Ecologically, culturally and economically vital, forests are both a fundamental part of our natural history and deeply rooted in our human history. These are spaces where the biology of our planet meets the structures of our societies, our bodies and our minds, constructed as much by storytellers and legal authorities as they are by ecologists, foresters and the planet itself. The roots of these cultural and historical associations are deeper and more tangled than we might imagine, particularly in the northern world. This project will be the first in-depth, multidisciplinary study of forests - and by extension trees and woods - in northern Germanic cultures. It focuses on three geographical and cultural areas: a) the Nordic world b) the Germanic-speaking peoples of the British Isles c) north-central Europe known to the Romans as Germania. 'Germanic' refers to the language group that maps onto these geographical areas; it is not in itself an ethnic or cultural signifier. By bringing together the study of three areas across a broad chronological span, I will shed light on a complex network of historical and cultural connections and influences - religious, political, artistic, literary, economic, legal - and their development over time. This project will provide new ways for understanding how historical cultures thought about and engaged with their physical environments, and what this can tell us about how humans think about the world around them and their place within it. The study begins in the 1st century BC with Caesar's commentaries on the Gallic/Civil wars, where we find some of the earliest descriptions of the northern forests of Germania. The vast Hercynian Forest formed the northern boundary of Europe in the Roman geographical imagination. Interpolated passages in the commentaries fill these forests with marvellous creatures (such as unicorns) and barbarian tribes. A century after Caesar, the historian Tacitus wrote of the cataclysmic loss of three legions in the forested badlands of Germania, with accompanying tales of human sacrifices in sacred groves. For classical authors, these impenetrable forests were synonymous with barbarism, an association that was carried over by the 'barbarians' themselves in the early medieval period. With the proliferation of source material for Northern Europe, insiders' perspectives emerge. The intersection between embodied and imaginative engagement with the forest becomes more complex, blurring into spheres including economic use, resource management, law, storytelling and religion. By the end of the medieval period (c. 1500) forests had flourished as a central topos in the literary cultures of Northern Europe, not least in the interconnected romance traditions of the British Isles, Germany and the Nordic world. The chronological endpoint of this investigation brings us up to the dawn of the early modern era, with the seeds planted for many of the significant developments of the following centuries where once again trees and forests play prominent roles (scientific enquiry, nationalism, romanticism). Today, the forest continues to flourish in our collective imagination, from the legacy of the Brothers Grimm to Tolkien's Mirkwood, from Julia Donaldson's Gruffalo to JK Rowling's Forbidden Forest. Yet while the cultural and historical potency of the forest is alive and well, the same cannot be said of the average modern Westerner's relation to it. In demonstrating how deep and tangled these roots go, I seek to expose the tension between lived experience of the forest in earlier periods, and its mediated remnants, actual destruction and unprecedented importance in an era of climate change and deforestation. Through outputs including a book, interdisciplinary workshops, and impact and outreach activities, I aim to stimulate dialogue and synergies not only across the academic disciplines but also with experts from broadcasting, ecology, heritage, education and the creative industries.