About the course
The course explores interactions between historical societies and their environments during a period of colder climate ca.1300–1850CE, known as the “Little Ice Age” (LIA). It encourages students to investigate how stories of disasters, adaptations, and resilience in the face of past climate variability and extreme weather might help us prepare for global warming in our own times.
Each lesson provides videos by leading experts, commented data and sources, Q&A sections, a reading list, and a range of classroom activities to explore the Little Ice Age (1500-1800). In its entirety, it can be used to teach the new subject of “sustainability studies”.
The course’s six lessons may be completed either separately or together as a single course. The content is suitable for both history and natural science courses as well as interdisciplinary courses on environment or sustainability.
Each lesson consists of six parts:
- A brief introduction to the content
- A video presentation of about 8–10 minutes exploring a theme in the history of the LIA
- A question and answer section explaining some topics in more depth
- Additional videos, including interviews with experts in climate science and history
- A list of suggested class activities and discussions
- A list of references and further readings
The complete course is freely accessible on this website, where all six lessons can be explored sequentially or individually.
Instructors may download the full course content formatted for the Canvas learning management system. This allows teachers to adapt the material for their own online or in-person courses. The Canvas version of the course is available here.
All of the course video presentations are available with English, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Finnish subtitles on the NORCLI Youtube channel.
This course and all material therein is licensed under a CC BY-NC agreement. Users may distribute the material for non-commercial purposes, use it in a classroom, and modify it for their own purposes. However, they may not distribute any content in a modified format. All use of this material should acknowledge the original source and creators.