Into the Forest: Woods, Trees and Forests in the Germanic-Speaking Cultures of Northern Europe, c. 46 BC - c. 1500.

森林在生态、文化和经济上都至关重要，既是自然历史的基本组成部分，也深深植根于人类历史。在这些空间里，我们星球的生物与我们的社会结构、我们的身体和我们的思想相遇，这些空间既是由讲故事的人和法律当局建造的，也是由生态学家、林务学家和地球本身建造的。这些文化和历史联系的根源比我们想象的更加深刻和复杂，特别是在北方世界。这个项目将是对北日耳曼文化中的森林以及树木和森林进行的第一次深入的多学科研究。它集中在三个地理和文化区域：a)北欧世界；b)不列颠群岛上说日耳曼语的民族；c)被罗马人称为日耳曼尼亚的中欧北部。“日耳曼语”指的是映射到这些地理区域的语言群体；它本身并不是一个种族或文化的符号。通过将三个领域的研究结合在一起，我将揭示一个复杂的历史和文化联系和影响网络——宗教、政治、艺术、文学、经济、法律——以及它们随着时间的发展。这个项目将为理解历史文化如何思考和参与他们的物理环境提供新的途径，以及这可以告诉我们人类如何思考他们周围的世界以及他们在其中的位置。这项研究始于公元前1世纪凯撒对高卢/内战的评论，在那里我们发现了一些关于日耳曼尼亚北部森林的最早描述。在罗马人的地理想象中，辽阔的海西尼亚森林构成了欧洲的北部边界。评注中插入的段落让这些森林里充满了神奇的生物（比如独角兽）和野蛮部落。在恺撒之后的一个世纪，历史学家塔西佗（Tacitus）记录了日耳曼尼亚森林荒地上三个军团的灾难性损失，并附上了在圣林中献祭的故事。对于古典作家来说，这些密不忍睹的森林是野蛮的代名词，这种联想在中世纪早期被“野蛮人”自己延续了下来。随着北欧的原始材料的激增，内部人士的观点出现了。与森林的实际接触和想象接触之间的交集变得更加复杂，模糊到包括经济利用、资源管理、法律、讲故事和宗教等领域。到中世纪末期（约1500年），森林已经成为北欧文学文化的中心主题，尤其是在不列颠群岛、德国和北欧世界相互关联的浪漫传统中。这次调查的时间终点将我们带到了早期现代时代的黎明，为接下来几个世纪的许多重大发展埋下了种子，在这些发展中，树木和森林再次发挥了突出的作用（科学探究、民族主义、浪漫主义）。今天，森林继续在我们的集体想象中蓬勃发展，从格林兄弟的遗产到托尔金的黑森林，从朱莉娅·唐纳森的格鲁法洛到JK·罗琳的禁林。然而，尽管森林的文化和历史潜力是鲜活的，但普通现代西方人与它的关系却并非如此。在展示这些树根的深度和纠缠程度时，我试图揭示早期森林的生活经验与它的中介残余，实际破坏以及在气候变化和森林砍伐时代前所未有的重要性之间的紧张关系。通过出版一本书、跨学科研讨会、影响和推广活动等产出，我的目标是不仅在学科之间，而且在广播、生态、遗产、教育和创意产业方面的专家之间促进对话和协同作用。

Ecologically, culturally and economically vital, forests are both a fundamental part of our natural history and deeply rooted in our human history. These are spaces where the biology of our planet meets the structures of our societies, our bodies and our minds, constructed as much by storytellers and legal authorities as they are by ecologists, foresters and the planet itself. The roots of these cultural and historical associations are deeper and more tangled than we might imagine, particularly in the northern world. This project will be the first in-depth, multidisciplinary study of forests - and by extension trees and woods - in northern Germanic cultures. It focuses on three geographical and cultural areas: a) the Nordic world b) the Germanic-speaking peoples of the British Isles c) north-central Europe known to the Romans as Germania. 'Germanic' refers to the language group that maps onto these geographical areas; it is not in itself an ethnic or cultural signifier. By bringing together the study of three areas across a broad chronological span, I will shed light on a complex network of historical and cultural connections and influences - religious, political, artistic, literary, economic, legal - and their development over time. This project will provide new ways for understanding how historical cultures thought about and engaged with their physical environments, and what this can tell us about how humans think about the world around them and their place within it.The study begins in the 1st century BC with Caesar's commentaries on the Gallic/Civil wars, where we find some of the earliest descriptions of the northern forests of Germania. The vast Hercynian Forest formed the northern boundary of Europe in the Roman geographical imagination. Interpolated passages in the commentaries fill these forests with marvellous creatures (such as unicorns) and barbarian tribes. A century after Caesar, the historian Tacitus wrote of the cataclysmic loss of three legions in the forested badlands of Germania, with accompanying tales of human sacrifices in sacred groves. For classical authors, these impenetrable forests were synonymous with barbarism, an association that was carried over by the 'barbarians' themselves in the early medieval period. With the proliferation of source material for Northern Europe, insiders' perspectives emerge. The intersection between embodied and imaginative engagement with the forest becomes more complex, blurring into spheres including economic use, resource management, law, storytelling and religion. By the end of the medieval period (c. 1500) forests had flourished as a central topos in the literary cultures of Northern Europe, not least in the interconnected romance traditions of the British Isles, Germany and the Nordic world. The chronological endpoint of this investigation brings us up to the dawn of the early modern era, with the seeds planted for many of the significant developments of the following centuries where once again trees and forests play prominent roles (scientific enquiry, nationalism, romanticism).Today, the forest continues to flourish in our collective imagination, from the legacy of the Brothers Grimm to Tolkien's Mirkwood, from Julia Donaldson's Gruffalo to JK Rowling's Forbidden Forest. Yet while the cultural and historical potency of the forest is alive and well, the same cannot be said of the average modern Westerner's relation to it. In demonstrating how deep and tangled these roots go, I seek to expose the tension between lived experience of the forest in earlier periods, and its mediated remnants, actual destruction and unprecedented importance in an era of climate change and deforestation. Through outputs including a book, interdisciplinary workshops, and impact and outreach activities, I aim to stimulate dialogue and synergies not only across the academic disciplines but also with experts from broadcasting, ecology, heritage, education and the creative industries.