Value of silence: mediating aural environments in Estonian rural tourism

Abstract

This paper concentrates on the creation of value(s) by rural tourism entrepreneurs via intangible and atmospheric natural resources, the aural environment. The creation of value is analysed with regard to how the rural tourism entrepreneurs facilitate and mediate the aural environment of their farms to their guests and how by doing so the notions of rurality and rural environment are constantly (re)created and (re)negotiated. The paper concentrates on the notion of ‘silence’ which the tourism farmers regard as one of the most valuable qualities of their environments and shows how the personal experience of the host is one of the most important aspects when creating and mediating the experience for the visitors. The paper begins with a theoretic discussion of the idea of rural idyll, after which the research background is described with a brief overview of the Estonian rural context and the description of the methodology and empirical data of the article. This is followed by the analysis of the gathered data which is divided into two main topics: the creation of value by the tourism entrepreneurs when constructing the rural sound idyll and the question of competing values in the rural tourism context.