Maastikud ajas

Carl Ortwin Sauer

• 1889-1975

• Inimene ehitab kultuuri abil loodusmaastikust kultuurmaastiku

• Loodus on materjal, kultuur on agent, maastik on tulemus.

• iga maastik kord oma ajalise arengu lõpuni.

• Inimese loodud ja kujundatud regioon

What’s this?

The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.

ESAK III / Usaldus. Vastutus. Sidusus. / Maastik – keskkond – identiteet – säästvus / Maastik, sidusus, identiteet

Conceptual graph of the frequency and magnitude of landscape evolution in Europe (after Antrop 2000).

Landscapes have limits in time

• Traditional landscapes, where several generations live in the same landcsape

• Modern landscapes, where one generation sees several landscapes

Stages in landscape history

Western Europe time Estonia

Postmodern landscapes 2000 Postmodern landscapes

Collective open fields

1900 Private farm

landscapes

Industrial

landscapes

1800

Estate landscapes

1700Traditional agricultural

landscapes

1600

1500

1400Mediaeval landscapes

1200

Antique landscapes Ancient landscapes

Natural/prehistoric

landscapes

Vos and Meekes 1999 Palang and Mander 2000

Who were they?

German speaking landlords

We were all we

Moscow

Rural people?

LANDSCAPES IN TIME

Different time layers shine through in the same spot

Time

(Centuries) Landscapee

Landscape

element

After Vervloet 1986

LANDSCAPE PALIMPSEST

FUNCTION

FORMATION

CHANGE

TIME

PRINCIPLE LINK

1. FORMATION

2. FORMATION

MORPHOLOGY OF LANDSCAPE CHANGE

What am I at?

• How the shift of formations happens? Which “tools” are used?

• How different approaches explain, describe or help to understand the change?

• What changes when landscape changes?

• Whose story to believe?

Reflections to this conference

• Landscapes are never produced locally - leitbilder as well as political “tools”

• Different approaches to time – reconstructive and retrospective

• Contestation, both of history/memory and of landscape itself

How it changes

• Political change

• Representation by power

• Changes carried out “in reality”

• People get used, still remember the past

• Time lags

• Innovation becomes heritage

So what remains on the blackboard when it is cleaned?

How long does the tradition go, if there is any?

Setu Time layers 1 - 1920-30s

• To adjust the Russian-tradition-based cultural landscape to the Estonian one

• integrating of Setu people

• introduction of the parish reform

• immigration of Estonians

• land consolidation

• weakened the traditional way of life

Time layers 2 – soviet time

• Land use and lifestyles of the previous periods were altered, new structures introduced.

• halved between Estonian SSR and Russian SFSR, administrative consequences

• lifeways connected with collective farms and block buildings.

• Gardening, leaving the country

• Cultural landcsape became more impersonal

Time layers 3 - independence

• BORDER

• Abandonment

• New symbolism – creation of the Setu Homestead Museum

– borders between the Orthodox and Lutheran religions are not that clear anymore

– number of authentic Setu people is small

– the old customs are merged with today’s customs

– the close villages have changed

• Rebirth of traditions?

What is important?

• Nature

• Ideal landscape – circular reference

• Different actors and power play – Local people

– Local activists and intellectuals

– Tourists

• Dichotomy of places for insiders and tourists

Distribution of village types in South-Estonia in the

end of 17th century

Distribution of village types in Estonia beginning of 20th century

Before land consolidation village had:

1. Social organisation

2. Commonly managed lands and strip-fields

3. Households

After land consolidation village became an administrative

unit

Many dispersed villages were named dispersed

farmsteads, although their position was unchanged

Changing roles of villages

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

1950

1952

1954

1956

1958

1960

1962

1964

1966

1968

1970

1972

1974

1976

1978

1980

1982

1984

1986

1988

1990

1992

1994

1996

Other

%Forest

%Arable land

%Grassland

Land use change 1950-1996

Dynamics of the share of agricultural land on Saaremaa

1918 1929 1939 1942 1945 1966 1975 1986 1992 1996 2001

88.05 69.22 69.6 73.16 70.69 37.5 32.7 30.5 30.53 28.05 17.03

Changes in landscape structure

Urbanisation

Time layers

Land consolidation mid-19th century

More time layers

Layers in layers

Landscapes and counterlandscapes?

Foucault (1977: 160), in discussing the way that political agents attempt to influence others, proposes that individuals are engaged in preparing 'counter-memories'; 'a use of history that severs its connection to memory, its metaphysical and anthropological model, and constructs a counter-memory - a transformation of history into a totally different form of time'.

Path dependency (Zarina 2013 Geografiska Annaler B)

• used for explaining the sequences that are marked by relatively deterministic causal patterns and, what is of an equal importance, that the outcome of a sequence cannot be predicted by looking at the initial conditions alone.

• an approach, rather than a formalized theory

two dominant types of sequences

• self-reinforcing sequences characterize the formation and long-term reproduction of a given institutional pattern,

• reactive sequences describe chains of temporally ordered and causally connected events.

• From a landscape point of view, by the former we describe the fixity of practices, while by the latter the particular development of (or changes in) landscapes.

The path of the Šultes village

SWOT of PD:

• Strength: how small changes can produce large downstream consequences; interplay of differect actors-factors; opens space for the participation of locals in narrative-type explanation

• Weakness: wide interpretation space can be considered as a weakness of the method

• Opportunity: a set of qualitative explanatory models for analysing causal complexity

• Threat: generalisation: “past influences future”

Path dependence summary

• holistic, in essence even scale-less, approach that allows us to understand landscape change or its particular fixity.

• Language issues – the necessity of communication

• Landscape path dependence and succession paths research is important to understanding which processes and activities have resulted in the development of the landscape spatial structure, the landscape meanings which are the driving forces and sources of landscape development trajectories.

Cultural Explosion (Lotman 1992)

• Landscape as chronotope – i.e. time and place both important

• Times of relative stability and times fo explosive change

• In case of explosion, many competing new scenarios of development emerge, only one of which finally consolidates and achieves the central position.

• In the same way, we can distinguish periods of gradual and explosive changes in landscapes, where in the epochs of explosive change a disruption with previous landscapes is produced.

Key issues

• Lotman (2009) pays main attention to borders within one system, and the translation possibilities that the border creates, i.e. the continuity or persistence and the change of the system.

• after a qualitative change (which he calls explosion) the culture must be able to describe its own change. During the explosion itself this sort of describing is impossible.

• It is important to create the link with what was there before the explosion. If a culture is able to describe the explosion, the pre-explosion becomes part of the culture, if not, the link is lost.

Two old figures

Whose landscape?

• Two former military sites in Estonia • What happens after the troops have left and the

base is given back to non-military life? • through the eyes of the local people – how they

perceive the landscape, how they shape the landscape with their everyday practices, how they see the past of their landscape and let it influence their lives.

• Whether and how a place that used to be observable from behind a fence has been turned into a place of inhabitation.

Soviet military areas in Estonia

• 1939-1994

• Raukas (2006, p. 46): 1565 objects in 800 different locations and ca 87,000 hectares of land -1.9% of the whole territory.

• military personnel in mid-1980s 122,480; family members should be added to this number.

• The biggest military objects were the training grounds in Aegviidu, Laeva, Nursi, and Värska, but the military also used the whole Pakri peninsula

Case 1: Pärispea

• on July 26, 1940, Soviets took over the Estonian border guard station.

• In August 1941 they were pushed away by the invading German troops

• The Germans left on September 18, 1944, after having blown up the batteries and also buildings of two farms they had been using as storages.

• The Red Army re-appeared in Pärispea on October 29, 1944.

Suurpea

• Most respondents feel depressed and powerless when talking about the military installations.

• The memories about the military differ, dependent on the age and character of the respondent. In general the opinions were neutral, no one owes a grudge to the soldiers, and the former situation is currently taken as an inevitable peculiarity of the past which fortunately is over by now.

• Concerning the buildings, the common agreement was that something should be done. It’s perhaps not that important what exactly should be done, but this neglect is unacceptable. Two of the respondents said tearing them down is a good idea, the rest thought that reusing the better ones is also acceptable, but this needs a good business plan and a decent investment.

• The national park: wants to regulate details, but misses the bigger picture

• life was better in Soviet times, because the peninsula lied within the border zone and there were no strangers

• Disappointment: the former village common was privatised by the local government and nobody could stop it

• Our initial idea that nothing has been done in the military areas because there is some kind of estrange towards everything Soviet and military is disapproved. Annika commented: “yes the mentality is that the words Russian and Soviet have their aura. But so what, there are some ruins, whether Russian or Soviet or military. It’s just decayed ruins. Life has gone on and we understand everything differently and we would like to see our surroundings also differently and in my opinion this untidiness …”.

• a lady in Suurpea, who came there as a wife of an Ensign in 1960: no it does not feel sad, it was like it was. The military left in 1994, right after that the locals started to dissemble things. They didn’t say steal or rob, but to take away… Plumbing has been excavated, everything that might make sense has been taken away. Now two drunkards sell bricks by piece … What people are these who turn a school house into a waste dump…

Kangru

• was erected in 1954-58 in a location that has never been inhabited

• a sandy pine forest with closest farms situated some kilometers to the south and south-east.

• The base was used by technical support corps of a zenith missile division.

• several technical buildings on 55 hectares surrounded by a barbed wire fence, but also living quarters for officers’ families..

• After the Soviet military left, the territory was given to the Kiili Municipality: the buildings were handed over by November 1993 and land by March 1994.

• AS Estko rented some of the buildings, the rest stayed unused until 2000.

• Then the municipality decided to divide the land into plots and start developing the area for residence. Some plots were sold to real estate developers, some directly to future home owners, the main aim being to earn money for the municipality and increase the number of population and thereby tax base.

• By December 2009, all but one plot is sold, development has been done at different speeds meaning that most houses are ready, but some streets that started early still lack asphalt or streetlights.

• Raivo (50) who lives in an apartment block at Nabala Road tells a different story. He is satisfied with the place he lives in, but cannot comment upon the new village. He says that when he moved in in 1996 the nearby rocket base was quite some sight: “what it was – it was interesting. A Stalker landscape. I wandered around myself with interest. Thanks to the military it was a closed area for a long time, no one could enter. Natural habitat survived as it was. Compare it with other peri-urban areas with free access, they were not too pretty”. He considers it rather positive that the new village emerged: “it makes no sense to leave these areas empty; on the other hand, had they made some sort of a production facility here it would be worse. As the technopark in Jüri (a village 12 km away). People’s dwelling is a completely different story.”

• There was just one respondent whom the discovery that the area is a former military base made her think. The woman (35) had lived in Kangru since 2003. While asked where she knew that it was a former military base she answered: “in the sense that we really didn’t plan to come live in a military district, that I, when we were here for the first time, I thought that good heavens what barracks and walls and I left it completely. And then after a while we came back and it was all demolished already”. She obviously could not imagine that one could make a home in a former military area – the place looked so strange in the beginning.

• Seven respondents were well informed that it was a former military area. They were all people who came from nearby, had had summer cottages or relatives living nearby. One even worked for the local municipality. And none of them considered it awkward or strange.

• None of the respondents was worried about pollution. They still mention barbed wire that can be found in gardens while doing the spring works, but not more. Only two conversations hint on the topic. While asked whether before settling in they also checked for the possible pollution Katrin answers: “you could feel it, as you hit the spade into ground it smelled oil /--/ But the soil here still smells oil and petroleum. Now we have brought a different soil into our yard. But somehow our lot is the warmest in the whole village.” When asked whether he hesitated that he has settled in a former military base Enn answered: “not directly. Yes there were thoughts about how and what. /--/ that perhaps there is something unhealthy in the ground or God knows. You can’t rule out anything”.

• It also seems that the earlier settlers had clearer opinions about the possible pollution. The later one moved in, the less of the military legacy was visible and the less testified about the military past. So Valeri answers the question whether he hesitated that he has settled in a former military base: “pollution, radioactivity – don’t think so. There wasn’t anything like this in Estonia, perhaps it was in Paldiski (a former Soviet naval base). The pollution we had in Estonia might be everywhere regardless whether there were military or not. Pouring fuels into ground, burying whatever rubbish, this is not the primary action of the military, it was characteristic to that time and it might happen in any kolkhoz, sovkhoz, military base. In military bases it depended on the commander. I served in three different places in Tallinn and they were all different.”

Whose landscapes now?

• The only similarity between the villages seems to be the presence of the military installations – in Pärispea the buildings are still in ruins and unused, in Kangru the ruins have been dismantled and buried under the layer of a modern suburb. Pärispea is an old village with established structure and history, and also awareness about that history. The village has a clear identity, its inhabitants value their home and their lifestyle. Kangru is a suburb that is still searching its identity. People do many things together, but the structure and community are not yet established.

• The presence of the military installations is perceived as a problem only in Pärispea. In Kangru, where the military legacy is less visible and one can easily ignore it, there is no direct conflict with it, or at least it is not recognized. While the people of Pärispea try to “re-capture” the former village, re-integrate the military areas in everyday life, the Kangru villagers are busy with place-making.

• studied the possibilities of using military areas for ecotourism. One of the major obstacles she found was the object don’t speak to ordinary Estonians, they cannot be linked to Estonian history. This point was also stressed in one of the interviews in Kangru, where Valeri told: “I think it is the question of time. Perhaps a community in Saaremaa or Hiiumaa finds that it’s naturally cool place and the municipality is wealthy enough that together with private partners they do something there. Or that some lad finds that there is some bunker and builds a house next to it which is in a cool style. But if you take it politically so that all this is remains from the Soviet times and because of that we should now level or cover it – in my opinion this is waste of money. There could be some story attached – I am old enough to remember those things. But perhaps in ten years a ten-years-old boy shows up there and knows nothing. At least an info-board telling what it is and what for…

• Q: so to use the installation in some kind of tourism attraction? • Valeri: not attraction but to increase awareness. I think people don’t read much

anymore. You drive to visit someone and usually you drive a little around. And when you see these things it’s a good chance to educate yourself. So when you visit the Valaste waterfall, there is a board that tells some history, some technical data etc. It makes sense to do just to educate yourself. Until a better solution is found. There shouldn’t be any tragic, it’s not a 200-years old tree that should be protected.”

The Väälma story

1973

Conclusion I

• From the military viewpoints, the fate of the bases follows the well-known track to oblivion. The political processes that created the need for Soviet military bases ceased; due to that the bases lost their function; time and people – decay and demolition – took care of the forms. The military landscape was functional for a certain period of time; when the function was lost, the place ceased to exist. For its contemporaries, the military places carried a meaning of (alien) power, even threat, but also stability and control. These days it still brings forward nostalgia, the former threat has been turned into a joke.

• From a community point of view, the military places constitute a challenge for their identity. The

Pärispea people try to re-domesticate the place that once was theirs, but has been out of their control for quite a while. The problem here is largely that the community has no power of the once lost lands. For Kangru, the lack of knowledge of the past – or deliberately ignoring the past – allows the community to indeed start from the scratch, as if the place they inhabit has no past.

• From theoretical viewpoint the cases bring us to the following. The discursive-material phenomenon, as Davis (2005) called place, has also limits in time. The discursive and material parts of this phenomenon interact; if one of the two ceases, the other one does so as well. This way we can find places which are characteristic to a certain socio-economic formation – as Cosgrove (1984) argued – and which are “withered out” when the formation changes. And we also witness that knowing the past of a place is a key to its survival.

• Lotman’s worry was that if we are unable to create a link with the past, the past landscapes will lose their meaning for us and we are unable to incorporate them into our heritage. Military sites and their development differ from the mainstream. So are the Soviet military landscapes finally socially also restored?

Conclusion II

• CE – useful for communicating bigger paradigatic changes

• PD useful for explaining all sorts of development paths, incl through major changes.

• Explosive processes ensure innovation, gradual ones succession

Thank you for your attention!