Our purpose is to study a period of Crisis, Conflict and Climate change in Scandinavia.

Although there has been a focus on the effects of climate change on prehistoric populations in archaeology during the last decade, there are few studies if any, that have provided a high enough resolution in time and space to discuss its societal effects (Degroot et al. 2021). The main purpose of the Crisis, conflict and climate programme is to investigate a well-known period of climate change, conflict and crisis in Scandinavia, 300-700 CE. With the proposed programme, there will, for the first time, be a coherent investigation of demographics, diseases, climate and environment, politics and social change in a very well-defined geographical area in northern Europe, the island of Oland. We will study one of the more prominent features of the Olandic societies at that time, the ringforts, as a case study. We will provide high-resolution dates on their different occupation phases and clarify their societal role. We will then study the people and the societies that utilized the ringforts, and put the ringforts into an international setting, addressing the following questions: What was the economy enabling the building of forts and stone-wall-houses? Why were the forts and the stone-wall-houses abandoned? And why were some of the forts re-utilized? Were the people who built the forts and the stone-wall-houses local to Oland? Was it local people who eventually re-utilized them? What economic and social conditions enabled re-utilization of the forts? Were conflicts or other types of crises the reason for abandonment? Were any conflicts internal or external?

By answering these questions, we will be able to provide information on how societies, in connection to major
climatic events and pandemics, have dealt with conflicts and crises and how this in turn might have changed their social cohesion expressed in economy, material culture and religious beliefs. In this programme, we will study if crises — caused by pandemics, war, natural disasters or climate change — are driving or retarding forces of societaldevelopment.

This programme brings together the leading expertise, profiting from the most up-to-date knowledge of the field, employing state-of-the-art methods and benefitting from modern public outreach channels. It represents a unique opportunity to study processes leading to societal crises and societal responses to these crises, caused by a number ofexternal factors, such as climate change, contagious disease, and warfare — conditions not very different from the situation that many countries in the world face today in times of a warming climate, covid-19 and worldwide conflicts.