Astrid E. J. Ogilvie

  • Research Professor
  • Senior Associate Scientist, Stefansson Arctic Institute
  • NORLIA Fellow, Centre of Advanced Study, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Oslo, 2024-2025
  • ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Human ecology of Arctic and subarctic regions

Interface of social sciences, humanities, and the natural sciences; long-term human ecodynamics and climate change.

Primary focus: Building bridges between the humanities and the natural sciences in a wide variety of research projects in order to foster interdisciplinary cross-fertilization, break down disciplinary boundaries, and to encourage fruitful and inspiring communication between colleagues in different disciplines.  

Research interests

  • Arctic Studies. 
  • Climate change and climate-change impacts. 
  • Human ecology of Arctic and Subarctic regions.
  • Environmental history of countries bordering the North Atlantic regions. 
  • Historical climatology of northern Europe, in particular, Iceland.
  • Sea-ice systems and the reconstruction of variations in the incidence of sea ice off the coasts of Iceland, Newfoundland/Labrador, the Greenland Sea and the Barents Sea.
  • Human dimensions studies.
  • Northern region ecodynamics.
  • Syntheses of proxy climate records.
  • North Atlantic fisheries history.
  • Ethnographic studies in Iceland, Norway and Labrador/Nunatsiavut.
  • Analysis of primary historical texts (in English, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish).
  • Effects of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) in Arctic regions in the present and past.
  • Climate and Health. 

Ogilvie CV (42-page PDF)

Positions

  • Senior Associate Scientist, Stefansson Arctic Institute, Akureyri, Iceland.
  • Visiting Professor, University of the Highlands and Islands, Orkney, Scotland.
  • Professor Adjunct, Hunter College, CUNY, New York.
  • Adjunct Professor, Royal Roads University, Canada.
  • Member of the Reykjavík Academy (ReykjavíkurAkademían).
  • Centre of Advanced Study Fellow, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Oslo, 2024-2025. 

Education

  • PhD: University of East Anglia, 1982
    • Dissertation title: Climate and Society in Iceland from the Medieval Period to the Late Eighteenth Century.

Awards and honors include

  • 2025. Invited to become member of the Reykjavík Academy of Independent Scholars.
  • 2024. Invited to become Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) Fellow 2024-2025 at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
  • 2020. Invited to be Chairperson of the Advisory Board for the Nicolaus Copernicus University (Torún, Poland) Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR).
  • 2019. St Andrews Article Prize in European Environmental History, European Society for Environmental History.
  • 2014. Nansen Professorship in Arctic Studies, University of Akureyri, Iceland.
  • 2013. Elected Fellow, Royal Meteorological Society, UK
  • 2010. Fulbright Scholarship to Iceland  
  • 2009. Dorothy Martin Faculty Fellowship, University of Colorado Boulder.  

Courses taught include

  • North Atlantic Peoples and Cultures
    • CU Boulder: ANTH 4000 level. Split-level course for upper-division undergrad students and graduate students.
  • Iceland and Greenland: Climate Change and the Arctic
    • School for International Training: Summer school course for graduate students.
  • Society and Environment in Mývatnssveit Course
    • Univ Iceland: For senior archaeology students at the University of Iceland, based on MYCHANGE and MYSEAC projects.
  • Human Ecology and culture at Lake Myvatn 1700-2000
    • Svartárkot Culture-Nature Project: Interdisciplinary graduate course on dimensions of environmental and cultural change.
  • Environmental Memory and Change in Medieval Iceland
    • Reykjavík Academy: 10 ECTS Intensive graduate summer field course. Interdisciplinary course in the environmental humanities and social sciences with a special focus on risk and vulnerability in Iron Age and medieval Iceland.

Outreach online  

A Brief Description of Sea Ice
Webpage authored by Ogilvie.

Sea-ice stories from Iceland and Labrador
Online publication authored by Ogilvie.

The Nordic Little Ice Age. An online course on climate history and adaptation (video)
Ogilivie's contribution is a 10 minute video interview in Lesson 5: Responses. 

In 2026 the NORLIA research group published “The Nordic Little Ice Age. An online course on climate history and adaptation”. The open access course explores what we can learn from the last time the climate changed. Its six interdisciplinary modules are interdisciplinary and aimed at high-school teachers and university students in history, science, and social studies. 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 is available at Climatehistory.net or University of Oslo (fully importable) and has its own YouTube channel. 

Research projects, current and recent 

The Nordic Little Ice Age (1300-1900): Lessons from Past Climate Change (NORLIA). 
Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Reflections of Change: The Natural World in Literary and Historical Sources from Iceland ca. AD 800 to 1800 (ICECHANGE). 
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Sweden (for the Advancement of the Humanities and Social Sciences).

Example publications

For additional publications, see Astrid's Google Scholar profile.

Edited books 

Jones, P.D., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Davies, T.D. and Briffa, K.B. (eds) 2001. History and Climate: Memories of the Future?Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow. 

Ogilvie, A.E.J. and Jónsson, Trausti. (eds) 2001. The Iceberg in the Mist: Northern Research in Pursuit of a “Little Ice Age”. (Reprinted from Climatic Change 48) Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht. 

Collet, D., Gundersen, M.I., Huhtamaa, H., Ljungqvist, F.C., Ogilvie, A.E.J. and White, S. 2025. Nordic Climate Histories: Impacts, Pathways, Narratives. White Horse Press, Winwick, Cambridgeshire  

Edited journal volume in preparation 

Ogilvie, A.E.J., Júlíusson, Á.D., Hreinsson, V., Hicks, M., Dugmore (Editors). 2026. Landscapes and Seascapes – Interdisciplinary Investigations in the North Atlantic Realm: Contributions in Honour of Ragnhildur H. Sigurðardóttir (1966-2025). Journal of the North Atlantic.  

Selected journal articles and book chapters 

Kiss, Andrea, et al., including Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2026. Cascading continental-scale floods across Europe in 1342–1343, Nature. Published online 12 August 2026.

Ogilvie, A.E.J. and Miles, M. W. 2025. Northern Iceland Temperature Variations and Sea-Ice Incidence c. AD 1600-1850, (In) Nordic Climate Histories: Impacts, Pathways, Narratives, (Dominik Collet, Ingar Mørkestol Gundersen, Heli Huhtamaa, Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Astrid E.J. Ogilvie, Sam White, Eds) White Horse Press, Winwick, Cambridgeshire, 186-208. 

Lundstad, E., Norrgård, S. and Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2025. The Development of Meteorological Institutions and Early Instrumental Climate Data in the Nordic Countries, (In) Nordic Climate Histories: Impacts, Pathways, Narratives, (Dominik Collet, Ingar Mørkestol Gundersen, Heli Huhtamaa, Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Astrid E.J. Ogilvie, Sam White, Eds) White Horse Press, Winwick, Cambridgeshire, 29-55. 

Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2022. Writing on Sea Ice: Early Modern Icelandic Scholars. (In) Klaus Dodds and Sverker Sörlin, eds., Ice Humanities: Living, Working, and Thinking in a Melting World. Manchester University Press, 37-56. DOI:10.7765/9781526157782. Published online 02 August 2022. 

Ogilvie, A.E.J., Hill, B.T. and Demarée, G.R. 2021. A Fleet of Silver: Local Knowledge Perceptions of Sea Ice from Iceland and Labrador/Nunatsiavut. In (Eva Panagiotakopulu and Jon P. Sadler, editors) Biogeography in the Sub-Arctic: The Past and Future of North Atlantic Biota, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester, 273-291. DOI:10.1002/9781118561461.

Ogilvie, A.E.J., Gao, Y., Einarsson, N., Keenlyside, N., King, L. 2021. The ARCPATH project: Assessing Risky Environments and Rapid Change: Research on Climate, Adaptation and Coastal Communities in the North Atlantic Arctic. In (Douglas C. Nord, editor) Nordic Perspectives on the Responsible Development of the Arctic: Pathways to Action, Springer Nature, Switzerland, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-52324-4, 137-156. 

Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2019. Famines, mortality, livestock deaths and scholarship: Environmental stress in Iceland ca. 1500-1700. In Kiss, A. and Prybil, K. (eds.), The Dance of Death in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe: Environmental Stress, Mortality and Social Response. London: Routledge, 9-24. DOI: 10.4324/9780429491085 

Hartman, S., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Ingimundarson, J.H., Dugmore, A.J., Hambrecht, George, McGovern, T.H. 2017. Medieval Iceland, Greenland, and the New Human Condition: A case study in integrated environmental humanities, Global and Planetary Change 156, 123-139, DOI: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.04.007 

Ogilvie, A.E.J., Woollett, J.M., Smiarowski, K., Arneborg, J., Troelstra, S., Pálsdóttir, A. and McGovern, T.H. 2009. Seals and sea ice in medieval Greenland, Journal of the North Atlantic 2, 60-80.