Second home countryside. Representations of the rural in Finnish popular discourses

This paper focuses on the representation of post-productive countryside in Finland by exploring how the rural is presented in the context of second home tourism. Being an integral part of rural areas and their history, second homes are an established example of the post-productive consumption of countryside. The international and Finnish literature on rural images provides the theoretical framework for the paper. Research on rural visions has been active in recent years with an emphasis on the Anglocentric interpretations of the rural idyll. This paper contributes to this discussion by providing an empirical review of Finnish popular discourses of second homes. The review is based on an analysis of second-home owners' motives and media representations. The second home countryside is analysed as a farmscape, wildscape and activityscape. The results suggest that the Finnish second home landscape is seen as wilderness (1), life at second homes imitates visions of traditional rural life (2), and the environment is used for traditional consumptive and leisure activities (3). (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.