Land restitution in the former Swedish settlement areas in Estonia consequences for land ownership, land use and landscape

This paper deals with the land privatisation process in eastern and central Europe. The focus is on Estonia, and particularly on the rural north-western area of the country. Until 1943–1944, a Swedish speaking minority inhabited the area. During the Second World War, a large part of this Swedish population migrated to Sweden. The homesteads were abandoned, and during the years of Soviet occupation the Estonian Swedes lost contact with their native areas. Following the fall of the communist system at the end of the 1980s, the former occupants, whose farms had been nationalised by Soviet Union in 1940, were allowed to have their properties restored to them. The aim of this paper is to investigate the land restitution process in the area, which has taken place during the 1990s. More than half of the landowners live abroad, predominantly in Sweden. By comparison with landowners living in Estonia, their property use has so far been more passive and they are not prepared to settle permanently on the property that has been restored to them. A shift away from the patterns of land ownership and land use associated with Soviet style collective farming and a return to an approach based on smaller units of land is visible to some extent in the landscape of the area.