Fortellingens Kraft 26

What would it mean for a story to genuinely cross the boundary between human and more‑than‑human — not as rhetoric but as a shift in how we see and relate? That question frames a talk by multimedia storyteller Torsten Schäfer, who draws on work about nature, kinship and rivers conceived as living beings. Schäfer’s current research and writing project, Talking Salmon, developed with Oslo Metropolitan University, follows salmon species around the globe. The project treats salmon not merely as subjects but as a lens and a connector — an invitation to rethink how stories about the natural world are told.
A central argument of the talk: water is an underreported solution to climate adaptation in an overheating Europe. Rivers, wetlands, swamps and coasts, Schäfer says, deserve far more attention in mainstream climate coverage — and migratory fish offer a way into that conversation. Schäfer outlines four narrative orientations his work explores: - telling stories about nature; - telling stories in the presence of a being or landscape; - telling stories with an animal; - and, experimentally, telling stories as an animal (for example, as a salmon or a reindeer).