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

Poetry, Pestilence, Prescriptions: the plague in Scottish literature

29 November 2021 |

End of November 2021 an event titled 'Poetry, Pestilence, Prescriptions: the plague in Scottish literature' was hosted by Bio-Lit Talks Crossing Science with Humanities. A NORDEMICS researcher took part.

Plague risk in the western United States over seven decades of environmental change

26 November 2021 |

Plague risk in the western United States over seven decades of environmental change
70 years of data from the western U.S. was used to investigate how plague crosses between animal reservoirs to the human population, and whether environmental changes might be upsetting the balance.

GLASGOW: Climate change, resilience and new pandemics in the Arctic

01 November 2021 |

NORDEMICS partner Nils Christian Stenseth, professor at University of Oslo was one of the speakers at NordForsk event at COP26 in Glasgow about Nordic perspectives and solutions. The event was called 'Climate change, resilience and new pandemics in the Arctic'.

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