Infrastructural Systems and Technical Change

In recent years, partly due to the emerging global warming problem, interest in petroleum, wind power, fishing, shipping and other activities in the far north has increased. This has spurred increased research efforts in fields such as construction and infrastructural systems in cold climates. Most of this research is today conducted by engineers, many of them associated with one of the public and/or industrial research centers that are specialized in the field and are located in the northern parts of the world. This article addresses some important questions related to establishing infrastructures in cold climates in the past, in particular how those involved in the establishment of infrastructure in cold climates and in remote places managed, before any actual research in the field existed and prior to the general infrastructural technology was fully established, to construct working systems.