Exploring “Elsewhereland” — Places Desired, Remembered and Dwelled: Place experience of vacationers on Saaremaa Island, Estonia

Abstract

This paper examines summer vacationers’ experiences and connections with an island place on Saaremaa in Estonia. Discourse from sixteen in-depth interviews are coupled with a theoretical discussion exploring place, emotions, memory, and self through an analysis of personal narratives on individual emotional perspectives of meaningful places, memory of places elsewhere, and the materiality of the cultural landscape itself. Emotional aspects associated with verbal expressions are examined with a discussion of emergent themes of place experience via a literary narrative writing approach. The emotional dynamics of rhetorical conversation between interviewees, researcher, and place echoed through the shared materiality of people and their environment. Personal narratives of place meanings examine island environments through emotional individual experiences resulting in five themes: places desired, places remembered, lost and found, elsewhereness and home, and returns. Home, everyday, and elsewhere are intertwined impressions of island places memorised, balanced via expressions of belonging as experiences of everyday and nostalgic renderings of times lost.