From “Friluftsliv” to “the Symbiocene”
- 6 days ago
- 6 min read
Scholar Examines the Transformation of Language for Better Earth Care
Language does more than describe reality—it shapes it.
For example, Scandinavians use the word “friluftsliv” (pronounced free-loofts-liv) to convey “getting out into nature.” Friluftsliv translates to “open-air living.”
In Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark, people can friluftsliv—walk or camp—pretty much anywhere, as long as they respect nature. Corporate culture maintains an expectation that people should have time to get outside during work hours. To encourage friluftsliv, companies in Sweden and Finland can even get tax breaks for outdoor sports activities and equipment.
Friluftsliv is often accompanied by the word “allmansrätten,” which means the “right to roam.” Access to nature is an expected part of the culture, so natural spaces are a must. Plus, Sweden has a phrase that says, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” That phrase removes the negativity associated with certain weather conditions like rain, encouraging people to enjoy being out in all weather.
The English language doesn’t typically have words or phrases like these. Instead, many Americans grew up hearing the myth that they’ll catch a cold being out in the rain. This gap in vocabulary matters. It shapes how people prioritize being out in nature, how they view the natural world, and how they deal with ecological issues.
“These kinds of words show us that, for other people, there are other ways of representing our relationship with nature,” explains Dr. Cristina Soriano, a senior linguistic researcher at the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences at the University of Geneva.
Adopting Words from Other Languages
Soriano studies how language and metaphors evoke emotion and span across cultures. She and her colleague, psychologist Tobias Brosch, contributed to a 2023 climate change exhibit at Geneva’s Natural History Museum called Tout contre la terre (or Close to the Earth). While the exhibit covered climate change science, it was specifically designed to evoke visitors’ emotional responses.
“I had looked at language for emotion, but not at language for emotion in the context of the climate crisis,” Soriano tells The Earth & I. “I learned a lot of useful things, not only about how the language we use will influence our emotions—which in turn influences our behavior in the crisis—but also the words that have come to exist to talk about our emotions in the climate crisis.”
Soriano fell in love with several words and phrases, like the Scandinavian ones mentioned above, that present a different way of looking at the human-nature relationship. Another phrase she found powerful came from the Mexican Rarámuri tribe: “Iwígara” (pronounced ee-WEE-ga-ra).
Iwígara represents a familial way of viewing non-human entities in nature.
Iwígara represents a familial way of viewing non-human entities in nature, such as other animals, plants, and even landscapes. It goes beyond phrases in English like “Mother Earth” and represents the interconnectedness of all these natural forms. Ethnobotanist Enrique Salmón helped popularize this word in the English-speaking world through his 2020 book Iwígara: The Kinship of Plants and People.
“It is alien to us [English-speakers]!” Soriano says. “We can kind of do it metaphorically—“mother nature”—but it is not quite as engrained as [in] these other communities.”
By using words already developed by other cultures, English speakers can learn to conceptualize their feelings and thoughts better. English is already such a hodgepodge of different languages, she notes, why not add a few more?
Expanding the English Lexicon
Having words to describe something provides an opportunity for more emotional regulation and to develop personal and societal frameworks around it. For example, the term, “ecocide,” which means the destruction of the environment by humans, was first used in 1969, according to Merriam-Webster. Ecocide has now become a formal legal term in many countries and is being considered for a new crime prosecutable by the International Criminal Court.
In addition, the term “eco-anxiety” defines a specific form of anxiety that is driven by climate change concerns. This term allows psychologists to develop modalities and strategies to help patients manage.
Eco-philosopher Glenn Albrecht continues to introduce new terms, such as in his 2019 book Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World, to help people describe what humans are doing to the planet and how it makes them feel. These words include “the Symbiocene” (described below), “solastalgia” (the distress or homesickness caused by environmental transformation, degradation, or loss), and “terrafurie” (Earth anger/rage).
“I do this because the world is rapidly changing in powerful and novel ways,” Albrecht explained to Dr. Marc Bekoff in a 2019 Psychology Today article. “Novel global contexts require new concepts, new words.”
The Symbiocene is his suggested follow-up to the Anthropocene, a term describing our current geological age or epoch. The “anthro-“ prefix refers to humans (think anthropology).
The word describes an era in which humans began to affect the planet enough to impact how its global systems operate. While there’s disagreement amongst geologists on whether the term is formal or not, and when the Anthropocene began, many geologists think Earth transitioned from the Holocene to the Anthropocene during the Industrial Revolution, when human activity began to drastically accelerate the amount of greenhouse gases spewed into the atmosphere.
The “symbio” in Symbiocene comes from the word “symbiotic.” Albrecht believes Earth will have transitioned from the Anthropocene to the Symbiocene when humans have switched from having a destructive, extractive relationship with nature to a mutually beneficial one. While this feels like a far-off goal, developing the word now gives people something to strive for.
Albrecht believes Earth will have transitioned from the Anthropocene to the Symbiocene when humans have switched from having a destructive, extractive relationship with nature to a mutually beneficial one.
Words to Shape a Positive Future
New words like the Symbiocene allow people to express current emotions and problems as well as an opportunity to dream of a positive future. “Solarpunk”—a futuristic society that plays off the ideas of “steampunk” and “cyberpunk,” where societies are based on steam or computers, respectively—envisions a world built on sustainability, technology, infrastructure, and practices in tune with the natural world. Solarpunk worlds can already be seen in films like Studio Ghibli’s 1984 film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Marvel Studio’s 2018 film Black Panther.
While new words can catch on and help develop human consciousness around different environmental topics, they also risk being jargony. Soriano stresses that words won’t click if they sound too scientific, are too hard to pronounce, or if their meanings are too difficult to parse out.
“If we are demanding society adopts these new words,” Soriano says, “it needs to serve a proper function.”
That’s one of the reasons she likes the idea of working with words from other cultures and languages. The words already exist because they are relatable and valuable. “I do think it might be enough to look outside of our language and see what other cultures use to represent things,” Soriano suggests.
“I do think it might be enough to look outside of our language and see what other cultures use to represent things.”
A positive-framing, non-English word she enjoys is the Spanish word “ilusión.” While it can directly translate to “illusion” in English, the meaning of the word goes far beyond that.
“You feel ilusión for something in the future, irrespective of the odds of it being true,” Soriano explained. “It could be ilusión like looking forward to something certain or looking forward to something that I hope will happen. It’s the same word. [Either way] you rejoice in it, and you inhabit the joy of what it would be like if or when it happens.
“And I think we need that because we could just get lost in the [negative] numbers. If we run the numbers, they’re kind of pessimistic to be honest. It’s unlikely that things turn out well; however, we need to go all in because doing nothing, and therefore resulting in nothing, that’s just too hard a loss.”
In a way, ilusión is a similar idea to “radical optimism.” This is not the British singer Dua Lipa’s album (though that also encompasses positive vibes) but the philosophy of actively and consciously trusting that positive outcomes are possible even when they don’t always feel possible. Radical optimism is more of an active, evidence-based choice than simply hoping.
Soriano says that while radical optimism is similar, ilusión gives deeper meaning to the native Spanish speaker. Ilusión brings more guttural joy; it’s a way of envisioning one’s existence in a positive future that has the ability to fuel real change, as documented in a 2023 Argentinian study.
“The odds, the numbers, should not factor into your anticipatory joy and that way you can fuel your internal motivation,” Soriano says.
*Becky Hoag is a freelance environmental reporter. You can find her work on her site beckyhoag.com and through her YouTube channel https://youtube.com/beckisphere.