Research Project Pathogens, Pandemics and the Development of Nordic Societies

Project Duration: 05/01/2021 - 09/30/2025

While infectious diseases have faded from the Nordic region today, they have not gone away. That threat materialized in December 2019, as the world encountered the SARS-CoV-2 virus. To cope with these emerging threats, a clear understanding of forces that drive the dissemination, impact and control of infectious pandemics is essential.

This project aimes to create NORDEMICS, a Nordic interdisciplinary consortium dedicated to understanding how factors such as urbanization, increased trade and travel, large-scale migration, vaccines and other public health interventions, climate change and ecological degradation influence the dynamics of epidemic and pandemic infections in human populations. The consortium will systematically study historical health data to understand the patterns of spread and health impact of such diseases in the Nordic countries over the last 300 years.

We will take full advantage of the Nordic countries’ unique and zealous tradition of record-keeping, which has produced troves of quantitative health and mortality data stretching far into the past, but which have yet to be comprehensively analyzed. We will apply cutting-edge mathematical modeling techniques to these data, while thoroughly integrating the analytical methods and insights of historians, demographers and economists in a truly interdisciplinary environment.

Combined with insights into the social, environmental, economic and demographic context, our effort will yield a deep quantitative understanding of past pandemics that will allow us to draw a detailed picture of pandemic and epidemic diseases in the pre-modern era. In short, the proposed Consortium will reveal important insights into the major diseases that shaped human society, and broaden the knowledge base that helps us prepare for future pandemics.

News

Did the 1918 influenza pandemic cause a 1920 baby boom? Demographic evidence from neutral Europe

06 April 2023 |

Demographic evidence, economic evidence, and a review of post-pandemic fertility trends outside Europe suggest that the 1920 baby boom in neutral Europe was caused by the end of the First World War, not by the end of the pandemic.

Photo: Stock photo of stock failure. Colourbox.

The last hunger years? The 1826–1832 mortality crisis in Denmark

14 March 2023 |

A newly published study examines the demographic and clinical features of 1826–1832 mortality crisis in Denmark.

Photo: Professor Lone Simonsen. By Ulrik Jantzen. Published with consent from Roskilde University.

Pandemics: Past, present and future

14 March 2023 |

When invited to hold a lecture at the LUSEM Centre for Economic Demography, professor and epidemiologist Lone Simonsen gave insights into the work at PandemiX, highlighting their work with Covid and how they made use of information on earlier pandemics.

Contact

Lone Simonsen, professor and project leader, lonesimo@ruc.dk

Researchers

Researchers at the NORDEMICS project

Department of Economic History

University of Oslo: CEES

University of Turku

Niels Bohr Institute - Biocomplexity and Biophysics

Centre for Research on Pandemics & Society (PANSOC)

Department of Public Health

Publications

The 1919–21 influenza pandemic in Greenland
Ingholt, M. M., Simonsen, L., Mamelund, S.-E., Noahsen, P. & van Wijhe, M., 6 Mar 2024, In: International Journal of Circumpolar Health. 83, 1, 12 p., 2325711.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
An ordinary malaria? Intermittent fever in Denmark, 1826-1886
Ingholt, M. M., 2023, In: Medical History. 67, 1, p. 57-73 17 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Een historisch perspectief op vaccinatieprogramma’s. Hoeveel gezondheidswinst hebben we behaald?
van Wijhe, M., 2 Nov 2023.
Research output: Contribution to conference › Conference abstract for conference › Communication