The following blog entry has been republished here courtesy of Itching for Eestimaa.

“My people were entirely Nordic, which is to say idiots. Every wrong idea that has been expounded was theirs … They were painfully clean … After dinner the dishes were promptly washed and put back in the closet; after the paper was read, it was neatly folded and laid away on the shelf … Everything was for tomorrow, but tomorrow never came.”

I am digging through Tropic of Capricorn and I am reminded of my neighbors. They are all Estonians, eestlased, every single one of them. I don’t know most of their names. Maybe they know mine, but they never use it. We only see one another when we are working outdoors, because that’s all Estonians do outdoors. If they see me working, they look genuinely pleased and grunt out “jõudu,” which means “strength.” Then I grunt back “tarvis,” which means “needed,” and continue moving. There must be constant movement.

An Estonians’ idea of a good time is digging up root vegetables or examining fallen apples for worm holes or bruises. When an Estonian wants to relax, he grabs two poles and goes for a walk. It’s called “Nordic walking.” All across the country you can see them, poling down some highway, their neatly hung reflectors glimmering in the flash of headlights, a catatonic expression on their Finno-Ugric faces.

The odd thing is that I want to join them because they look so satisfied with themselves. It’s the Estonian smug. It hangs in the air, caressing the islands’ coasts and blanketing the drumlins and potato fields and berry patches and apple orchards and country lakes. You can’t escape the smug. You breathe it in through each nostril, and after awhile you are patting yourself because the state in which you dwell is not dead last, ie. Latvia. As long as Estonia continues to measure its success by comparing itself to Latvia, then the air is likely to be choked with smug. It’s in all the weather reports. It’ll be 10 below tomorrow with a 99 percent chance of smug.

I’ve tried to fit in as best I can. I spent last weekend raking frosted leaves and examining frozen apples for worm holes. And yet, at some point, I got tired and I made for our hammock and just couldn’t help but to collapse into it, to lay there with the November sun on my face, to feel my heavy body suspended in air, to relax and breath and feel human, to savor the pleasures of existence. I was almost smiling when I suddenly realized that one of my neighbors might spy me slacking off, so I leaped out of the hammock and was back scavenging for apples in no time.

You may think I’ve become neurotic, northern Estonian. But then I caught my neighbor patrolling the front yard at dusk to make sure that every stray leaf had been raked and removed to the backyard to be burned. His yard is tip top. Ours? Well, let’s just say that ours is getting there. I saw the Estonian neighbor crane his neck around, too, while he was on leaf patrol. He gave our yard a quick inspection, like I could work with all that smug in the air, stinging my lungs. And I knew what he was thinking. Italians. Lazy, sloppy, careless Italians. It doesn’t matter if I’ve got an American passport or an Estonian wife. Our work is tainted by our Mediterranean work ethic. It’s in the amount of olive oil we consume. We’re not real northerners. We’re something else.

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