Chronotope as a framework for landscape experience analysis

The paper explores the analysability of landscape experience and the interpretation enabled by the concept of the chronotope. Beyond its potential for a holistic study of texts, the chronotope can also be applied in landscape studies. In geography, the chronotope has primarily been used for analysis within three different areas: discourses and narratives, spatiotemporal sense of everyday places and biological spaces. Our aim is to show the applicability of the chronotope in the experiential aspect of landscape studies. Experiencing the landscape implies a dialogic understanding of action in a situation including the subject’s interrelationship with the environment. We examine how the subjective experience of an abandoned landscape is internally multiple and has significant value for imagination and meaning-making. The example analysed is an Estonian architect’s description of his visit to Hashima Island, Japan, and focuses on three levels of chronotopes—the topographic, the psychological and the metaphysical.