experiences of avalanches, floods and mining accidents are embedded in collective and cultural memory and circulate as shared knowledge across generations.
This process can be understood as vernacular risk communication, since it relies on language, imagery and practices that are locally intelligible. In contrast to expert-to-public communication that often remains technical and abstract, folkloric storytelling situates hazard experience in shared cultural frames, which may strengthen understanding, enhance perceived credibility and reinforce social bonds.
Beyond mnemonic utility, these narratives encode warnings, guide preventive practices and provide action scripts during crises. Repeated retellings can support coping and recovery, affirm embodied knowledge and contribute to identity work after extreme events.
This contribution is interdisciplinary. It connects folklore and cultural memory studies with risk communication and environmental psychology. Using an aware, prepare and act heuristic strictly as an analytical lens, it examines how storytelling grounded in cultural memory supports awareness, preparedness and action, and how it may shape risk perception, self and collective efficacy, and participation in Alpine communities.
The analysis highlights disaster narratives as cultural resources that translate memory into practice, fostering community participation in everyday preparedness and in collective responses to recurrent natural hazards.