Karin

Prior to colonization, Estonia was a land of small settlements, villages, and farms. That all ended in the Thirteenth Century with the northern crusades (a topic for another day). The year my father was born, 1918, Estonia declared independence and by 1920 was the Republic of Estonia, an independent country.

Image by Wolfgang Eckert from Pixabay

During the first period of independence that lasted until 1939, Estonians sought to reclaim, re-imagine, and/or reinvent the authentic Estonian spiritual beliefs.  After seven hundred years of colonization and subjugation sorting out Estonian traditions from those of the Germans, Danes, Swedes and Russians was not easy. Then of course there was the conversion (forced and/or voluntary)  to Christianity

As the Estonians started to re-create a culture that was grounded in independence, one strategy was to reject the imposed Christian belief system in favor of the creation of a uniquely Estonian religion. And thus Taarausk (Taaraism) was born. Following the Christian concept of one god and referencing the god,Tharapita, from the writings of Henry of Livonia during the Northern Crusades, this new religion was focused on creating cultural and intellectual freedom to live up to the ideals of political liberty. Then came fifty years of Soviet colonization. Finally with the restoration of independence Estonian culture creators could resume the work that was interrupted by World War II.

Since the early 1990s, Estonia has been engaged in the type of intentional myth making employed by colonized and colonizing cultures.  When a culture has been colonized and then regains independence, the people cannot go back to who they were before the colonizer imposed an alien structure of economics, politics, culture, and relations to other peoples. The culture is forever changed. However, as George Orwell so astutely noted in his short story “Shooting an Elephant” the colonizers are also forced to alter their behavior and, of course, their myths to justify their actions. Because in the end, we use our mythologies to justify our inhumanity.

I find Estonian mythology fascinating, not just because I am half Estonian, but because the people are re(imagining) a past that may or may not ever have existed. They are actively defining for themselves what it means to be Estonian now after so much trauma. I ,as someone who is ethnically, but not culturally Estonian (having been born and raised in the USA with a father who kept Estonia and Estonian culture as a privately held part of his life), may not be living the Estonian myth making process engaged in by those who remained in Estonia after World War II, but I live in a culture where myth making is also an ongoing process, where many culture workers are trying to reveal the layers of colonization of the first people of this land and in which I am part of the colonizing culture.

Of course, in the USA, there are still people clutching to the mythologies created to justify colonization, imperialism, and slavery.  Therefore, we have many competing mythologies trying to claim cultural space.  If the dominant culture in the USA was traditional for the people who lived on this land since time immemorial, then the myth making process would be evolving slowly over time. However, the dominant culture in the USA is squarely in the Western culture space where individualism, capitalism, the nation state rule and “newness” is more profitable than what happened ten or thirty years ago.

Therefore, I suggest that the USA as a nation state has no precolonial culture.

Oh my! No wonder we are a nation adrift.

Stealing the culture of the indigenous is not an option, although some non-indigenous people do.

Trying to import your or your ancestors culture is an option and one that my Swedish mother excelled at as I was growing up. Although in my opinion, culture is tied to land. Just as celebrating Lucia Day in sunny San Diego doesn’t have the same impact as it does in dark and snowy Sweden. With thousands of competing cultures, who wins?

Image by Bilge Can Gürer from Pixabay

The culture of the USA is built on settler colonialism and many residents of the USA have ancestors that came over two, three or even more generations ago.  Many people are a mixture of a dozen or more ethnic groups. This is what creates instability of culture as current and future culture always has roots in past culture, but with so many past cultures, it is no wonder that culture wars are on-going in the USA.

While Estonians have ten thousand years of culture creation that stems back to the retreat of the last ice age and no doubt shares traits with neighboring cultures, the era since the 13th century experienced a mingling of Estonian and the cultures of colonial powers. Since the retreat of the occupying powers, Estonia also has experienced challenges untangling the threads of its history and culture as we are experiencing in the USA.

Yet I have to ask, is there any opportunity to create a post colonial culture on occupied soil or are countries like the USA doomed to fail because there is no precolonial culture to inform future culture creation as there is in Estonia?

In California, I live on the land of the Kuumeyaay / Iipai-Tiipai.  I am aware I am living on someone else’s ancestral land, I am part of a community group that cares for the creek and salt marsh by my home, and I do my best to honor the land and the culture that lived in harmony for thousands of years in this area.

Emajõgi (Mother river) from Kaarsild (Arch bridge) in downtown Tartu.

In Estonia, I walked on my own land. The land upon which my father grew up. I imagined him swimming in the Emajõgi (Mother River) in Tartu where I was living and he was born and raised.  Tartu is the land in which my grandparents graves are nestled.  As I walked the streets and woods in and around Tartu, I imagined my grandparents walking these same streets. I imagined my father being part of a korporatsioon or fraternity when he attended Tartu Ülikool (University of Tartu).

In the USA, many people can claim that they are walking on the land where their parents and grandparents lived and maybe even died. The difference for me is that in Estonia, I was living on the land of my ancestors going back thousands of years. Perhaps even to the first people who settled this land after the glaciers retreated ten thousand years ago. The Estonians are the people who lived on the land since time immemorial and I am one of them. With a language not related to Indo-European languages and a unique culture that has modified by colonization, the Maarahavas or people of the land are descendents of the first peoples.

The trees seemed to speak to me, to tell me all the things I didn’t know. The river cradled me and revealed a life that could have been mine except for the ways of humanity. I experienced a deep seated connection to the land via my emotions that was an ache akin to the longing for a lover’s touch. The compulsion to touch and be touched by this land is so opposite from how I feel about California.  Understanding the land intellectually is so different from touching land that your ancestors died on, worked on, were enslaved on. And yet I know the land of California, its plants and animals, the mountain peaks and the desert wildflowers in spring. California is one of my homes and now Estonia is another home.

I learned about traditional farming practices that took place for thousands of years and that sculpted the land. I saw how the tending of the lands is managed today to maintain all the habitats that people living, loving and dying with land for 10,000 years created.  Now, my experience of connection to land has deepened, shifted, grown more complex and more painful.