I just spent a week in Ireland and though I have but one Irish grandmother, I did feel comfortable with the country, some familiarity with its people.
Even if we did not look the same, they did seem to be relatives of some kind. There was some intimacy there, some immediacy to the Irish. And then I took two planes and landed back in Eesti.
As soon as I arrived, I knew that I was not of this place. When I sat among Estonian passengers on the flight back to the mosquito coast, when I chatted up the cab driver on the ride back to my home, I knew the language, the surroundings well, but felt intrinsically that these people were nemad, them, and I also knew that I was not like them, even if I am married to one of them, and even if my daughters are two of them.
To be a bit more specific — this doesn’t mean that I look down or up at them; I merely acknowledge their difference. And I started to wonder about these instinctive ideas of us and them and what roles they play in today’s Europe.
While Estonians are them to me, I started to wonder if they were meie, “us,” to others. And who were these others. Estonians are foreign to Italians, foreign to Irish. But to Swedes and Finns? Even if they care not to advertise, it’s hard for those who have come here and spent time among the Estonians to look at the locals and not feel a familiarity with the place. For Finns, this is perhaps the only place in Europe outside of their homeland where they can speak their native tongue and be kind of understood.
And how about the Germans, who come expecting little Russia and wind up feeling like they’ve come across some Twilight Zone version of Schleswig-Holstein? Indeed, for a lot of northern Europeans, Estonians are “one of us,” and this sense of kinship may have played a subtle role in the fate of Estonia.
Does this seem foriegn or familiar to you? Photo by Egon Tintse.
I recall how then Latvian Foreign Minister Maris Riekstins at the Lennart Meri Conference a few years ago remarked that any application by Iceland or Norway for European Union membership would likely be fast tracked, while interest from Georgia or Ukraine for European integration would always be looked upon officially with polite openness, but privately with intense skepticism.
I have to ask, was it really geopolitics, or was it something else that drove such attitudes? Is Europeanness more than just democracy, rule of law, and historical coincidence? Or does it have to do with German lawmakers meeting their Estonian counterparts and coming away feeling that the Estonians are a chip off the old block? Is it really possible for Nordic decision makers to look at, say, the Icelanders and the Georgians the same way? Is it possible for them to construct the Georgians as an “us” and keep the Icelanders as a “them”?
Of course, the Estonians share kinship with the Russians too, but it’s a precarious relationship given the status of Finno-Ugric minorities in the Russian Federation. Russians can appeal to common Finno-Ugric roots, but the Estonians feel a tinge of sadness, for in their eyes, the Russians with a Finno-Ugric past have lost the one thing that continues to define the Estonians’ image of themselves as a separate nation: the language. So there will be no warm embrace.
Yet again, kinship plays a role. And this is not just information gleaned from some ethnology course. This is the process of looking at someone, spending time in their company, and deciding that, by some stretch of the imagination, they are family.
But for me, as close as I get to the Estonians, I still know that we are different. I know that they are, to put it simply, a them. I wonder though how foreigners with Estonian roots feel when their plane touches down in Eesti. Do they feel like they have landed in a foreign country? Or do they feel that they have finally arrived home?
Justin Petrone is an American writer living in Estonia and the author of the best-selling travel novel “My Estonia.” He publishes one of the best-written blogs in the Baltic states, Itching for Eestimaa.
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Views expressed in the opinion section are never those of the Baltic Reports company or the website’s editorial team as a whole, but merely those of the individual writer.
I will be going to Estonia in 2 weeks and will let you know. I speak the language, however, with an accent or so I was told. I never lived there so my language teaching came from my parents when we settled in North Dakota after WWII. We are outsiders, having no experience with the hardships they all endured under the Russian rule. United States was held in such high regard for years especially for “having it all” so I think there is a cetain resentment against these “rich” expats like me.
I know a man in his 40s from Canada, who was born there but who’s parents were WW2 fugitives from Estonia. He came to EE last summer for the first time with his Canadian wife to visit Singing Festival and see about. The man was crying like a child on the festival grounds. He was eager to talk to us in his poor Estonian as he had learnt it from home, eager to see and experience the country.
They don’t land as foreigners and we don’t take it as “them”. This is not the kind of context. The proof? Estonian president. As the Estonian saying (derived from German) says, blood is thicker than water.
Tiina, are there any Estonians left in ND? Or am I the only one?
I was born in the US to estonian parents. My first and only trip to eesti was in 2004, and it did indeed feel like going home. Things just made sense all of sudden.
The author seems to be having a similar experience to that of our Estonian parents/grandparents who emigrated to the US in terms of acclimating and adjusting to living in a new country. Indeed, a universal emigre experience.
I am a longtime Canadian citizen of Estonian birth. Have visited Estonia over a dozen times. On short visits I don’t get to to stage where I feel like one of “them”. On visits over 3 weeks in length, I feel absolutely comfortable in Estonia, seeming to undergo a sense of self-reorientation to feel that I am among “us”. At that stage I am reluctant to leave the country.
Just because we speak the same language, Estonian, accented or not, doesn’t automatically make us feel like family when we go to Estonia. It can depend on a lot of things, such as our personalities and attitude, who we meet up with when we go to Estonia, what our relatives are like, even our economic situation.
As for jealousy of “rich expats”: many people are doing well, beautiful Euro-designed apartments and homes, technological sophistication, superior cars, great clothes and a general connection to Scandinavia and Europe, where the best ideas start first and, alas, take a couple of years to get to North America. No, not too much for them to be jealous about any more. (Don’t forget, Estonians invented Skype) Of course, if you run into people not doing well, or embittered people living in the past, they may have a different attitude.
I was born to parents who fled Estonia as children during WWII. I grew up with the language, culture, food, and plenty of other Estonian relatives and family-friends. I was nearly 30 the first time I went to Estonia. As mentioned above in another post, for the first time ever, my life suddenly seemed to make sense — I no longer felt alone like a lost soul in the Great American Melting Pot. I’ve been back to Estonia dozens of times now; married an Estonian who I met in the United States. We have children who speak Estonian and English. While I do speak Estonian with an accent, it doesn’t bother me since I know Estonians in Voru speak with a slight accent that differs from the Estonian spoken in Tallinn, just as the English spoken in Boston sounds different than what is heard in Dallas. PS-As to the question “Does this (photo by Egon Tintse) seem foreign or familiar to you?” without a doubt is so familiar that it makes me feel warm inside: my grandmother owned and wore the same folk dress on special occasions.
“Does this photo seem foreign or familiar to you?”. I would’ve picked the photo out of the line up of many other ones in a blink of an eye.Though I never wore the clothes myself, I know most of the national clothes when I see them. The same way I can pick out the word Estonia from any text, and many other things that are very Estonian, including blue,black and white and the colors don’t even have to be in the same order, or Estonian names to name a few.Also the silhouette of Estonia, then again, I was born in Estonia and grew up there.
My parents fled Estonia during the war so I was born in Canada and grew up there and the U.S. I went to Estonian school and was brought up completely in the Estonian culture. I’m proud to say that Estonian was my first language and that I’ve been told many times that I speak it without an American accent. I first visited Eesti in 2002 and immediately felt at home there. I loved the fact that everyone spoke Estonian and I wasn’t an anomaly there! Yes, things were different there from what I’d grown up with but I understood why because I knew the history of Estonia and its culture. And I think that is the key. In order to really understand a culture—any culture, including its language and even cuisine—you have to understand where its come from. That involves reading—a lot!! And even then, though many “mysteries” of that culture will be revealed and you will certainly have an easier time understanding why things are done the way they are and why its people behave the way they do, you still may never feel like one of them (although you certainly will feel a lot closer), because you simply aren’t. So, yes, Justin, that’s just the way it is. You are of the culture you were born into and no matter how hard you try, you may never completely fit in to someone else’s. But so what? The most important thing is to have respect for each other’s cultures and accept that you will always be a little different from them. (And yes, as an Estonian, that photo is very familiar to me. My American friends, however, will—understandably—not have a clue.)
Russians don’t have Finno-Ugric heritage. Also, if you think you, American, feel ‘different’, and that Finno-Ugric people are mistreated in Russia, try to see what it is like for Russian-speaking people in Estonia, whose language is being banned, who have no rights at all, and who are constantly singled out as ‘occupators’ even if they were born in the 90s.
Russians are mix of ukrainians, finno-ugric people and tatars. Why in your opinion in old times Russian capital was Kiev:) Real russians lived in territory of Ukraine.
У тебя нет прав! А нука вали в Рашку и нажлаждайся своим русским языком и правами! Никому нытье советских уже не интересно!
Putin calling!