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EESTI ELU reedel, 5. märtsil 2021 — Friday, March 5, 2021
Nr. 9
To my grandsons Bruce and Dane: Exploring Estonia’s countryside Arved Plaks Once this corona virus has been conquered, I hope you will continue to travel. We all have ancestors who emigrated here from distant lands, and travel may increase your appreciation for the reasons for them leaving their home to come to this wonderful land. Estonia has recently gained interest as a travel destination, so maybe you want to include it on your bucket list. Most people who have seen Estonia as tour ists have done that as a stop on a cruise. Cruises stop for a day at the harbor of Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia. Cruisers are bussed to the center of the city, where they will enjoy the sights of the 500-year-old Hanseatic City. Then they are bussed back to their ship where they dine in luxury, as they cross Estonia off their list of places to visit. But what will you see if you rent a car and venture into the countryside? I have done that more than every five years. I include in my trips time to explore the countryside at the time of solstice, and to get back to the city for song festivals. Solstice is the longest day of the year, on which the sun almost but really does not set. It happens there because Estonia is far north, as far north as is Juneau in Alaska. The photo above was taken at midnight on solstice. On my most recent car trip, which was in 2019, I drove to a village called Kambja, about 110 miles south from Tallinn. This is the place where my
earliest known ancestors lived as peasants. They rented their farms by paying for the use of the land with a portion of their harvest. At solstice, bonfires are lit in every Estonian village and peo ple dance and sing around it. I used to think it was just a ritual from pre-Christian times, but 100 years ago, this day took on a new meaning. 100 years ago, Estonia had to fight two enemies to gain its indepen dence: one attacking from the east and the other from the south. As a history professor (your father) once said: “free dom is seldom given, you take it!” On that day in 1919, Esto nia’s improvised army won a decisive victory over an army of German mercenaries and peace followed. Therefore, the bon fires may celebrate both events. After all, Estonians do not like to waste any excuse to sing and dance the night through. Re member, it stays light all night through. In most villages are swings onto which up to a dozen people can climb. The swingers, by shifting their weight, can get the swing to rotate nearly to the top. Woe to anyone to wanders into the swing’s path! Kambja has a 250-year-old cemetery, where some of my ancestors are buried among the trees. They toiled here in the feudal times well before they had a family name. The over lords just called them by the name of the farm they were renting. There was no need for a family name when people did not own property that could have passed on to one’s chil dren. This changed in the year 1826 when peasants were given the right to buy the farms they were living in, and to choose a family name. My ancestral family chose the name ‘Tornius’ from the name of the farm ‘Torni’ meaning a farm with a tower. Every year on the Sunday nearest to solstice, a church ser vice is held in Kambja to honor the dead. This seems unusual for a predominantly Protestant country. Even more unusual is that it is held in its forested cemetery. During the service,
families gathered at their family burial plots and lit candles. I too lit a candle. The tombstones are illustrated with crosses only half of the time, the others have symbols that are similar to our Unitarian flaming chalice, that dates back to Czechoslovakia’s time of Nazi occupation. Having explored the land, it was time to head back to Tal linn. The highway is patrolled by silent sentries that just snap a picture of your car license plate should you exceed the speed limit. The speeders get a ticket by mail. Estonia is a very internet-connected country. Most banking transactions, tax payments, elections and pay ments for parking one’s car in the cities are conducted by the internet. On the way back to Tallinn, I stayed overnight at a hotel that had sauna privileges. We call it just ’saun’. It is a room with all-wood interior except for a stove. It is heated to the point that one can hardly stand it. Then water is thrown with a cup onto the stove and the steam intensifies the heat in the room. There are benches of varying height. The higher you sit, the hotter it is. But as if this is not enough – bunches of birch branches are used to hit yourself to intensify the heat on the skin. After sweating pro fusely for perhaps 10 minutes, you exit and wash yourself in the adjoining room. As a 10-year-old, I spent a summer on a farm. Its saun was heated once a week and the farm family washed commu nally. The saun was almost a holy place. Babies were birthed there, and the deceased were laid there upon death until their burial. Washing there seemed to me almost a spiritual experience of cleansing. Much refreshed, I continued my drive to Tallinn. This drive took me longer than for the local folk, because my compul sion to photograph storks’ nests along the way. They were on telephone poles, church steeples and abandoned chimneys. To have stork’s nests on your farm was thought to bring it good luck. Each nest was a challenge to photograph: to capture chicks being fed, or being cooled by the parent by waving his or her wings. Estonia used to be the northernmost area for them to nest after migration from the south. Now because of global warming they have been seen also in Finland. My time in Estonia included time to participate in the Esto nian National Song and Dance Festival. This festival is held every five years in Tallinn. The tradition was started in 1869, as Estonia emerged from the feudal times, and there was a national awakening. Since the song festival stage cannot accommodate more than
30,000 singers, the choirs wish ing to participate have to pass an audition. The weaker choirs are eliminated. Each singer has to belong to a choir to be included. Competition among choirs is fierce and they prac tice hard for months. For the 2019 festival’s audi tion I attended a workshop in Toronto, Canada, where I am a member of the Toronto Esto nian Men’s Choir. The choir passed the audition and the choir now had to gather in Tallinn at the city main square in our uniforms for the parade to the festival grounds at the ap pointed time. On the first Saturday of July, 40,000 singers and folk dancers gathered in the summer heat at the city’s main square. At 1 pm the parade started, led by choir and folk-dance group leaders. All choirs wore their unique costumes and carried placards with the choir’s name and place of origin. Being a Toronto-based choir, we marched with a Canadian flag. Streets were lined with on lookers, shouting to us “long live Canada!” and we shouted back: “long live Estonia!”. Behind us marched a choir from New York waving a United States flag. People shouted to them “Long live Ameri ca”… and so on the whole walk to the festival ground’s gate. Though the distance to the festival grounds was only a little over two miles, because of the huge number of marchers the final groups did not get there until early evening. There we were fed from army kitchen kettles. At 7 p.m. rang the opening song of the concert, watched by 150,000 onlookers. After the opening songs, selected choirs gave separate performances. This lasted until late at night. I stopped singing occasionally to take photos from the stage. The rest of the choir just kept on singing. I put my camera away and sang on with elation. Since at that time of the year Estonian nights don’t get dark, the performance just seemed to go on for ever. The audience demanded many encores and in the case of generally familiar song joined in singing. The following day the con certs continued from noon until late evening. For the finale all choirs, including youth choirs, also came onto the stage and the final concert ended with 30,000 singers singing the most beloved songs with great enthu siasm.
Even the president of Estonia stayed to the very end, she being a member of a sorority choir. That gave me a chance to get a photo with her. Then, exhausted and drained, the singers and listeners walked back to the city. No wonder Estonia is called a ‘singing nation’. Three de cades ago, it literally sung itself free from the grips of the occu pation of the Soviet Union, and freedom was gained without firing a shot. After the festival I spent an other week visiting relatives or just walking around on the cobblestone paved streets of the old city. And, of course, I at tended a simultaneous dance festival. I said to myself, “Tonto, this is not Kansas any more.” But of all that I will write another time. In mid July I flew home. Love, grandpa. Pearland, TX 7/7/2020
Discriminating… (Continued from page 9)
shelved thanks to politicians. As a regular attendee of those concerts the music-lover could venture that there were never more than 50 people using their lunch break, or making an express visit for the half-hour concert in attendance. Surely exceptions could be made. York minster is not like Grossman’s tavern, where everyone was cheek-to-jowl during Saturday night blues concerts. Or Scruffy Murphy’s, the North Toronto gem forced to close for ever, due to these restrictions. A small, intimate place, where it was hard to find seating Saturday nights, when local musicians jammed on a tiny stage. Shame. If there was logic behind these lockdown decisions, one might be able to accept them. But there is not. The predicted third wave promises to be long, if judging by the Spanish flu pandemic of more than a cen tury ago is any indication, as an example. Certainly one can survive without classic Organ spiele (such as works by Bach, Buxtehude and Handel), openstage jams and the blues. But to irrationally limit funeral atten dance, close houses of worship makes absolutely no sense. For many Sunday services are indeed essential. But in our increasingly antagonistic and atheistic, if not laic society, this fact is sadly not being acknowl edged. OTEPÄÄ SLIM
