Edgar Kant and Balto-Skandia: Heimatkunde and Regional Identity

"Geography has never flowered alone; it has always been tied in with the general advances of science, trade, and technology; it literally has no history separate from the intellectual and cultural currents of the time." F. Lukermann

Issues of national prestige and identity stirred among the sponsors and audiences of geography during its early years as an academic field. For the first two generations of disciplinary effort in Europe at least, imaginations continued to fly towards exploration of the few remaining terrae incognitae, but they also turned to the local environments of the homeland, where landscapes were read as indices of cultural belonging, as 'medals struck in the image of civilization', tangible evidence of historical relationships between human cultures and milieux. Heimatkunde (literally, knowledge of home areas), which became a required item in the apprenticeship of young recruits, was a style of practice intimately linked with questions of local, national and regional identity. It held a special appeal in the lands of Norden.