Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the historic narrative of a breach in the Vistula Spit caused by a storm surge in 1497, touching upon the perception, relevance, and consequences of this change in the coastline and connecting this history to present questions related to access to the sea.

Paper long abstract:

Water in motion has the power to literally transform shores and coasts. The changes in the environment caused by flood events on the coastline in the Southern Baltic Sea area have in numerous occasions commanded an adaption to the new conditions by societies and reshuffled the cards regarding resources, access and connections.

Taking a narratological perspective, the paper will investigate one case in which a storm surge had a permanent impact on the Baltic Sea coast, to which adjacent communities had to adapt and which was conclusively turned into a narrative: During a flood in September 1497, a breach through the Vistula Spit, known today as the Strait of Baltiysk, opened. Multiple sources within the historiography took notice of this and report on the event.

Focusing on how and where this incident was narrated allows insight into the perception of change in the environment and proves that this was an event of supraregional importance, in whose context the role of water and causes of the coast transformation were also described. Another topic will be the consequences of change: Soon the navigable strait became a point of conflict among trading cities, including those of the Hanseatic League, foreshadowing a conflict about the same waterway in the present: Russian domination about the Strait of Baltyisk has led to the building of a new channel through the Vistula Spit by Poland in hopes of gaining an independent access, opening a geopolitical perspective with a connection to the past.

Paper short abstract:

Focusing on cases of Sicily and the Canary Islands, both under the Crown of Spanish kings in the Early Modern Period, this paper highlights the role water played in shaping those societies, but also the extraordinary techniques and methods developed to face water stress for plant growth.

Paper long abstract:

My proposal will address topics generally forgotten of academia's main fora. But there are few regions where water is as precious as on the islands, due to their difficulty in retaining water. Thus, focusing on cases of Sicily and the Canary Islands, both under the Crown of Spanish kings in the Early Modern Period, this paper highlights the role water played in shaping those societies, but also the extraordinary techniques and methods developed to face water stress for plant growth.

The unique system of building semi-circular low walls around each vine to protect them from the wind and create humidity turn famous the vineyards in La Geria, Lanzarote in the Canary Islands and in Pico, Azores. On Pantelleria, a Sicilian Island, circular stone walls protect trees from winds and capture the night fog and dew, to create sufficient humidity for the growth of this botanical species.

The property of land, the hydraulic systems and their regulation, the distribution of water, and the horticultural methods developed demonstrate the effort and expertise put to face a water stress environment. These are just some of the cases that demonstrate that in adverse environments, ingenious solutions have come up throughout history, which can enlighten the relationship between the garden produce, the water availability, the environment and the solutions found to circumvent problems regarding water scarcity, being able to transform an adverse environment into a productive one. This research builds on the AQUA project, that I coordinated between 2018 and 2022.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the agential powers of geothermal waters across fluctuating political landscapes. By assembling a spatiotemporal map of urban transformation in Velingrad, I trace the restructuring of hydrosocial relations as water becomes both an agent and object of change.

Paper long abstract:

How is the agency of hydrothermal resources manifested in the urban environment and what kind of socioecological relations can be traced by mapping its transformative powers? These questions guide the inquiry into the hydrosocial entanglements that are simultaneously defined by the boundaries of the built environment and act as its co-creators. Taking as a case study the resort town of Velingrad with its thermal springs, this research brings together the temporal and spatial dimensions of urban transformation and a two-scalar perspective exploring the microhistories of individual infrastructures and the mezzo- and macro-level networks they form across the political, socio-cultural, and natural landscapes of region and country.

In the late 1940s, Bulgaria’s socialist government embarked on an ambitious plan for the development of an extensive network of balneoresorts providing healthcare and holiday facilities for the growing working-class population in a rapidly industrializing country. Three villages in Southwest Bulgaria were at the forefront of this campaign and formed the neighborhoods of the new town of Velingrad – a resort of “national importance”. The access to thermal waters was no longer confined to individual buildings but was transformed into an infrastructural endeavor that required the remaking of civic life. Drawing on environmental history, political ecology, and geography of health grounded in fieldwork and archival research of urban planning records, this paper illustrates how changing socio-cultural and scientific concepts of hydrothermal resources transformed the built environment of Velingrad, while realigning the hydrosocial landscape along the contours of its emergent infrastructures.

Paper short abstract:

The Kiiminkijoki river has seen many stages of environmental management, which are tangibly visible in the landscape. I look at the environmental transformations of the river as a socio-ecological interaction between cultural practices, politics, and the materiality of the river.

Paper long abstract:

Throughout history the changing livelihoods of people and varying forms of environmental management can be witnessed as tangible transformations in the landscapes as the legacies of the previous historical practices carry their material consequences in the environment. In these politically contested transformations that result from different rationales of environmental governance and natural resource utilization, water is a central element.

The Kiiminkijoki river which flows to the Baltic Sea on the northern edge of Oulu region has seen many of these concretely visible transformations. The drying of the lakes for agriculture in the 19th century were followed by the opening of the rapids for timber floating after the second world war. Later, during the latter part of the 20th century the tilling of the peatlands for industrial forestry and the peat production for energy caused changes in the river system which have dramatically altered the ways the waters can be used for other purposes such as fishing and recreation. Most importantly the naturally occurring Baltic salmon population vanished by the end of century.

Nowadays the industrial management of the natural environment is accompanied by the restoration of the water systems and the river basin area with an aim to support the traditional ways of being along the river. The rationales behind managing the environment are consequently highly politically contested. In this paper I look at the environmental change of Kiiminkijoki river basin area as a process in which cultural practices and politically motivated ambitions intersect with the materiality of the river.