Released in October 2024, the book has gained a great interest in Sweden and internationally. The Norwegian version has been well received with reviews in Klassekampen, Morgenbladet, Harvest, and Sverker has been part of the popular podcast NRK’s Drivkraft. In Denmark is has been written about in Politiken, Kristeligt Dageblad, Jyllands-Posten, Informasjon and more. The English version is coming in October, with current plans for publication in seven languages.
What does this book mean to you? What did you want to bring to people with this book?
Every book is an important book, in a sense, but perhaps this is the most important one, at least to myself. Partly because it is very personal, about snow, that I hold dear and about people I hold dear. And because it is an attempt of an ‘elemental’ history, in the spirit of the Anthropocene.
Why do you think there is such an interest in your book?
We live in troubled times and there is a widespread sense of things going wrong, and losses everywhere. Snow represents all this which is frail and threatened and so people look at snow as a slightly utopian element. It is soft and warm and comforting, precisely the opposite of what the world is right now. So, it holds out a promise of hope, however faint and feeble.
How does it connect to the environmental humanities?
A lot, I should say. To begin with this is an approach to climate and the elements that engages knowledge from across the humanities and social sciences – and at the same time it is also a profound encounter with the natural sciences. Just in the spirit of environmental humanities. I often thought in my work on the book that if there is a ‘blue humanities’ for the ocean humanities, there should be a ‘white humanities’ for the study of snow, or perhaps more widely, the cryosphere. It is also a planetary story, linking the atmospheric ‘birth conditions’ of the snowflake to the long-lasting climate records of the ice cores, or the fresh-water reservoirs in the high mountains of the Andes or Himalaya-Pamir. Snow is slow. It slows down the water cycle, and it slows down global heating through its albedo effect, which are key properties in the Anthropocene world.
What did you enjoy most when writing this book?
As always, I enjoy learning! Every book is a mix of things I already knew –otherwise it is hard to conceive of a book – and the things I need to know in order to write it. Even after decades of work in the history of glaciology, my work on the Arctic, and many encounters with snow in my early life in the Scandinavian sub-Arctic – it was so much new material to absorb. And so many connections to make to form a holistic view of snow. I now know that snow is more important for us, as a functional human civilization – and as a functional planet – than I ever pondered before. Including what it means, existentially, to many first nations and local cultures. And, not least, the sheer fun of it.
For those who have not read your book yet and might not have heard about it, why should they read it? What can we learn from this book?
Perhaps the ultimate reason, to get a sense of the new Anthropocene History that is now emerging. How we can write the elements, such as snow, into our human histories, and write ourselves into the histories of nature. So we can learn about how we are all entangled in natural words and, hopefully, also how we can shoulder more responsibility as that insight dawns upon us.
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Sverker will be joined by cellist Johanna Sjunnesson in Stora Kyrkan, with words and music set to Sverker’s new book on the 20th March 19.00-20.00
Tickets here
