This article presents results that seriously challenge conventional frameworks regarding the time, course, and cultural context of the introduction of iron and steel in Europe, in turn central metals in the narrative of civilization development. From focusing on 2,000-year-old finds from 42 different sites across the national borders of present-day northernmost Norway, Finland, and Sweden, our study reveals advanced iron and steel production contemporaneous with Roman steel production within the hitherto unthinkable cultural context of hunter-gatherers. By employing archaeometric analyses alongside a lens that considers the Arctic climate and landscape, long-standing inadequate interpretative frameworks are challenged and we manage to shed novel light on the metallurgical practices and skills of the ancient Arctic hunter-gatherers. By examining local conditions, the research specifically reveals adaptation strategies and previously underexplored social and organizational aspects of early ironmaking. The implications of these findings are profound, urging historians and archaeologists to adopt similar methods and perspectives to potentially uncover additional “unthinkable” locations/regions or contexts with advanced and early metalworking.

Drawing from literature across various disciplines, this article aims to provide a fuller picture than what is typically outlined by ‘environmental historians’ regarding the important and consolidating decade of Swedish environmental policy and legislation in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and demonstrates how it in line with expressed needs in the current climate policy debate involved green business and knowledge-based policy implementation. Given the urgency of the interaction between humans and the environment today, it is valuable to revisit previous policy-making practices, knowledge developments, technological solutions, and businesses seeking to reform this interaction. This is particularly justified for countries regarded as environmental forerunners, such as Sweden.

The expanded perspective on environmental concern in Sweden during the late 1960s and early 1970s teaches us that policy action primarily focused on reducing industrial pollution emissions into water and air. Additionally, it prompts us to reconsider environmental concern as something that could grow within business, industry, and government authorities in parallel (and sometimes prior) to public opinion and advocacy by environmental opinion makers. Several Swedish government institutions, along with the industry/government co-funded pioneering environmental research institute IVL, demonstrated significant readiness to discover, understand, and address the growing environmental challenges. During this nascent period of environmental concern, addressing environmental issues often involved targeting low-hanging fruit—relatively straightforward and cost-effective solutions, such as developing measurement standards and devices that significantly benefited various industry sectors.

This chapter departs from the dual objective of reusing waste while at the same time mitigating pollution; it focuses on the opportunities and challenges of managing this trade-off through voluntary agreements between various actors. The chapter aims to investigate and discuss the emergence, outcomes, and future challenges of the Swedish voluntary certification scheme REVAQ. This scheme includes efforts among wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) to build trust for the application of sewage sludge on agricultural land and thus reuse the nutrients contained in it, not least by reducing the presence of metals and organic substances. Our findings suggest that the establishment of REVAQ was, in many ways, a natural response of the incumbent actors to an uncertain regulatory situation. The preventive environmental work pursued because of the certification scheme has been successful, thus resulting in decreased flows of hazardous substances to soil. However, REVAQ faces challenges, largely due to previously unattended trace elements, e.g., microplastics and pharmaceutical residues. These will make it difficult for actors to convince the key stakeholders about the future quality of the sewage sludge. There is also currently a prioritization of system optimization over system change, i.e., a bias towards incremental improvements in the existing system instead of seeking to innovate beyond this system. REVAQ likely contributes to this path dependence and technological lock-in.

Although Sweden pioneered in the development of resource-recovery sanitation solutions, and there has existed a political awareness of such solutions since the 1990s, their implementation has been slow. We adopt a historical (40-year) perspective and use the main journal of the Swedish sanitation sector as source material to go into depth why this has been the case. Central explanations emerge in terms of previously strong governmental control and continuously tightened environmental requirements that ceaselessly have expanded and strengthened the large-scale centralized sanitation system. In parallel, the sector has continuously been reminded of the shortcomings of alternative (and smaller) solutions and of the tension between recovery and treatment/risk management. The study highlights the possibility of achieving long-term and profound impacts from policy mixes, as well as the strong influence of the sum of challenges and choices over a long time, on today’s perspectives and propensity for change.

The article critically examines interpretations of Old World ferrous metallurgical developments with reference to their consequences for Arctic Fennoscandian iron research. The traditional paradigm of technological innovations recurrently links the emergence of iron technology to increasing social complexity and a sedentary agricultural lifestyle, typically downplaying ‘peripheral’ areas such as Arctic Fennoscandia and its hunter-gatherer communities. Even in postcolonial research of recent years, the archaeometallurgical record of Arctic Fennoscandia is interpreted and organized within the traditional frameworks on the time, course, and cultural context of the introduction of iron technology in Europe, where Arctic Fennoscandia is not considered to have any noteworthy role. However, current archaeological research with new data in Arctic Fennoscandia disputes prevailing ideas in European iron research and shows substantial evidence that iron technology was an integrated part of hunter-gatherer subsistence already during the Early Iron Age (c. 200 BC). Archaeometallurgical analyses reveal advanced knowledge in all the operational sequences of iron technology, including bloomery steel production and the mastering of advanced smithing techniques. Therefore, we urge dispensing with traditional ideas and call for an increased interest in the underlying mechanisms for the transfer of iron.

The paper analyzes the prerequisites for a regulatory-driven transition toward radically lower air and water pollution in industry. This is achieved in the empirical context of the Swedish mining and metals industry, and by investigating the environmental licensing processes during two regulatory systems. The paper derives an analytical framework that explores under what circumstances such licensing processes can result in radical emissions reductions without seriously jeopardizing the competitiveness of the industry. Archived material covering six environmental licensing processes, three during each system, is used to illustrate the various design and implementation issues. The results suggest that regulatory-driven green transitions benefit from trust-based bargaining procedures in which companies are involved in repeated interactions with regulatory authorities, and which extended probation periods permit tests of novel abatement technologies (including innovation). The findings also illustrate the importance of abstaining from simplified normative notions about policy instrument choice (e.g. taxes versus standards).

The role of ferrous metallurgy in ancient communities of the Circumpolar North is poorly understood due, in part, to the widespread assumption that iron technology was a late introduction, passively received by local populations. Analyses of two recently excavated sites in northernmost Sweden, however, show that iron technology already formed an integral part of the hunter-gatherer subsistence economy in Northern Fennoscandia during the Iron Age (c. 200-50 BC). Such developed knowledge of steel production and complex smithing techniques finds parallels in contemporaneous continental Europe and Western Eurasia. The evidence presented raises broader questions concerning the presence of intricate metallurgical processes in societies considered less complex or highly mobile.