The Role of Place-Lore in Environmental Conflict Discourse: The Case of Paluküla Sacred Hill in Estonia

Abstract

This article is a critical study of how local place-related narratives, i.e. place-lore, is integrated into environmental discussion and how it has significant potential to illustrate local and public, as well as vernacular and institutional, meanings concerned with the environment. Combining the frameworks of ecosemiotics, environmental communication studies, and place-lore research, the article explores how a new storytelling context, ideological selection, and the logic of conflict communication influence the re-contextualisation and interpretation of place-lore. The theory is applied to an empirical examination of public discussion of Paluküla sacred hill in Central Estonia. Tracking references to previous place-lore about Paluküla Hill in the media coverage of the conflict allows a demonstration of how the contextuality and referentiality towards an extra-narrative environment that are originally present in place-lore are often overlooked or ignored in conflict discourse. This, in turn, leads to socially and ecologically disconnected discussion.

Earth Religion, “Forest People” and Environmental Disputes: A Case Study on a Pursuit for National Unity and Sustainability in Estonia.

“…While the activity of Earth Believers at first concentrated mainly on private outputs in the form of rituals in historical natural sacred sites, since the 2000s a public aspect of nature protection has strongly emerged (cf., Päll, 2021). The activity of the organization obtained a wider societal and political dimension.…”

“…Several researchers and policy makers have raised the question of which group's reasoning should be preferred in a situation where archival texts contain contradictory information (Vaarmari, 2007, p. 282). The question also arises as to how many folk narratives or how many people who define a place as a sanctuary are enough to consider it part of the cultural heritage, and not just someone's individual activity (Päll, 2021).…”

“…Although Palumäe Hiiemägi was part of a landscape protection area and partly under heritage protection, in 2004 the local Kehtna municipality initiated a development plan to build a recreation and sports center on it. The reaction of local people split into two: some had nothing against the new facility, but others shared the views of Earth Believers and found it inappropriate to change the landscape and scale up commercial activities on a historic sacred site (see more on the topic in Päll, 2021).…”

“…As source material, this chapter used media accounts, participant observation, and interviews with Earth Believers (followers of Maausk) and persons who attend events in natural sacred sites. From earlier studies, the chapter draws mostly on some in-depth studies (Västrik, 2015;Jonuks, 2013;Jonuks & Remmel, 2020) that have scrutinized representations of Estonian national identity and the development of Estonian national myth but also the role of Estonian Earth Believers in public environmental discussions (Päll, 2021).…”

An ecosemiotic dimension of folklore: Reframing the concept of place-lore

“…This research is the first attempt to study place-lore in an ecosemiotics framework. However, various other local or nature-related representations have been studied by ecosemioticians: for example, describing the "herbal landscape" in ethnobotany (Sõukand, Kalle 2010), cultural and ecological interpretation of mires (Pungas-Kohv et al 2015), and sacred natural sites in national history and conflict discourses (Heinapuu 2016;Päll 2021) deserve mention. One of the branches of eco-and biosemiotics has been closely intertwined with ecocritical studies (e.g.…”