This paper builds on critical heritage studies that have highlighted the importance of relational ontologies of Indigenous groups by foregrounding relational ecological knowledges embedded in European folklore, emphasising how heritage connects people and environment. Through ecocritical and phenomenological analyses of traditional narratives from northern Europe, it demonstrates that folklore constitutes vernacular, lived frameworks through which communities have long negotiated ethical relationships between people, landscapes, and nonhumans, including the supernatural. Often overlooked in formal heritage governance and environmental policy, these narratives encode ecological sensibilities that resist anthropocentric and capitalist imaginaries and resonate with core themes of critical heritage scholarship, including relationality, care, and stewardship. By showing the kinship between European folkloric worldviews and Indigenous ontologies, the paper complicates rigid Western/non-Western distinctions and strengthens advocating relational approaches across diverse cultural contexts. Recognising vernacular relationalities in folklore thus broadens critical heritage discourse and supports more inclusive, pluralistic approaches to environmental responsibility and action.

This paper examines the development of relational approaches to heritage in Germany within a global context since the nineteenth century. The first part traces the historical emergence of relational thinking, emphasising the impact of transnational
networks and Indigenous epistemologies on German preservation practices. The second part discusses the opportunities and challenges that relationality presents for rethinking memory culture and postcolonial heritage, as well as engaging with more-than-human heritage. It also considers the reasons behind objections to relational frameworks. The final section draws on three current research projects in northern Bavaria to demonstrate how regional histories and heritage structures influence the adoption of relational approaches, and explores how international practices can be adapted and negotiated within diverse local contexts.

The paper explores how everyday heritage practices connect people with their environments through affective and embodied engagement with ordinary urban places. Drawing on an ethnographic study conducted in central Reykjavík, Iceland, it examines how vernacular urban spaces become affectively charged through everyday use, sustaining relations with the past beyond official heritage narratives.
Grounded in phenomenological and more-than-representational frameworks, the paper understands everyday heritage as a relational process through which the past is encountered and layered into present experience. Based on walk-along interviews, first-person audiovisual recordings, and group revisitations, the analysis foregrounds how place attachment and memory emerge through bodily movement, sensory atmospheres, and environmental attunement. Participants’ affective responses reveal how ‘insignificant’ places become repositories of personal and collective pasts. The paper argues that such engagements extend heritage beyond monumental sites, demonstrating how heritage is enacted through embodied, sensory relations between people, place, and environment.

The paper discusses the transformation of landscape and heritage in the Lusatian region, drawing from my PhD project. It analyses the conflict and integration of different forms of heritage in relation to current social challenges. Key points include:
1. Contested forms of heritage can aid in addressing social issues during the region's transformation.
2. The landscape is viewed as a heritage asset, significant for tourism and renewable energy.
3. The preservation and selection of heritage assets, both tangible and intangible, raise questions about preference and decision-making.
4. The concept of affect is used as a lens to understand the dynamics of change, identity formation, and the relationship between heritage and landscape in Lusatia.
5. The analysis highlights the connections between natural, cultural, and identity aspects within the context of transformation processes.