Paper short abstract:

This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Ida-Viru County, Northeast Estonia, and explores the possibilities and practices of reclaiming a post-industrial and post-socialist landscape via tourism.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on preliminary findings from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Ida-Viru County, Northeast Estonia. The seaside region, once a major oil shale producer in the Soviet West, is nowadays an Eastern periphery of the European Union. Oil shale extraction in Estonia peaked in 1980s, but decreased in the 1990s due to post-Soviet restructuring of the industry. Although oil shale is still being produced in Estonia in large quantities, leaving the land perforated by underground mines and elevated by semi-coke dump hills, its limited reserves and the impact of mining on the environment force the country to think of alternatives of land use.

In academic literature, concepts such as reclaiming, re-cultivating and re-wilding are used in discussions about industrial landscapes. This paper maintains the context of capitalism and economic rationalism and explores the possibilities of post invasive-land-use focusing on the tourism industry and its strategies. Drawing from interviews with representatives of local tourism companies and participant observation during tours to the industrial region, this account focuses on specific local responses to socioeconomic demands, looking at how the locals understand, strengthen and mediate their relationship with the land they inhabit by negotiating the past and imagining the future of the peculiar artificial landscape in tourism narratives and practices. Considering the representations of landscape alongside with its social, cultural and political dimensions offers a possibility to examine how is the anthropocene experienced, understood and mediated in the post-socialist setting.