Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

The present study asks how storytelling practices related to landscapes, sacred sites, and local lore have changed in post-Soviet Estonia.

Paper long abstract

In 21st-century Estonia, interest in landscapes and landscape lore has grown significantly among both scholars and amateurs. This development is closely tied to the cultural ruptures of the Soviet occupation, which systematically disrupted collective memory and transformed the physical and symbolic landscape through deportations, destruction of heritage sites, militarization, renaming of places, and large-scale agricultural interventions. During the Soviet period, storytelling was structured by censorship and self-censorship, producing distinct layers of narrative: stories silenced for political reasons; stories shared only in restricted circles; and relatively neutral stories deemed safe for wider circulation. These constraints not only limited cultural expression but also reshaped the role of oral tradition in society. The present study asks how storytelling practices related to landscapes, sacred sites, and local lore have changed in post-Soviet Estonia, and what role they play in processes of identity construction. We analyze the ways in which oral history and folk narratives are mobilized as culturally authoritative sources of memory, and how these are linked to contemporary understandings of nature, heritage, and community. Particular attention is paid to the emergence of sacred natural sites and nature-based worldviews as central categories in the redefinition of Estonian self-identity. We argue that the renewed interest in landscape lore serves both as a reaction to past cultural disruptions and as an instrument for negotiating present-day social and environmental change. Local storytelling thus operates simultaneously as a repository of historical memory and as a resource for shaping identity and resistance to unwanted transformations of the landscape.