Mobilized villages: local community agency during the Swedish wildfires in 2018 and the process of re-orientation towards the future

In the summer of 2018, wildfires erupted in Swedish forests at a magnitude without precedence in modern Swedish history. The purpose of this project is to study how local communities particularly affected by the wildfires in 2018 mobilized local resources to cope with the crisis, how local residents narrate the crisis and its aftermath, and what the crisis led to in terms of strategies and awareness of sustainable development in the future. Through digital ethnography, qualitative interviews and focus group interviews the project examines three questions: 1. How did local residents act during the actual events of the wildfire? 2. How are the wildfires and the mobilizations remembered and narrated? 3. Does local history and forestry traditions and practices impact on how local communities imagine possible futures? Through an ethnographic approach, we wish to capture the tensions between the past, the present and the possible future, with the idea of trying to show the potential for resilient communities in a world of global climate change. This study contributes ethnographic insight into how disaster can be managed and how it changes individual and collective cultural norms and conceptions of time, as well as management of resources in local communities. The data consists of pseudonymized transcripts of interviews. Accessible metadata describes the interviews.