Vistas of ancient finland: Intangible cultural heritage, place, and landscape

This article discusses the relationship between intangible heritage, place and landscape in the light of critical heritage studies and the research of canonical Finnish landscape imageries. The analysis sheds light on the authoritative UNESCO processes in Finland by examining the ‘Wiki-inventory for living heritage’ submissions. The main focus is on the ways in which the national epic, the Kalevala, influences the discussions on cultural heritage, landscape, place, and Finnishness. Furthermore, the article examines the discourse of ‘Kalevalaicity’ (kaleva-laisuus) that is understood here as a set of interpretations and ideas that are regarded as reflecting the values of the Kalevala in the contemporary society. The processes of heri-tagization and the idea of Kalevalaicity are interpreted in relation to material, physical, imagined, and historical worlds. The study shows how intangible cultural heritage and Kalevalaicity are landscaped and spatialized at multiple scales, but, nevertheless, they seem to re-circulate the canonical constructs of Finnishness.