Contesting Marginality: The Boreal Forest of Middle Scandinavia and the Worlds Outside

In this article, we present ongoing archaeological research into Scandinavia's forested inland region, suggesting that its people and communities were socially and economically integrated into systems of trade and in close interaction with the worlds outside, as early as the first centuries of the Common Era. The article presents a range of archaeological evidence, from ca. 500 to 1400 CE, for processes of ecological globalization, manifested by the exploitation of local landscapes and the extraction of valued products that could be transformed into commodities through crafts and trade. These forested landscapes were reliant on—and also shaped by—complex social and economic relations reflecting interrelated socio-economic systems of extraction, production, and consumption. Our main argument is that these landscapes are crucial to identifying and understanding the contours of the premodern global North.