A Devonian devotion

I arrive down a reddish sandy track to a campsite by a reed-lined lake, smoke still issuing from an earlier fire, and with a few birch twigs and splits, a merry, crackling fire springs to life. The perfect campsite – and it was because I was later able to drive uphill out of it.

After a frantic time swapping two fun-loving Estonians at one campsite with friendly Finns at another, it’s been a day of heading south, through Tartu, deep into the Devonian geology, and rolling country of fields and forests. The water is clean, the ground dry, the setting peaceful, and the washing I did yesterday is now drying before brightly lit embers as daylight fades into the long summer twilight.

Time to take stock. Ähijärv is so named, like the Ahju river, for the ancient water god, which like so many other legends stems from the south of Estonia. Valdur Mikita, the nature philosopher and writer, says the red sandstone marks a region where the earliest Finnic peoples have retained their nature-based traditions over the millennia, compared with the north of Estonia, which took on a more Germanic or northern European slant.

A thunderstorm earlier in the day caught me in Võru, a little town having as its only distinction a museum dedicated to Friedrich Kreuzwald who wrote the national epic, the Kalevipoeg. Inside, I conversed with a lady curating a small display of books. I would have bought a translation into English, or one reproducing the original drawings, however, not available at any price.

The rain eased and I propelled myself south through stands of birch, past dark wooden farmsteads and fields of rye, and expanses of yellow canola that are now losing their colour; winding gravel roads took me at a slower pace to where I am camped.

In this part of Estonia, the dialect changes into Võru, and as I head further southeast towards the border with Russia, it becomes almost another language, Seto. An Estonian academic delegation visiting New Zealand earlier this year told me of an indigenous cultural exchange between Māori, and these two sets of Estonians.

Family in Otepää, less than 30km NW of Võru as the crow flies, consider the Võru and Seto dialects to be more similar to Finnish than standard Estonian, and the people to have a different mentality to Estos from the southwest of the country, an area of historically more prosperous farmland called Mulgimaa. Whatever it may be, the Seto / Võru mentality stands in contrast to Mulgi people who, it is said, are entrepreneurial and ambitious.

From Võru country to Setomaa is my intention, and the next day I drive from Ähijärve eastwards via Rõuge where there is a viewing tower with a huge bird’s nest structure on top, and a reconstructed Viking farmstead that looks similar to today’s talud of 100-200 years old.

A foot bridge crosses over a “primaeval valley” – really, this is a narrow gully several metres deep choked with sycamores, bird cherries, aspens, hazel, and other trees. From the valley’s name, ööbikuorg, nightingales abound, but I don’t hear any. Moreover, the ööbik is a small grey bird and almost never seen.

Further east, a stop for chicken and vegetable soup, rye bread and black coffee by Estonia’s highest peak, Suurmunamägi or the big egg mountain. At 318 metres above sealevel, it is difficult to tell from the road where it is, other than by reading a sign that points to it. We did ascend a viewing tower on the previous visit, and now for me into the unknown - a stop at Piusa, a former sand quarry for making glass, surrounded by pine forest carpeted in bilberry and bearberry plants, and then further east, hoping that google maps does not navigate me unintentionally into Russia.

Setomaa is located in the far southeast corner of Estonia, and many Setos ended up in Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed and Estonia returned to independence. When the Soviets drew up the borders of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, they left out bits east of the Narva river in the north and the Seto settlements of Petseri (now Pechory) and Pihkva (Pshkov). Driving there, the landscape looks the same as the rest of rural Estonia, fields sown in grain, forests, farmsteads, storks on their nests, the chicks now fully fledged. Possibly, more silver birch trees grow here than elsewhere, and all looks in good condition.

Like Finns, Setos have a more Finno-Ugrian look about them than other Estonians, wide cheek bones and almond-shaped eyes. Some of our family in Otepää have this look, and they claim to be partly of Seto origin, and thinking back, our father had the same look.

The main town Värska turns out to be several blocks of Soviet-built apartment blocks, some nicer houses, and a square where the Estonian flag and that of the Seto nation are flying. I keep driving eastwards; my destination is Podmotsa, and the heart starts beating a little faster. After several kilometres winding through pine forest on a narrow gravel road, the end of the road comes suddenly, freshly painted houses, apple trees, a traditional Estonian swing, a cul de sac and a jetty out into a narrow arm of Lake Pihkva. The cupola of Kulje Orthodox church on the other side gleams in the sunlight, in a hot 26 degrees.

I take a photo of Russia, spying also a coastguard-like boat on the other side, moored at a reed-lined shore, and a man in it dressed in black stares at me. Back to the car at a gentle pace, and then back down the gravel road, past the square with the flags, and onto the motorway to Tartu, opening up the throttle a bit, and now calming down and feeling safe.