Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on local resident's narratives about forest wildfire as a force of nature that conditions both the forest, as well as its human users and nonhuman inhabitants. What meanings are expressed about the forests? What is imagined as natural? How is human intervention understood?

Paper long abstract:

In 2014 and 2018, wildfires erupted in Swedish forests at a magnitude without precedence in modern Swedish history. These wildfires had a major impact on local communities and forestry, also stirring national debate on climate change, forestry production, and biodiversity. In this paper we present results from an ethnographic study of the aftermath of the forest wildfires in 2018. The overall purpose of the study is to study how three affected local communities mobilized local resources to cope, how local residents narrate the events of the wildfire and its aftermath, and what the wildfire led to in terms of strategies and awareness of sustainable development. Our analysis starts from the idea that anthropogenic climate change indeed "changes everything" (Klein 2014) as it alters the way in which interactions between climate and society are questioned (see Hulme & Burgess 2018). Our material consists of in-depth interviews with local residents who in different ways - as forest owners, evacuated local residents, volunteers, local fire fighters etc. - were affected. This paper focuses on local resident's narratives about forest wildfire as a force of nature that conditions both the forest, as well as its human users and nonhuman inhabitants. When re-imagining the forest and its role in the interviewee's lives, as well as its value in society, what meanings are expressed about the forest? What is imagined as natural? How is human intervention understood?