In a comic book by French authors Benoit Sokal and Francois Schuiten from 2022, an ancient maritime myth is picked up in a comic format. The story is about a small community of refugees who once settled on the back of a giant whale floating in the ocean. The animal is so vast, that it’s back appears like an atoll or a small island. Vegetation grows and various animals have settled, attracted by the mild climate created by the warmth of the animal’s body. After seventy years however there are conspicuous signs that the whale is starting on her journey towards the North Pole, endangering the survival of the small society that has made her back it’s home.
Essentially, the environment for this community is similar to many coastal and island communities: The living conditions are rather comfortable but there is a constant danger of drowning. Whenever the whale moves or sinks, the sea becomes agitated and rises threatening the human settlements.
The authors have come up with a clever piece of bionics as adaptation measure for this condition. The community lives in giant crab-like houses (or rather house-like crabs). These housings have long legs to elevate and hatch like roofs that can close and seal the interior against water in case of inundation. Some of these giant crabs apparently can also swim and cover large distances individually. Here are some sketches from my edition of the book:
This design is not so unlike the houses on stilts that were once common in Bangkok and can now be found again in places like Makoko in Lagos or Apung Teko in Jakarta. Of course these moving and amphibious crabs are much more sophisticated. To inhabit and navigate the crabs, humans had to develop into a symbiotic existence with them. The whole lifestyle of this small community is highly symbiotic and so far adapted to it’s host/surrounding, eventually making it impossible for them to leave. That certainly is the tragedy of this little floating eco-topia.
The two volume book is a wild mixture of maritime folklore, pop-culture references (Moby Dick, obviously), romantic fairy tale and eco-fantasy. Too crude and stagy for my personal taste, but nevertheless interesting as a twist on an old maritime myth – for reference see my post on whales as islands here – seen under today’s light of climate adaptation imperative.
In times like these, what the world needs is good humor and good counseling. And this company apparently offers both. Because if you name your business consulting company after a city that spectacularly sank into the sea as a punishment for the hubris of it’s citizens, you have to have a really keen sense of humor. And these guys have been at it for 30 years! So they must be doing something right after all. 😁 And yes indeed, they are: For this Greek company, Atlantis is not only a quirky choice of a name, but also a commitment to cultural heritage on the one hand and to the ocean on the other. In their own words: “ATLANTIS Consulting implements projects aiming at the promotion of culture, “blue” technologies and the exploitation of the underwater wealth (cultural and natural) for the benefit of the European economy. ATLANTIS is pioneering internationally on the issue of the protection and sustainable exploitation of the cultural heritage.”
So if I ever happen to amass enough finance to seek the services of a finance consulting company, they will of course be my first choice. And until them, I’ll keep researching the odd paths of cultural heritage of sunken cities and of Atlantis in particular. (Note: Atlantis is actually not an uncommon name for finance enterprises. I guess the lure of untold riches is a stronger allegory than a notorious demise.)
In my search for books that could be considered “climate literature” or “climate change narratives” I recently came across a volume by Swiss writer Max Frisch, entitled “Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän” (english edition titled “Man in the Holocene“). Frisch wrote the short novel in the 1970s and it saw several editions and reworkings until it was eventually published in it’s final version in 1978.
So this is way before the general climate change discourse got under way. For comparison: In 1971 Germany passed the first environmental protection law in the history of the country and in 1974 established a National Environmental Protection Agency, the first of it’s kind in Europe. People in the 1970s spoke about nature and weather, but not about climate. Even more interestingly, Max Frisch in 1974 intended to name the short novel “Climate”.
The final title which translates literally as “man appears in the Holocene” I find even more astonishing, as it seems to anticipate the now popular concept of a man-made geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Geologically speaking, man did not arrive in the Holocene but in the Pleistocene. By referring to the Holocene instead, the era of the present, Frisch cleverly plays with temporality: What appears like one of many quotes the protagonist of the story clips from his science books, can also be read as a description of an occurrence in the present: The protagonist appearing in his environment, in his epoch.
Here’s a short passage from the original German text:
— die Alpen sind durch Faltung entstanden.
— die Ameisen leben in einem Staat.
— das Gewölbe haben die Römer erfunden.
— wenn das Eis der Arktis schmilzt, so ist New York unter Wasser, desgleichen Europa, ausgenommen die Alpen.
— viele Kastanien haben den Krebs.
— Katastrophen kennt allein der Mensch, sofern er sie überlebt; die Natur kennt keine Katastrophen.
— der Mensch erscheint im Holozän.
What makes this short novel remarkable is not only Frisch’s political foresight, but rather how the author reflects on man’s place in the environment and how he connects scientific knowledge and the lived experience of the individual in a moment of – assumed or real – natural catastrophe. As the protagonist remarks above: “Man alone knows disasters – if he survives them. Nature knows no disasters.”
All of today’s skepticism towards the language and role of science is here, the profound uncertainty and ambivalence about the relationship between oneself and nature, the sense of existential loss, what we now call eco-anxiety, or “solastalgia” (Glenn Albrecht), and the all too real threat of extreme weather events. And yet it is all within a very simple story about an aged and lonely human being, a very humane and humble story.
I think it is not coincidence that this early environmentalist literature is from Switzerland and is set in the Swiss Alps. For centuries, Switzerland was among the poorest countries with the most hostile living conditions in all of Europe. Life in the valleys of Ticino was hard and there was constant threat of natural disasters and extreme weather events like rockslides, extreme cold or droughts. (for example see my post here) People in this region had to live – and still often do – in close connection with nature and develop intimate understanding of the forces around them. Frisch’s text can also be read as an account of this intimate and fragile relationship between the collective, the individual and the environment in the moment of it’s disintegration and collapse.
To me this is a beautiful example of how literature attempts to address issues of global and existential political magnitude in a human-sized and emotionally accessible and moving format. One of the most beautiful “climate narratives” I came across and I highly recommend reading it.
Note: Amitav Ghosh of course knew Max Frisch’s short novel when he wrote his famous non-fiction book “The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable”. He does reference Frisch, but does not quote his text. For obvious reason: In the following passage towards the beginning of the book Max Frisch pretty much formulated Goshs whole thesis 50 years prior:
“Romane eignen sich in diesen Tagen überhaupt nicht, da geht es um Menschen in ihrem Verhältnis zu sich und zu andern, um Väter und Mütter und Töchter beziehungsweise Söhne und Geliebte usw., um Seelen, hauptsächlich unglückliche, und um Gesellschaft usw., als sei das Gelände dafür gesichert, die Erde ein für allemal Erde, die Höhe des Meeresspiegels geregelt ein für allemal.”
My translation: Novels are not suitable at all these days; they are about people in their relationship to themselves and others, about fathers and mothers and daughters or sons and lovers, etc., about souls, mainly unhappy ones, and about society, etc., as if it were the terrain secured for it, the earth once and for all, the height of the sea level regulated once and for all.
“When you could walk from London to Paris to get a Croissant for breakfast…” (Jeff Goodell)
Land bridge between the mainland and Britain – Doggerland and Dogger Bank. Comparison of the geographical situation in 2000 to the late years of the Vistula-Würm Glaciation. Translation from German into English of File:Doggerland3er.png using GIMP (XCF file available for use in further translations).
As ice melted at the end of the last glacial period of the current ice age, sea levels rose and the land began to tilt as the huge weight of ice lessened. Doggerland eventually became submerged, cutting off what was previously the British peninsula from the European mainland by around 6500 BCE. The Dogger Bank, an upland area of Doggerland, remained an island until at least 5000 BCE. A recent hypothesis suggests that around 6200 BCE much of the remaining coastal land was flooded by a tsunami caused by a submarine landslide off the coast of Norway known as the Storegga Slide. (source Wikipedia)
In “Being Ecological” Tim Morton wonders about the prevalent mode of climate writing, which he calls “information dump”, “dumping massive platefuls of facts on to us” over and over again. Morton wonders, why we do that and finds the following analogy:
“Imagine that we are dreaming. What kind of dream would it be where the characters and plot vary, sometimes significantly, but the overall impact—where the dream leaves us, its basic color or tone or point of view (or what have you) —remains the same? There is definitely an analogy from the world of dreaming: these are the trauma dreams of sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).” According to Sigmund Freud, Morton writes, “the PTSD sufferer is simply trying to install herself, through her dreams, at a point in time before the trauma happened. Why? Because there is some safety or security in being able to anticipate. Anticipatory fear is far less intense than the fear you experience when finding yourself, all of a sudden, in the middle of a trauma. If you think about it, traumas by definition are things that you find yourself in the middle of—you can’t sneak up on them from the side or from behind, and that’s why they’re traumatic. You just suddenly find yourself in a car crash, for instance. If you had been able to anticipate, you might have been able to swerve out of the way.” “By analogy, then,” Morton concludes, “information dump mode is a way for us to try to install ourselves at a fictional point in time before global warming happened. We are trying to anticipate something inside which we already find ourselves.”
Just 31 years lie between two disasters of the same nature along the shores of a lake in Western Norway destroying twice the two lakeside villages.
Lake Lovatnet is considered one of the most beautiful lakes in Norway. In the first decade of the 1900s and again in the 1930s large fissures in the rock formation above the lake appeared and eventually rocks repeatedly fell into the lake. In 1905 a massive piece of the mountainside loosened and fell into the lake, producing waves of up to 40 meters in height that completely destroyed the two farm villages on the shore. “61 people lost their lives, half the population of Bødal and Nesdal together. Only ten were ever found.”
The villages were rebuilt, only a little bit higher up the shore. In 1936 daily rock falls happened again before eventually in September that year “one million cubic meters of rock fell down from 800 m height into Lake Lovatnet, pushing up the water and creating three waves; the highest a more than 74 meters high.” The two towns were once again completely destroyed.
Only a hundred kilometers away in a fjord called Tafjord the same thing happened in 1934: a massive piece of rock fell off the mountianside and sent a tsunami wave 17 meters high, reaching up to 300 meters inwards land, crushing houses and other buildings, moving large boats inwards land and killing 23 people.
This threat of rock slides resulting in tsunamis and floodings is common to this region of Norway. In 2015 director Roar Uthaug made a film based on the assumption that a similar event is expected to occur anytime in the future on the Åkerneset mountain, not far from Tarfjord. The movie entitled “The Wave” was so successful, two consecutive films were produced in 2018 and 2022.
The village of Bodal after the Loen Rock Slide. Click on the image for online source.Image from the movie “The Wave”.The fjord today. Click on the image for online source.Image from the movie “The Wave”.
There is an excellent article about the Loen disasters by Christer Hoel online here. The quotes in my post are all from his text. I used another image from the movie here.
In a 1971 special edition of Architectural Review devoted to the lagoon city author Jan Morris proposes to simply let the city sink. It’s a polemical claim, but one that takes the ambivalences and dilemmata of historic heritage seriously. A different, longer version of the text was printed in the New York Times on July 20, 1975. It is a wonderful piece of polemic and speculative journalism on the city that, according to the words of Jan Morris, “for a thousand years has occupied a unique position in the imagination, the affection and the distaste of all the nations.” Both version of the text are online here (1971) andhere (1975). And in 2023 Catherine Bennett wrote a nice piece for Wired magazine to review Jan Morris original position, which is also online.
Cover from the 1971 special edition of Architectural Review.
The 19. Century was not only the century of industrialization, the spark that “set human civilization aflame” (Andri Snaer Magnason). Between 1800 and 1815 half a dozen large volcanic eruptions all across the globe significantly changed the climate in China as well as all across Europe and practically all continents. What followed was “the year without a summer” 1816 which did not only bring massive crop failures as well as floods and resulting famines and other hardships to societies worldwide, it also influenced European culture so profoundly that a whole new era of the arts and philosophy developed that had a lasting impact on all of modern society: Romanticism. 1816 is not such a distant past and the paintings, poems, novels and scientific treaties of that era by Caspar David Friedrich, Lord Byron or Mary Shelley remain central to our cultural canon and identity today. In fact, all these climate change stories and images have been right in front of our eyes, in museums, libraries, on t-shirts and advertisements all along. To understand better what’s ahead of us now, we should seek advise from ourselves just seven generations back.
This is an image of the first page of Lod Byron’s famous poem “Darkness” from summer 1816. The full text of the poem and more information about the impacts of “The Year without a Summer” can be found online.
Every year at Ascension Day (Ascensione di Cristo, or “Festa della Sensa” as the Venetians say, it is celebrated in May) the Republic of Venice celebrates itself but also it’s intimate relationship to the sea.
In the age of Renaissance the head of state, called the Doge, would be rowed out to the island Sant Elena in a boat. Upon entering the open sea, he would throw a golden ring in to the water as a sign of matrimony to the Mediterranean Sea.
This tradition stopped when the independent republic dissolved in the so called Fall of the Republic in 1797. Since the 1960’s Venice has picked up the tradition and the ritual is enacted anualy by the mayor of Venice.
The tradition is believed to be more then 1.000 years old and probably has origins in even older pagan rituals. There are various related stories and rituals of sacrificial offerings to the sea, often with the intent of making it more lenient for sea travels.
Painting by Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal) from 1745
“Take the plunge and explore an abandoned and flooded city, an incredible 60 meters underwater. Experience Deep Dive Dubai – a world of exciting and unique scuba and freediving opportunities,” reads the website of Deep Dive Dubai, a newly opened diving resort. The resort is said to be conveniently located “– 15 minutes from Downtown Dubai and 25 minutes from Dubai International Airport –” and sets the world record for the deepest artificial diving pool, featuring artificial ruins for the divers to explore.
Of course, Deep Dive Dubai, cashes in on the uncanny of a dive among ruins in a city that according to studies from 2010 could very likely be submerged by 2100. Dubai ranks high among the coastal cities most at risk from sea level rise. The “sunken city” appears to be such a vital marketing element, it even has it’s own icon on all webpages of the company, as you can see below:
Artificial ruins are not a new idea. They were already once the rage among landscape architects in the period of romanticism in the 19. century all over Europe. For more info on the cult of ruins, you can read online the publication by Anne Eriksen enticingly titled “The Murmur of Ruins” or check out the wikipedia entry on ruins with images of the garden of the castle Schönbrunn in Vienna.
