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Paper short abstract

The paper focuses on the co-narrative and dialogic side of nature-trail guestbooks in Estonia. It looks at the different ways nature acts in the dialogues found in them (as a topic, initiator and co-creator).

Paper long abstract

A guestbook is an institutional way to say: “I was here!” However, as the guestbooks are used in different settings, this statement can convey different kinds of relationships to the place where one happens to be. This paper focuses on quite a special layer in the Estonian guestbook tradition – the nature-trail guestbooks. With this notion I refer to notebooks where visitors of nature-trails, bird watching towers, hiking cottages or other natural spaces can leave their feedback.

Nature-trail guestbooks belong into the sphere of vernacular or everyday literacy – people who write in them use and blend different generic models, style registers and ways to position oneself. There are several possibilities to look at the guestbooks as a site of co-narration. Firstly, we can look at the volumes as a kind of co-authored oevre, created by visitors of one particular place in the course of the time. Secondly, we can look for co-narration and dialogues on the level of single entries or clusters of entries formed around one visit.

However with the nature-trail guestbooks there is also the third option. What makes nature-trail guestbooks special is their habitat that is not healthy for paper products. And due to these conditions nature is not only the topic of the entries but also the co-creator of them. In my paper I am going to look at some nature-trail guestbooks and analyse the different ways nature acts in the dialogues found in them.