Perceived reasons for changes in the use of wild food plants in Saaremaa, Estonia
Graphical abstract
Section snippets
Research site
Saaremaa (Ösel) is the largest island in Estonia (2673 km2) and the fourth largest island in the Baltic Sea. About half of the roughly 30,000 inhabitants live outside of its urban centre, Kuressaare. The population of the island is very sparse, mean population density is 12 people per km2. As people tend to inhabit small towns or village centres, some countryside locations have population density even below 3 people per km2 (Eesti statistika, 2016). Soviet kolkhoz system and repressions
Results
In sum, 51 keywords were identified in the narratives through the textual analysis (Table 1). A large number of keywords in every individual interview were rather ambivalent, possible to attribute to several discussion categories. However, for the clarity of analysis the majority of keywords (48) were divided into six main discussion categories: availability of wild plants, their taste, demand for nutrients, wild plants as part of pastime activities, their perceived effect on health and their
Discussion and conclusions
The current study aimed to deepen the understanding of the mechanisms underlying the phenomenon of unlearning debt (Kalle & Sõukand, 2016), e. g. identify the reasons for rapid erosion of the knowledge of the use of wild food plants. The understanding of the phenomenon is important because the use of wild food plants is seen as homogenous, due to representing emergency foods of the past (Quave and Pieroni, 2015, Sõukand and Pieroni, 2016), hence being a mean for securing food in case of sudden
Acknowledgments
The fieldwork was supported by the grant from Estonian Ministry of Education and Science EKKM14-300 and the Estonian Research Council grant IUT22-5; writing of the paper was supported by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies, CEES). The author is grateful to all inspiring interviewees. Special thanks to Raivo Kalle, who equally participated in the fieldwork and transcription of the interviews and Urmas Sutrop for important
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