3.4 Cultural landscapes

The cultural or biocultural heritage is an important economic asset of the BSR. Some sites like St.Petersburg with world-known Hermitage, palaces of Russian nobles, and picturesque waterways attract visitors. Cities like Stockholm, Gdańsk, Vilnius, Tallinn or Riga, landscapes of Estonian islands or Kurionian and Leba dunes and many others are of European importance.

Hanseatic cities in BSR countries are testemony of an intensive historical economic integration of the shores of the Baltic Sea. Cultural routes like the Via Hanseatica (along southern Baltic Sea shores), Via Baltica (linking Berlin with Warsaw, Vilnius/ Kaunas, Riga, Tallinn, Helsinki), Amber route (partly identical with the Via Hanseatica), and Kings Road (St.Petersburg - Helsinki - Turku - Stockholm - Oslo) pride themselves of a concentration of cultural values.

In the era of democracy the focus of conservation has broadened significantly. At the end of the 19th century, the gained a influence of peasantry rendered the conservation of their heritage possible. The growing influence of the industrial working class matched with an emerging interest for the conservation of worker's dwellings and industrial structures.

Now, the notion of heritage has extended from single items to large ensembles of artefacts and all types of man-made landscape. Also the scope of time has been broadened, circumscribing everything from palaeontology to modernism.

Regardless the broadened scope of interest for cultural heritage, priorities have to be set.

The Nordic countries represent a dramatic loss of meanings attached to historical settings as well. The reason is not in the first place immigration but rather the strong post-war urbanisation and subsequent migration within the countries. An additional trait is the rapidly growing part of the population with a non-domestic or even non-European background.

Any part of the physical environment could be ascribed heritage values ²⁶. Criteria for the use and conservation of such values have not been established yet in the BSR. The classification and documentation of the cultural heritage in the BSR is lagging behind European standards. An intensive cross-sector co-operation is missing in this field despite efforts made by the tourist sector of Baltic 21 co-operation.

Cultural heritage is a wide range of features and landscapes, ranging from small areas of a castle or a village to large landscapes shaped by human activities.

The traditional distinction between natural and cultural heritage has been replaced by an integrated notion of "the landscape": A great amount of features have both, a cultural and a biological component ("biocultural heritage").

The understanding that much of European natural values were not a "wild nature", but the result of man's activities, has also become part of conservation work in European coun-tries.