chapotraphouse

this is a shitpost, but Scandinavian anthropology really shows how the land gave rise to a remarkable culture. Some historians conceive of them as the final terminus of the ancient silk road, which makes sense from all the distant imported goods fond in prehistoric scandinavia, such as silks, jade Buddhas, islamic artifacts. In order to be able to trade at such an extent, they must've had something that foreigners wanted. There was a well established network of north-sea traders long before the viking period, due in large part to their development in an environment where maritime travel was far faster than land travel in any direction. they probably perceived the world map in terms of traveling time, and the east coast of Britain was therefore far closer than their neighbors 50 miles away. Their trading was unique in that it wasn't simply organized to exchange foreign goods. it was also a sophisticated network of domestic trade, across political boundaries of Scandinavia, with petty kingdoms being able to command and distribute an oversized economy that funneled goods from the hinterlands into exchange, and vice versa

im colorblind and this map is straight up impossible to read

I remember I used to watch a small YouTuber called I think Black Bolshevik, who was from the Bahamas and who once made an in-depth video showing clips from and analyzing a documentary about food independence or food sovereignty in his country, and the various ingenious techniques that Bahamian farmers were developing or utilizing to increase the country's self-sufficiency in food despite the poor soil and very small amount of arable land. And I really wish I could rewatch that video, because Black Bolshevik apparently deleted his channel and that video hasn't been reposted anywhere. I did eventually manage to find what appears to be a different documentary about farming in the Bahamas, but that one seems to be much more focused on conventional farming techniques.

Anyways, point is that I do think that Norway could and must become a lot more self-sufficient in terms food. As it stands I could see a socialist Norway going the way of the DPRK, which you might be aware is also a highly mountainous country with issues around having little arable land and poor soil, and which suffered greatly from losing access to food imports. For that matter Norway's situation could also be compared to the Faroe Islands, where many store shelves went completely empty last year during a strike which encompassed 10% of the population — and the store shelves going empty was specifically a result of the Faroes' extreme reliance on food imports from Denmark, their colonial masters.

So Norway could learn from the DPRK and from countries like the Bahamas as said when it comes to food self-sufficiency. I think some key points are to demolish unnecessary infrastructure built over what could be arable land, this includes a lot of military and car infrastructure; to do what's possible to improve soil quality; to end terrestrial animal husbandry/agriculture except reindeer, and develop aquaculture beyond fish; and to embrace polyculture and urban agriculture. I don't necessarily have faith that Norway could grow all of its own food at this point, but it could grow Enough of its own food to be able to Mostly withstand a situation like economic isolation.

But I'm not an expert on agriculture, of course. I do if nothing else get the impression that food self-sufficiency is something that a lot of left-wing organizations in Norway focus on to some extent, there's an organization I know of called Landbruksalliansen (lit. The Agricultural Alliance, rebranding from Alliansen Ny Landbrukspolitikk, lit. The Alliance [for a] New Agricultural Policy, abbrev. ANL). Their website is landbruksalliansen.no but be warned that it's not secure.

Hunter gathers actually lived in highly complicated and managed systems with nature. For most of history they lived better than agricultural peoples. It wasn't untill middle agriculture that it was in and way more efficient. Most hunting and gathering was low intensity agricultural. For thousands of years people slowly tended the plants and animals of the environment. The system just didn't allow for population density which may or may not have been historically important for societal development.

Wdym "civilization" they have, like, one village

Is this data right? wales while being pretty mountainous still as plenty of arable land

And the same with the Welsh and Galicians

Acting like they aren't surrounded by fish...

Slava ukraini 🌞🌾