The last Ice Age: The trade in natural ice as an agent of modernisation and economic integration in 19th and early 20th century

The point of departure for the "Last Ice Age" project is the shipping of natural ice from Norway in the 19th and early 20th century. In the peak years, this annually employed thousands of people in coastal communities, and hundreds of ships. The Norwegian ice industry has been addressed by many local historians, focusing on ice plants and ice exporters. The significance of these local businesses in wider geographical, economic, technological and cultural contexts is far less researched. This project, therefore, has followed the ice to its markets, in Norway and overseas, and investigated the Norwegian ice trade as part of an extensive international trade in ice with far-reaching implications for production, transport, marketing and consumption of fresh foods, cold drinks, etc. in the UK, Ireland, continental Europe and North America, prior to the proliferation of modern cooling technology. The outcomes of this research has already been extensively disseminated. Underway dissemination both to colleagues and a general public has been an integrated part of our research strategy. By publishing peer reviewed articles in Norwegian journals with wide distribution also to the general public as well as pure popular science articles both in Norway and abroad, by running a bilingual public Facebook group and by giving numerous public lectures in local libraries, local history associations, Rotary clubs etc., we have gained valuable information for our own research and inspired others to do research in the same field as well, and have thus potentially expanded both the final research results and dissemination of the project. More publications will follow, and eventually exhibitions and popular science dissemination on other platforms as well. As for results of our research, especially the following deserve mentioning: 1) Considerable but limited markets for natural ice had emerged in London and other metropols of Western and North-Western Europe from the late18th century, mostly connected catering for luxury consumption and fish trade. 2) The first export of ice from Norway from the 1820s were prompted by some mild winters in Britain that hampered local ice harvests. 3) The prime mover for more regular and extensive ice exports from c. 1850 was the modernization and expansion of the British high sea fishing fleet that in combination with railway building opened up a rapidly growing market for fresh fish both in London and the new industrial towns - and a vast marked for Norwegian ice. 4) Other great fishing nations followed on this path, and ice for cooling also rapidly became widespread in other industries, like the dairy, meat and brewing industries, as well as in restaurants etc. and private households. 5) The modes of operation in the Norwegian ice export business have been shown to be more complex and diverse than foreseen at the start of the project, eventually leaning heavily on extensive telegraph communication for rapid exchange of information. 6) With some exceptions, Norwegian fish traders were surprisingly late in taking advantage of the new fresh fish markets that the abundance of natural ice gave them access to, compared to the fishing industries of the UK and other countries that imported ice from Norway. This may be explained by the dominant small scale structure of the Norwegian fishing fleet, the late and limited development of the Norwegian railway network, as well as comparatively late industrialization and urbanization. 7) Annual fluctuations in temperatures did not only affect the demand for Norwegian ice abroad and caused prices to fluctuate. Great demand and high prices did not necessarily cause profits to rise for the exporters: Mild winters in the importing countries caused local production of natural ice to drop and demand for Norwegian ice to rise, but often coincided with mild winters in Norway too, reducing ice production in coastal areas here and causing costs to rise for exporters who would have to harvest or buy ice further from the coast, at higher transport costs, to meet their obligations to provide ice to their international customers. This demonstrates the complexity and vulnerability of the ice business as an export industry. 8) Environmental concerns about contaminated ice - justified when it comes to locally harvested natural ice in urban areas, but largely unjustified when it comes to imported ice from Norway - played a greater role in the competition on continental ice markets as well as in the UK between the imported natural ice and the growing production of artificial ice than we realized when we planned the project. To solve the issue of water pollution, a new environmental problem was created by replacing a far more sustainable source of energy for cooling - natural ice - with artificial ice production based on coal and eventually modern cooling technology, The use of imported natural ice was, however, more long-lived in the fish trade than in other industries..

Prosjektet har vært nyttig og vil ha varig nytteverdi for NMM som prosjekteier og for maritim historie som forskningsfelt i Norge på flere plan. Bl.a. har det: • styrket den vitenskapelige kompetansen i Stiftelsen Norsk Folkemuseum/NMM i samsvar med museets strategiske målsettinger og statlige forskningspolitiske føringer • styrket museet som forskningsinstitusjon også gjennom økt forskningssamarbeid med andre museer og forskningsmiljøer i universitetssektoren, både i inn- og utland • utvidet museets faglige nettverk og gjort det mer synlig både i internasjonale og norske maritimhistoriske miljøer, og i norske historiske og kulturhistoriske forskningsmiljøer mer allment, og på den måten dannet grunnlag for utvikling av samarbeid om nye forskningsprosjekter i fremtiden • gitt museet og samarbeidspartnerne nytt kunnskapsgrunnlag og nye perspektiver for både ny forskning og for formidling (se nedenfor) • kastet lys over sammenhenger mellom teknologiutvikling og klima- og miljøfaktorer som også er aktuelle i vår egen tid og kan bidra til å gjøre museets formidling relevant for nye publikumsgrupper

The investigation of the trade in natural ice will be divided into four discrete, yet closely related, strands, executed by four partly overlapping teams. The findings of the four teams will mesh together to provide a holistic analysis of an extractive and commercial activity that had wide-ranging ramifications for the growth of an array of industries, and the evolution of broad consumption patterns, in Europe and North America. Strand 1: Production will focus on the role of climate and environmental factors in shaping human economic, social and cultural activity, as well as on technological developments, manpower and property relations involved in the production process. The research will mainly be conducted by a team led by Professor Ingo Heidbrink, at Old Dominion University, Norfolk VA, USA, and by a PhD student in the Norwegian Maritime Museum; Strand 2: Transport and Marketing will investigate the 'supply chain' that linked centres of ice production with markets that tended to grow in scale and scope in line with improvements in sea and land transportation. It will be largely undertaken by a post-doc research fellow at the University college of Southeast Norway and the project manager; Strand 3: Consumption Patterns. A PhD student at the University of Hull, supervised by Professor David J. Starkey and Dr Martin Wilcox, will analyse the contribution made by natural ice in the improvement of food supplies, health conditions and standards of living in regions that imported the natural ice, with Britain as case study; Strand 4: Ice and Modernization. The impact of natural ice on societal taste, fashion and aesthetics, and the role of this commodity in driving cultural and technological developments, form the basis of a second PhD project based at Hull and supervised by Professor Starkey and Dr Wilcox. By connecting local history with international history, the outcomes of this research will lend themselves easily to dissemination to the public.