Right at the Back, Where the Lighthouse Stands. Infrastructure and Nautical Charts in the Context of Research into Maritime Spaces

Lighthouses are ambivalent objects: on the one hand, they form part of the ‘maritime transport infrastructure’; on the other, they are perceived as distinctive coastal landmarks and symbols. Through their light signals, they enable those who can interpret them to determine their location, effectively serving as a ‘road guidance system’. However, for the majority of people who lack knowledge of these signals, lighthouses are simply typical coastal tourist attractions. The same applies to other navigational aids that are also clearly visible from land, such as lateral and cardinal buoys. This observation stems from a project currently being developed by the author under the title ‘Between myth, transit and home: an interdisciplinary perspective on the Baltic Sea (1871–1978)’. In this project, various perspectives—such as cultural, economic, political, transport related, tourist related and natural landscape related—are to be explored and interrelated, using infrastructural facilities as a basis, amongst other things, and analysed in terms of their significance for those living both within and outside maritime spaces. Nautical charts are promising sources in this context. This article demonstrates the role that individual infrastructure facilities can play as heuristic links, on the one hand, and the role that nautical charts can play, on the other, in the context of the systematic exploration of maritime spaces.