CARINA DAMM

Participation in research projects:

1. Since April 2026 – Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences – Assistant Professor and Postdoctoral Researcher in the NCN OPUS project (2025/57/B/HS3/02198), “Rus’ Chronicles as a Source of Common Law”. The project analyses Rus’ chronicles from the tenth to thirteenth centuries and later documentary sources as evidence for legal practice, with particular emphasis on precedent, dispute resolution, and the relationship between norm and narrative; the comparative component comprises the analysis of medieval Nordic sources from Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland.
2. 2024–2025 – University of Silesia in Katowice – Principal Investigator of the NCN POLONEZ BIS 3 project (2022/47/P/HS3/01044), co-funded by the National Science Centre and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND action (grant agreement No. 945339): “Weather Perceptions in the Medieval North”. The project investigated the societal consequences of environmental change and extreme weather in medieval Scandinavia, with particular emphasis on Iceland.
3. 2023 – Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), Leipzig – Research Assistant in the “Humans and Environment” department; contributor to the EpiMedDat project and its database on medieval epidemics, with responsibility for the analysis of Old Norse and Latin sources.

Current research:

Current research centres on legal culture in medieval Rus’ and Scandinavia, alongside the preparation of the monograph Salt Worlds: Society, Environment, and Power from the Atlantic to Rus’, c. 750–1500. The book offers a comparative study of the social, economic, and political significance of salt production and circulation across northern and eastern Europe, combining documentary, legal, and narrative sources with archaeological and environmental evidence.

Editorial activities:

Studia Scandinavica, academic yearbook published by the Institute of Scandinavian Studies, University of Gdańsk – member of the editorial team.

Monograph:

1. Händler, Piraten, S(k)laven. Die südliche Ostsee der Wikingerzeit in der altnordischen Literatur, Vienna: Fassbaender, 2025.

 Selected articles and book chapters:

1. “Lawscapes and Climate: Environmental Stress, Legal Assemblies, and Elite Power in Medieval Rus’ and Scandinavia”, in Carina Damm, Monika Stelmasiak-Majorek and Alexandra Vukovich (eds.), Worlds of the Slavs: The Power of Emperors, Elites, and the Veche. Who Needs It?, Brill, in preparation.
2. “Elite Plates and Common Bowls: Medieval Diets and Social Stratification in Iceland and Brittany”, in Marta Rey-Radlińska and Renata Leśniakiewicz-Drzymała (eds.), Aspects of Power in Viking-Age Scandinavia, Turnhout: Brepols, 2026 (forthcoming).
3. “Honey, Bones, and Furs: The Saami and the Bjarmians as Brokers in the Early Medieval Trade between Scandinavia and the Islamic World”, in Solveig Wang et al. (eds.), Colonial Entanglements and the Medieval Nordic World, Berlin–Boston: De Gruyter, 2025, pp. 181–200.
4. “Volcanic Vulnerability in Medieval Iceland”, in Dominik Collet et al. (eds.), Nordic Climate Histories. Impacts, Pathways, Narratives, Winwick: The White Horse Press, 2025, pp. 103–122.
5. Carina Damm, Magdalena Opała-Owczarek et al., “Slow growing juniper shrubs from northern Iceland record summer temperature changes over the last 800 years”, Quaternary Science Reviews 363, 2025.