Gifts from the Sentient Forest: biocultural heritage and human-tree relations in Northern Finland

Forests face myriad threats globally including in Northern Finland, a relatively remote region celebrated as Europe’s last wilderness. Alongside the increasing imperilment of forests, however, lies a growing body of research indicating how trees respond sensitively to environmental change. The term forest sentience signifies the ability of trees to feel, sense, experience, behave, react, express, and remember. The article presents an analysis of the conceptual, methodological, historical, and cultural underpinnings of the project Gifts from the Sentient Forest (GSF) based in Northern Finland. GSF problematizes the construction of Northern Finland as a wilderness and places greater emphasis on the region’s botanical-cultural heritage informed by Indigenous environmental knowledge. Framing Northern Finland as heritage and homeland, the article offers an overview of three approaches advanced in the project to stimulate creative explorations of forest sentience: cultivating seasonal awareness, pattern-thinking through pareidolia, and remembering (with) trees. Through an emphasis on Northern Finland, we argue that forest sentience should be recognized as a conservation value alongside aesthetic, cultural, educational, recreational, scientific, wilderness, and other values. In this way, forest sentience provides a basis for countering narrow utilitarian views of trees, recasting wilderness as biocultural heritage, and preserving knowledge of the region’s endemic seasons.