PhD: Nordic Literature and the Oil Impasse – Contemporary Petrofiction from Denmark and Norway

A substantial survey of contemporary Nordic petrofiction going back to the UN’s Earth Summit of 1992 where climate change definitively gained political headway. From here on, climate change has been generally acknowledged while substantial steps to alleviate the planetary emergency still are in their infancy. As such, we are at an impasse where fossil extraction continues to take place while a position as so-called Nordic ‘green frontier’ nations has emerged on the global scene of climate policies.

The thesis interprets various fictional texts from the two Nordic North Sea nations of Denmark and Norway as registering – in multiple ways – this contradiction and dilemma. It further identifies the texts both within a Nordic social, cultural, and political framework and within a larger framing of world-literature.

Theoretically, the book is placed within the realms of World Literature, Energy Humanities and in particular the relatively nascent field of Petroculture.