No, that is not the South Pole or Northern Canada. That is Pärnu, Estonia, surviving the polar vortex freeze of the winter of ’18.
(Above Estonia; February 2018)
Tag Archives: Estonia
Who are the Finns and where do they come from?
Finnish, Estonia, Vepsian, Livonian, Hungarian, Mansi, Sami, Udmurt, Mari, Moksha. How many of these languages have you ever heard of? How about Nenets, Karelian, and Khanty? This is the language tree of the Uralic languages, including Fenno-Ugric languages where Finnish and Estonian belong (the top yellow-and-orange languages in the photo above).
In school I was taught that Finnish is an old language that stems from somewhere deep in Russian territory. It is not Indo-European, meaning Finnish is less related to Swedish than Sanskrit to German. I was also taught that the languages can be trailed backwards in tribes, along migration routes across the Siberian taiga, all the way back to the Ural mountains. Basically, people linguistically related to Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian are a smattering of fur-trapping and reindeer-hearding tribes between Finland and Mongolia. Sami, or the language of the reindeer-hearding Lapps in the Nordic countries, is on a separate branch even if it is geographically close to Finnish. It has heavy influences from its geographic neighbors but is according to linquists also close to Mongolian. 
Today this model is challenged. Those who combine ancestry genetics with linguistics say that Finns have a mixed genetic heritage, Finnish came to Finland from Estonia, and as a language it is not really old at all: if you remove all influences of Baltic, Swedish, ancient Germanic, and ancient Russian languages, you are left with just a few words. Surely this is plausible because people adopt each others words when they spend time together.
Which ever way is the truth, it is a curious and often forgotten fact that we EU citizens who feel we belong with Western Europe, Ikea, beer-lovers, and a Christian cultural heritage, actually have close family links with tribes living in very cold climes, either in wooden huts or in yurts, trapping fur animals or herding reindeer for a living. We share the same words and partially the same culture of singing our stories through poetic verse (check out the Finnish national epos, the Kalevala. It was a huge inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien in his youth). The soul of our ancestry lies in a mythical connection with nature, where everything from bears to trees to rocks have souls, too. We forget this, even when we pick seven kinds of flowers to put under our pillow at midsummer night so we dream of our husband-to-be; or when we retreat to our summer cottages, choosing to enjoy our holidays without power or running water, living and breathing Nature.
When you look at our past as well as the lifestyle of our linguistic relatives, is striking how much the Sami, Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian “Europeans” have much in common with Native American heritage: hunter-gatherer living, respect for big prey, living in connection with Nature, animism, and shamanism. Sure, this is the backdrop of the stone age human, but we Fenno-Ugric people lived like this still as near as 1000 years ago. And what happened to these two cultures? Today the Sami have their own council, their own languages, their own schools, and a growing respect for their culture, while the Native Americans seem to be downtrodden, century after century. And the Finns and the Estonian keep their heritage alive only through subconscious, not-realized connections to their past, such as big feasts when eating big prey animals, and the summer cottage culture.
Interested to learn more about the mysterious folks of the North-Eastern taigas and steppes? There is an excellent, permanent exhibition on the Uralic peoples at the Estonian National museum in Tartu.
(Eesti Rahva Muuseum, Tartu, Estonia; December 2017)
Random ways to make money(?)
When you want to build an attraction and don’t know how to best attract visitors, just place a house upside down, build a car park outside, and start charging for entry.
(I don’t know if this really works as I did not visit.)
(Tartu, Estonia; December 2017)
Hipster-to-be houses
In an area of town where streets are named “carrot”, “potato”, “pea”, and “celery”, one can only find down-to-earth inhabitants. The pre-war houses are heated with wood, the gardens are shaded by age-old apple trees, and every window looks inviting.
On a Sunday morning, surprisingly many people carrying wood across the garden or playing with children are young. Twenty-something and definitely with a tinge of hipster. In a (still) emerging economy, where money and glitz speaks of success, the original Soup Town artists, musicians, and vagrants are about to be updated with a lot that grows their own food, moves around town on designer bikes, and sports beards and expensive headphones. This is the time to make one of those lovely wooden houses your own. Five years from now it will make your wallet bleed.
Oh, I almost forgot. The neighborhood is called Supilinn, “Soup Town”. Why? Because that is what you get when you cook carrots, potatoes, peas, and celery.
(Tartu, Estonia; December 2017)
Seeing stars
Scholars have been seeing stars in Tartu for over 200 years. The old observatory is crammed with equipment to view, measure, and analyze. And it is a cold place, even with the hatch closed. A non-astronomer never realizes how freaking cold it is to work at an observatory, because except for in late summer, the clearest nights also mean coldest nights. Yet once again, no such luck for me.
(Tartu, Estonia; December 2017)
Wilde & Vilde
Being contemporaries, focused as much on style as on wit and critique of society, Oscar Wilde and Eduard Vilde could have met. But they never did. And so they were depicted having a chat on a bench outside of a pub in Tartu. Oddly, I learned that the exact same piece stands (or sits) in Galway, Ireland.
What an unsettling thought: after you are dead and gone, somebody depicts you next to a person you never met nor knew, assuming there is a connection – and the rest of the world agrees.
(Tartu, Estonia; December 2017)
Sweet youth
In the middle of the square they stand, kissing. Caught in a moment, frozen in love forever. These are no prissies for sure: note her short, tight skirt and his dancing shoes. This is young love, frivolous and unassuming; self-absorbed no matter the weather.
It was a cold Saturday in December. Somebody kind had wrapped the lovers in a woollen scarf. Hot pink, of course, just like their love.
(Tartu, Estonia; December 2017)
Stone of sacrifice
There, unassumingly in the park, next to a currently acknowledged house of God stands a much older site of God. A million sacrifice ceremonies have worn out round indentations in the rock, like bowls carrying gifts to the Divine.
The days of worship are not over. The students of Tartu university use it to burn their lecture notes after exams. Perhaps it is not so much a sacrifice to knowledge and life but a purification of methods after numerous books have been converted to understanding and insight?
Times change. Our need to connect with the Universe will not.
(Tartu, Estonia; December 2017)
Ruins
Days of misfortune arrived—blows fell broadly—
death seized all those sword-stout men—their idol-fanes were laid waste —
the city-steads perished. Their maintaining multitudes fell to the earth.
For that the houses of red vaulting have drearied and shed their tiles,
these roofs of ringed wood. This place has sunk into ruin, been broken
into heaps…(Anonymous, 800 AD)
(Tartu, Estonia; December 2017)
Where we come from
Over Finland: nightless night, coffee, and bears. Over Russia: beautiful ladies, Putinistan, and terrible drivers. And over the Arctic Ocean: polar bears. This is the world we live in, according to ourselves and foreigners to our country. A world of stereotypes and perceptions – many of which we struggle to ignore.
Where I come from is Finland. Indeed, nightless nights, but also cold, dark winters, introverts, silence in conversation, very little physical touching or hugging, and definitely very little expression of emotions. For Americans, “I love you” is an everyday word, quickly dropped to a life partner or daughter or friend when passing out of the door. In Finland, “I love you” is like a fabled unicorn. A phrase so rare it is a legend. Even on television, “I love you” is always translated in Finnish to “you are dear (to me)”. Because it is too intense, too monumental to be used.
But I digress. How did I get to “I love you” from a map of stereotypical perceptions of countries? Not sure. Yet please note that above I said “I come from Finland”, not “I feel like a Finn”. I wonder if anyone truly identifies with the stereotype of one’s country people?
(Tartu University Museum, Tartu, Estonia; December 2017)
This blue marble 