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EESTI ELU reedel, 13. mail 2022 — Friday, May 13, 2022
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EstoCast: a new podcast for all things Estonian Are you a regular reader of Eesti Elu / Estonian Life but find that your busy schedule limits the amount of time you can sit down and read at home? Maybe you’re trying to maximize the time you spend in transit, cooking, or doing chores. If you’re on-the-go and still want to connect with the latest in Estonian culture, you should really start listening to EstoCast. EstoCast is a podcast presented by and created by team members from VEMU (Esto nian Museum Canada), its pro ject Estonian Music Week, and Eesti Elu newspaper. All good podcasts need a focused theme, and luckily for us, these organizations have overlapping in terests and activities. Knowing how much we have in common, and seeing how podcasting as a medium is only growing more and more, we decided to embark on this multimedia endeavour together. Each episode of the podcast takes a different approach, focusing on a new person or theme that exemplifies all of the exciting things Estonians are getting up to in Canada, Estonia, and elsewhere in the world. To date, two episodes have come out. The first is an Estonian-language interview with VEMU’s Chief Archivist Piret Noorhani, conducted by host Kati Kiilaspea. In this episode, “Intervjuu raamatu koiga” (“An Interview With a Bookworm”), Noorhani propounds her point-of-view about
books and libraries, and speaks in depth about the VEMU archival collection in Toronto. The second episode is an English-language interview (conducted by host Vincent Teetsov) with Ruslan and Terje Trochynskyi, the leader singer/ trombonist and manager respectively, of the band Svjata Vatra. Ruslan, who grew up in Ukraine and tells the story of his early years as a musician, his transition to Estonia. They both speak about the extraordinary success of the Slava Ukraini benefit concert, during which many high profile Esto nian musicians played and raised almost 700,000 Euros. The EstoCast podcast is driven largely by a conversa tional or interview format, but there is also the potential, in the future, of episodes that dive deep into research and facts surrounding one specific topic or current event. Episodes will diversify your contact with Estonian culture through dis cussions of books, music, art, history, science, food, and more. Listeners in Estonia will be privy to the Estonian way of life abroad. If you ever wanted to kick back and learn the Estonian language through osmosis, this is also the perfect program for you. For every English-language episode, there will be an Esto nian-language episode, with familiar, clear conversational Estonian to pick up on as well as niche vocabulary to get acquainted with. Surround yourself with spoken Estonian
Reassessing the purpose of artifacts through Estonian Egyptology ancient detective work; and exhibits about ancient Egypt As a field of science, archaeo are often a gateway to learn logy is a source like no other ing about the contributions of for explaining what life was archaeology. For Estonia, it took longer like when written records were more limited or non- for such an exhibit to arrive. existent. Those living in North The country’s “first major exhibition of ancient Egyptian America’s cities are fortunate to so frequently appreciate art”, Egypt of Glory: Art from the cumulative results of this the Nile Valley, opened at Kumu
Vincent Teetsov
The Chamber of Mummies from the University of Tartu Art Museum. Photo: Andres Tennus
The EstoCast logo, created by Laani Heinar.
no matter how far away you live from Estonia! Depending on what you prefer, language wise, look for an indication of the spoken language in the description of each episode. EstoCast episodes will come out every two weeks, with key links, transcriptions, and show notes featured by each organization on social media in the weeks in between. Follow Estonian Museum Canada on Facebook and Estonian Music Week and Eesti Elu newspaper on Instagram and Facebook to access these resources. Listening to EstoCast is easy. Visit our podcast website at https://estocast.buzzsprout.com, click “more” to see all of the streaming sites where EstoCast is hosted, and then either play the episodes online or download them to your smartphone or other device for later. Coming out on May 25th is an Estonian-language interview with literary scholar Tiina Kirss, and then on June 8th, an English-language interview with the electrofolk band Etnosfäär. While you’re on our podcast’s page on one of these streaming platforms, make sure to hit the “follow” button so that you don’t miss out on all of these fascinating conversations!
Art Museum in October 2020, ending in March 2021. Curated by Paolo Marini from the Museo Egizio (Egyp tian Museum) in Torino, Italy and Dr. Jaanika Anderson, Acting Director of the Univer sity of Tartu Museum, it was a reminder of the pivotal force that the ancient Egyptians were as an early society. For their beliefs, their art, their engineering, their productivity. Astonish ment over the scale at which ancient Egypt grew as a civilization has only grown, in academia and pop culture alike. Amidst the sparsely-illuminated, tomb-like rooms of the exhibit, Kumu laid out many of the fundamentals of what is known about ancient Egypt, namely, its deeply spiritual way of life and powerful royalty. In addition, the wooden sculptures, bas-reliefs, figurines, scarabs, earrings, amulets, and necklaces on display reiterated the significance of decoration and design for this civilization. A great deal of this knowledge would be missing if archaeologists hadn’t excavated and studied these kinds of artifacts. One such archaeologist was Baltic German scholar Otto Friedrich von Richter, who
Põhjarada guides before the annual St. George’s Day parade at the Estonian House.
Põhjakotka scouts before parade.
Guide leader Talvi Parming distributing goods at a recent bake sale in support of additions to the guides’ Rajatare home at Kotkajärv. The guides baked more than 1,500 ‘pirukat’ at the Baptist church the night before. Photos: Enno Agur
documented his time in Egypt through sketches and hand written notes. Dr. Anderson deems him part of a wave of individuals of his time who travelled around to discover and study ancient civilizations. Of course, this study involved removing human re mains and possessions belonging to the deceased from their resting places in Egypt, which is where we begin to see the controversy that archaeology elicits. In the early 1800s, von Richter is thought to have purchased over 120 ancient items from locals, proceeding to send them to Sweden and onto his home in Estonia, Väimela Manor. Among these purchases were the sarkofaag (sarcophagus) of a pharaoh’s scribe and the mummified remains of two children. According to a 2020 research paper published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE – which involved academics based in Estonia, Egypt, Lithuania, and England – von Richter “carried out scientific expeditions to Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, and Lower Nubia” between 1814
and his sudden death in 1816. He was only in his mid twenties when this happened, and had just recently completed his education at Heidelberg University and the University of Vienna. In 1819, all that he sent to Estonia was donated by his father to the University of Tartu, before most of it was moved to Russia in 1915. What remained were the mummies of the two children, plus a dog and an ibis. The research paper notes that “Based on changes made to the policy of the museum collections, the mummies were moved to the university’s anatomical theatre in 1862.” Here, they were “measured, autopsied, and the bodies were briefly described.” This description mentions images of the Sons of Horus and the Eye of Horus, believed to protect those who had died, among the linen wrappings applied to the bodies. Analyses of the wrap pings also revealed prayers written in Hieratic (ancient Egyptian cursive) that date the (Continued on page 12)
