ABSTRACT

The Lahemaa National Park in Estonia is a somewhat special case among national parks due to its controversial history. Its creation was seen as outwitting the Soviet system, serving simultaneously as an object of national as well as socialist pride, being the first of its kind in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The national park's contested nature collapsed along with the USSR and its identity as resistance needs to be reviewed. With Estonian independence the property restitution reform was carried out in conjunction with many others leaving many gaps in the legislative system. Today Lahemaa faces a building demand and set out to make an inventory of the present situation as the most urgent problem is to draft guidelines for newly built houses in order to maintain the ‘traditional’ look. Traditionality is a very difficult concept to express in words and measures. Our suggestion after extensive fieldwork is that in maintaining or searching for a new regional identity, the bottom-up approach need not focus on rural built heritage but on creating a new vision of combined nature conservation and cultural heritage by democratic process. This is not to say that material heritage (buildings and settlement structure) does not influence the conceptual heritage and social construction of regional identity but the management of this should be done in accordance with the local population.

KEY WORDS

Lahemaa National Park; planning; heritage, nature conservation, local identity

INTRODUCTION

This paper departs from the interlocked trinity of landscape, culture and heritage and addresses a set of paradoxes including protection/development, past/future and science/policy (Palang/Fry 2003). The regional example here, namely Lahemaa National Park (LNP) in Estonia, conjoining nature and culture, exemplifies how knowledge gained through action can contribute to regional identity shaped both by orders from ‘above’ and local actors.

The aim of the paper is to sketch the specific situation of the LNP to explain how societal factors alongside natural and especially material cultural heritage like rural buildings and settlement systems influence the conceptual and social construction of regional identity.