EESTIMAA JA EESTLASTE KUVANDI ARENG XIX SAJANDI JA XX SAJANDI ALGUSE REISIJUHTIDES
Evolution of the Image of Estonia and Estonians in the 19th and Early 20th Century Travel Guides

Summary/Abstract: Travel guides from the era of the Russian Empire are compared to those issued in the Republic of Estonia as for the presentation of Estonia and Estonians. The authors’ interest was inspired by guide books as a popular non-fiction genre with a wide audience and, thus, a notable influence. In a way, a travel guide functions as a model of reality, moulding the historical and cultural image of a country or town. In the Russian Empire Baedekers on Estonia started to be published since the late 1830s. The article discusses the image of the history and natives of Estonia, on a general cultural-historical background, conveyed by the Russian-, Germanand English-medium guide books as well as by fiction and other non-fiction. In the first half of the 19th century Livonia is described as a German province, where Germans act as the „civilizing nation” towards the miserable and humiliated aboriginal Estonians. A new era in the treatment of the Estonian theme in the Russian printed word coincides with the Estonian National Awakening the major events of which are pointed out in the travel guides. In 1914 a Committee for Regional Studies was established at the Estonian Literary Society, which continued functioning in the independent Republic of Estonia. The work of this committee resulted in seven county omnibuses, published in 1925–1939. Most of those volumes feature a chapter called Rändajaile („For travellers”), including a short survey of the local sights. Those are very specific travel guides telling the Estonian people about themselves and their own country in the words of their own compatriots. The article aims to demonstrate that travel guide is indeed a genre enabling one to follow the historical development of the Estonian image. First, a wide public must have developed an idea of Estonia as an unambiguously German area, then as a German-Estonian area on the outskirts of the Russian Empire, and finally, as Estonia to be discovered, first and foremost, by Estonians themselves.

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