The week started in Tallinn and ended in Viljandi at an Estonian folk festival. (We flew back to England for the second time- the first time was to vote in the elections and this second time was for a dear friend’s funeral). Estonia is a small country with only 1.5 million people but it has a strong and appealing identity and a deep feeling for song.
Tallinn has a very fine old town with magnificent Hanseatic league merchants’ houses. We stayed in a very cool hotel, the Hektor Container Hotel, a converted warehouse, which as the name suggests is full of containers each of which has been turned into a very comfortable room but it does make for different corridors!
Here’s the open plan reception area where they served up a delicious breakfast. You can just see the containers through the glass.
Although the Russian Orthodox Alexander Nevsky cathedral is prominent in the old town and 21% of the population is Russian (mostly living in Tallinn), outside the Russian embassy there are passionate anti-Russian protest displays and none of the public signs are translated into Russian. In the modern art gallery there is an entire floor devoted to art during the Soviet occupation. Many are grim. This painting is called “The Doubters”.
There was humour as well, as in this list and the jokes:
But overwhelmingly we both felt the terrible tragedy of so many tens of thousands of people who were sent to Siberia to die or just murdered by a regime whose people themselves have suffered so much. We had a strong sense of how much the Estonians are on the frontline but from them all we experienced was a great pride in their independent spirit. And much of that comes through in their love of folk song. We also noticed how much they seem to like children with lots of imaginative playgrounds and small children playing in what felt like a very safe environment.
We drove south east from Tallinn to stop in Jäneda where another dear friend’s grandmother had a house which the family escaped to at the time of the 1917 revolution and where her grandfather was shot dead by an Estonian soldier. The grandmother, Moura Budberg, who was widely suspected of being a double agent and was known as the “Mata Hari of Russia”, led an extraordinary life. She was arrested before the October Revolution on suspicion of spying for the UK and transferred to the Lubyanka prison. Later, she lived with Maxim Gorky and had an affair with H.G.Wells. The house in Jäneda was built by her father-in-law and now seems a calm deeply rural place by a small lake.
Next stop Viljandi for a wonderful folk festival. The guidebook mentioned that there was a festival and, as you will have guessed, we like a festival and the timing was perfect.
The Estonians really care about songs and folk music. Once every five years in Tallinn 30,000 singers perform in the Estonian Song Festival. Through centuries of occupation the Estonian sense of who they are has been kept alive through song. Indeed it is said that twice they’ve achieved independence by using the power of unity and hope through folk song (1918 and again in 1991, after the Singing Revolution in 1988). In 1988 patriotic songs were sung at the festivals in Tartu and Tallinn. This was followed by a human chain of 2 million people who joined hands between Tallinn in Estonia and Vilnius in Lithuania to sing songs of protest and songs were used over the next four years to win independence. So a folk festival is a big thing and they do it really well.
The Viljandi festival has an audience of about 20,000 people and it takes place in and around the ruins of the Teutonic castle on the edge of an old cobble streeted town by the lake. It was great, a very beautiful setting, a lovely atmosphere, and great music.
We heard music from Georgia, Nashville Tennessee, Ghana, Mexico, Norway, Sweden and the Middle East as well as lots of modern and old from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (the three Baltic sisters).
We really liked a Norwegian group called Gabba with a Sami/Lapland lead singer who sang his grandfather and great grandfather’s yoiks along with his cool band from Southern Norway. The combination was powerful and fun. He explained that all Samis have a yoik. It’s a song about them at that stage of life so people have a childhood yoike, a marriage yoik, a middle aged yoik and so on. Each yoik is not about that person but evokes their changing personality and experience of life.
Here is Alex’s drawing of Viljandi town:
And another stand out was the couple (English and Estonian) who played a variety of instruments including the kannell (which is a beautiful sounding instrument rather like a harp played on the lap with a sort of large wooden platter as its base). They played songs they’d written based around recordings of birds, bees, waves, the dung beetle and they were magical. The Estonian wife explained that one song was a waltz which she’d written for their neighbours during Covid when they were all stuck inside but it was hot so they all had the windows open. She explained that Estonians don’t usually chat to their neighbours (they are known for being withdrawn) so although they’ve lived in their block of flats for a long time she didn’t know any of her neighbours until she learned a lot more when they were all at home with the windows open so they wrote this waltz as a gift to their neighbours.
This morning I went to a women’s singing group. There were about 100 of us of all ages. We had to take our shoes off and then sit in a circle. Of course it was hard for me to join in because all the songs were in Estonian and clearly many were well known but it was joyous. The songs all need a lead singer who sings the verse and everyone else joins in with the chorus. Clearly many are funny and involve tongue twisters or tell and increasingly funny story but others are abut hard work, passion, and grief. All round the room women had smiles on their faces and there was a great sense of togetherness. I’ve always loved singing and here is an entire nation who love it and know how much it matters.
We’re staying in Estonia for now but heading east to Tartu. Here’s the map to date.
