Search

Tourists seldom experience a destination with just one company, yet they often encounter a destination as a coherent entity. This results from the effort of different stakeholders who work together to develop a destination, despite often being competitors. These efforts make the tourism industry fertile for coopetitive relationships. The high presence of coopetition has inspired researchers to study this phenomenon in the tourism sector. There is a solid academic understanding of the rationales behind coopetition and the factors influencing the level of coopetition within a destination. However, despite the academic interest, there is only limited research dedicated to the impacts of coopetition on destination development. This study responds to this shortcoming and investigates the impacts of coopetition between accommodation companies on the destination development of Saaremaa, Estonia. Given the exploratory nature of this study, a qualitative case study approach focusing on collecting original data required from primary sources has been used as the research method. The qualitative research is carried out via semi-structured interviews with two sources of data. The interviews were conducted with six representatives of accommodation companies and one representative of the local DMO. The study results provide supporting evidence that coopetitive relationships between accommodation companies have several impacts on the destination development of Saaremaa. Namely, these relations are impacting the economic development and strengthening the image of Saaremaa. Furthermore, the results show that coopetition increases the diversity and the quality of offered products and services. However, given the case study approach and the size of the research, caution is required in interpreting the study's results, especially when applying the results to other destinations.

Tourists seldom experience a destination with just one company, yet they often encounter a destination as a coherent entity. This results from the effort of different stakeholders who work together to develop a destination, despite often being competitors. These efforts make the tourism industry fertile for coopetitive relationships. The high presence of coopetition has inspired researchers to study this phenomenon in the tourism sector. There is a solid academic understanding of the rationales behind coopetition and the factors influencing the level of coopetition within a destination. However, despite the academic interest, there is only limited research dedicated to the impacts of coopetition on destination development. This study responds to this shortcoming and investigates the impacts of coopetition between accommodation companies on the destination development of Saaremaa, Estonia. Given the exploratory nature of this study, a qualitative case study approach focusing on collecting original data required from primary sources has been used as the research method. The qualitative research is carried out via semi-structured interviews with two sources of data. The interviews were conducted with six representatives of accommodation companies and one representative of the local DMO. The study results provide supporting evidence that coopetitive relationships between accommodation companies have several impacts on the destination development of Saaremaa. Namely, these relations are impacting the economic development and strengthening the image of Saaremaa. Furthermore, the results show that coopetition increases the diversity and the quality of offered products and services. However, given the case study approach and the size of the research, caution is required in interpreting the study's results, especially when applying the results to other destinations.

In-situ minor, trace and rare earth element (REE) compositions have been measured in conodonts from the lower Silurian Vesiku Bone Bed (Estonia), with the aim to visualize and to quantify conodont apatite elemental geochemistry, to evaluate compositional differences between conodont histologies, and to evaluate the use of conodont chemistry as a palaeobiological or palaeoenvironmental proxy. Tissue-selective analyses of minor, trace and rare earth element compositions of albid, hyaline, and basal tissues demonstrated significant chemical offsets among these histologies. The albid tissue had the lowest REE and trace element concentrations, suggesting crystallinity-determined better resilience to diagenetic alteration as documented in previous studies. Conversely, the basal tissue had highest concentrations of REEs and many trace elements, except for Sr that showed an opposite trend. The higher concentrations in albid and hyaline tissues supports the in-vivo Sr incorporation by conodont crown. Nonetheless, the obtained SN-normalized REE patterns were uniform through all the analyzed conodont taxa and different tissues, implying common diagenetic history. Absence of a Ce anomaly, and defined negative Eu anomaly indicate reducing conditions during early burial. These results validate current interpretations of the palaeoenvironmental conditions during the deposition of Vesiku Bone Bed and bolsters the use of REEs in Palaeozoic marine vertebrates as an important palaeoenvironmental proxy.

The Danish National Archives in Copenhagen houses several thousand manuscript fragments, the remains of numerous works that were cut up and used in the bindings of later books. The majority of these fragments are written in Latin, Middle Low German, or Danish, although a few in Old Swedish also survive. Five of these Old Swedish fragments are published and discussed in this article. They contain parts of two of St Birgitta’s Revelations (Liber Caelestis) and of St Bernard’s A Rule of Good Life (Ad sororem modus bene vivendi in christianam religionem), known in Old Swedish as Ett gudhelikt lifwærne. The Birgittine texts are from an early stage of the retranslation process when compared to other extant versions and include several unique wordings that demonstrate the specific use of the original manuscript in a monastic environment. The Bernard fragments are one of just two extant versions and appear to predate the version in Stockholm, Royal Library, A 9; as such, they are an important witness to the propagation of the saint’s writings in Sweden.

Gotland, Aland, Saaremaa, Hiiumaa and Bornholm are five islands in the Baltic Sea which constitute, or have until recently constituted, provinces or counties. Combining perspectives from the fields of island studies and history, this article investigates how regional history writing has contributed to the formation of regional identity on each island since the year 1800. The special geographic situation of the islands somewhat secluded from the mainland but also connected to important waterways has provided their inhabitants with shared historical experiences. Due to varying geographic and historical circumstances, the relationship between regional and national identity is however different on each island. While regional history writing has often aimed at integrating the island into the nation state, it has on Aland in the 20th century been used to portray its inhabitants as a separate nation.

Gotland, Åland, Saaremaa, Hiiumaa and Bornholm are five islands in the Baltic Sea which constitute, or have until recently constituted, provinces or counties. Combining perspectives from the fields of island studies and history, this article investigates how regional history writing has contributed to the formation of regional identity on each island since the year 1800. The special geographic situation of the islands somewhat secluded from the mainland but also connected to important waterways has provided their inhabitants with shared historical experiences. Due to varying geographic and historical circumstances, the relationship between regional and national identity is however different on each island. While regional history writing has often aimed at integrating the island into the nation state, it has on Åland in the 20th century been used to portray its inhabitants as a separate nation.

During the Late Bronze Age, the number of metal objects in the Baltic Sea region increased tremendously. Mobility and interaction in this northern inland sea intensified. This occurred in a period of prehistory when the ship was the predominant symbol in southern Scandinavia. The ship can be found in rock carvings, on bronze objects and by way of erected stone monuments: stone ship settings. These stone ships are mainly to be found in the Baltic Sea region, with a marked concentration on Gotland. The stone ship settings and their landscape context are the focus of this dissertation. The objective is to clarify whether it is possible to find evidence of social groupings of people in the Nordic Late Bronze Age (1100-500 BC), by focusing on the stone ship monument, adopting a maritime approach. These people might have been part of a maritime institution specializing in trade and long distance journeys during this period, thus achieving a more advanced maritime way of life in the Baltic Sea. Are the ship settings an expression of these specific groups of people, who utilized their practices to position and articulate themselves in the landscape? If such maritime institutions can in fact be traced, there must also be uniformly structured locations for these groups of people to meet in, some kind of antecedents of harbours. By taking an inland sea, the Baltic Sea, as a geographical demarcation, a different perspective of prehistory is attained. The area in the Late Bronze Age and earliest Iron Age (950/900-200 BC) differed from the Nordic Bronze Age sphere. The communities around the Baltic Sea, through the establishment and sharing of mutual interests, seem to have reached a certain degree of consensus. This concordance might well be largely explained by the complex dependency on metal. Such a manifestation would not have been possible without an infrastructure or network, in this case a maritime one. This is something which has previously been overlooked in discussions

During the Late Bronze Age, the number of metal objects in the Baltic Sea region increased tremendously. Mobility and interaction in this northern inland sea intensified. This occurred in a period of prehistory when the ship was the predominant symbol in southern Scandinavia. The ship can be found in rock carvings, on bronze objects and by way of erected stone monuments: stone ship settings. These stone ships are mainly to be found in the Baltic Sea region, with a marked concentration on Gotland. The stone ship settings and their landscape context are the focus of this dissertation. The objective is to clarify whether it is possible to find evidence of social groupings of people in the Nordic Late Bronze Age (1100-500 BC), by focusing on the stone ship monument, adopting a maritime approach. These people might have been part of a maritime institution specializing in trade and long distance journeys during this period, thus achieving a more advanced maritime way of life in the Baltic Sea. Are the ship settings an expression of these specific groups of people, who utilized their practices to position and articulate themselves in the landscape? If such maritime institutions can in fact be traced, there must also be uniformly structured locations for these groups of people to meet in, some kind of antecedents of harbours. By taking an inland sea, the Baltic Sea, as a geographical demarcation, a different perspective of prehistory is attained. The area in the Late Bronze Age and earliest Iron Age (950/900-200 BC) differed from the Nordic Bronze Age sphere. The communities around the Baltic Sea, through the establishment and sharing of mutual interests, seem to have reached a certain degree of consensus. This concordance might well be largely explained by the complex dependency on metal. Such a manifestation would not have been possible without an infrastructure or network, in this case a maritime one. This is something which has previously been overlooked in discussions

During the Late Bronze Age, the number of metal objects in the Baltic Sea region increased tremendously. Mobility and interaction in this northern inland sea intensified. This occurred in a period of prehistory when the ship was the predominant symbol in southern Scandinavia. The ship can be found in rock carvings, on bronze objects and by way of erected stone monuments: stone ship settings. These stone ships are mainly to be found in the Baltic Sea region, with a marked concentration on Gotland. The stone ship settings and their landscape context are the focus of this dissertation. The objective is to clarify whether it is possible to find evidence of social groupings of people in the Nordic Late Bronze Age (1100-500 BC), by focusing on the stone ship monument, adopting a maritime approach. These people might have been part of a maritime institution specializing in trade and long distance journeys during this period, thus achieving a more advanced maritime way of life in the Baltic Sea. Are the ship settings an expression of these specific groups of people, who utilized their practices to position and articulate themselves in the landscape? If such maritime institutions can in fact be traced, there must also be uniformly structured locations for these groups of people to meet in, some kind of antecedents of harbours. By taking an inland sea, the Baltic Sea, as a geographical demarcation, a different perspective of prehistory is attained. The area in the Late Bronze Age and earliest Iron Age (950/900-200 BC) differed from the Nordic Bronze Age sphere. The communities around the Baltic Sea, through the establishment and sharing of mutual interests, seem to have reached a certain degree of consensus. This concordance might well be largely explained by the complex dependency on metal. Such a manifestation would not have been possible without an infrastructure or network, in this case a maritime one. This is something which has previously been overlooked in discussions

During the Late Bronze Age, the number of metal objects in the Baltic Sea region increased tremendously. Mobility and interaction in this northern inland sea intensified. This occurred in a period of prehistory when the ship was the predominant symbol in southern Scandinavia. The ship can be found in rock carvings, on bronze objects and by way of erected stone monuments: stone ship settings. These stone ships are mainly to be found in the Baltic Sea region, with a marked concentration on Gotland. The stone ship settings and their landscape context are the focus of this dissertation. The objective is to clarify whether it is possible to find evidence of social groupings of people in the Nordic Late Bronze Age (1100-500 BC), by focusing on the stone ship monument, adopting a maritime approach. These people might have been part of a maritime institution specializing in trade and long distance journeys during this period, thus achieving a more advanced maritime way of life in the Baltic Sea. Are the ship settings an expression of these specific groups of people, who utilized their practices to position and articulate themselves in the landscape? If such maritime institutions can in fact be traced, there must also be uniformly structured locations for these groups of people to meet in, some kind of antecedents of harbours. By taking an inland sea, the Baltic Sea, as a geographical demarcation, a different perspective of prehistory is attained. The area in the Late Bronze Age and earliest Iron Age (950/900-200 BC) differed from the Nordic Bronze Age sphere. The communities around the Baltic Sea, through the establishment and sharing of mutual interests, seem to have reached a certain degree of consensus. This concordance might well be largely explained by the complex dependency on metal. Such a manifestation would not have been possible without an infrastructure or network, in this case a maritime one. This is something which has previously been overlooked in discussions

During the Late Bronze Age, the number of metal objects in the Baltic Sea region increased tremendously. Mobility and interaction in this northern inland sea intensified. This occurred in a period of prehistory when the ship was the predominant symbol in southern Scandinavia. The ship can be found in rock carvings, on bronze objects and by way of erected stone monuments: stone ship settings. These stone ships are mainly to be found in the Baltic Sea region, with a marked concentration on Gotland. The stone ship settings and their landscape context are the focus of this dissertation. The objective is to clarify whether it is possible to find evidence of social groupings of people in the Nordic Late Bronze Age (1100-500 BC), by focusing on the stone ship monument, adopting a maritime approach. These people might have been part of a maritime institution specializing in trade and long distance journeys during this period, thus achieving a more advanced maritime way of life in the Baltic Sea. Are the ship settings an expression of these specific groups of people, who utilized their practices to position and articulate themselves in the landscape? If such maritime institutions can in fact be traced, there must also be uniformly structured locations for these groups of people to meet in, some kind of antecedents of harbours. By taking an inland sea, the Baltic Sea, as a geographical demarcation, a different perspective of prehistory is attained. The area in the Late Bronze Age and earliest Iron Age (950/900-200 BC) differed from the Nordic Bronze Age sphere. The communities around the Baltic Sea, through the establishment and sharing of mutual interests, seem to have reached a certain degree of consensus. This concordance might well be largely explained by the complex dependency on metal. Such a manifestation would not have been possible without an infrastructure or network, in this case a maritime one. This is something which has previously been overlooked in discussions

The Wenlock-Pridoli sequence has been subdivided and mapped offshore Saaremaa in the Baltic Sea by means of high resolution seismic reflection profiling. The most striking and consistent seismic reflectors correlate with contrasting lithological boundaries of the Silurian regional stages, the Jaani/Jaagarahu (S(8)), the Jaagarahu/Rootsikula (S(10)), the Rootsikula/Paadla (S(11)). the Paadla/Kuressaare (S(12)), the Kuressaare/Kaugatuma (S(13)) and the Kaugatuma/Ohesaare (S(14)) stages, which often coincide with erosional disconformities on Saaremaa. The shallow-shelf Silurian sequence that crops out on Saaremaa is also exposed in the closest offshore area of the island. Due to the westerly to south-westerly increasing erosional cut below the Baltic, the deeper facies varieties that are concealed in southern Saaremaa, are revealed and exposed at the seafloor towards Gotland. This is particularly well expressed in the Jaagarahu Stage, which undergoes a fades change with significant increase in thickness on the basinal slope of the Baltic Silurian Basin, both onshore and offshore Saaremaa. The Silurian sequence overlying the Jaagarahu Stage does not show any considerable thickness or fades changes neither below nor offshore Saaremaa. Offshore Saaremaa, seismic reflectors limiting new deeper facies subunits in the Jaagarahu Stage become either successively or simultaneously exposed inside the Vilsandi (S(8)-S(9)) respectively the Maasi-Tagavere (S(9)-S(10)) seismic units towards Gotland. These outcrop patterns were largely formed by two different erosional agents that during different time periods have played a considerable role in the formation of the present day Baltic Sea depression. Hence, the gradually south-westerly deepening cuesta landscape formed by the Cenozoic erosion, namely the Silurian Klint and the plateaus north and south of it, discloses progressively deeper part of the Baltic Silurian Basin. The deeper facies subunits are exposed rapidly by the submerid, authorCount :2