Care with culture

If there is something in the Estonian language that joins the speaker and listener more closely with the natural world, how does this appear in everyday life? I have noticed care taken to avoid expressing over-confidence, and a tendency to downplay. I have spoken at length on this topic with friends, and maybe there’s some clarity.

For centuries Estonians have lived amid uncertainty, whether of the forces of nature, or among other human beings. To be definite on anything invites catastrophe. Likewise for New Zealanders who are faced with earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods. I wonder if Estonia is a case of “island mentality”, the response of a small people to uncertainty, including nearness to a large neighbour - in NZ’s case, Australia. So too for Chileans who live in a long, thin country, abutting a brighter and brasher Argentina. Potentially, Canada and the US have a similar relationship. So, Estonia and Russia?

Well, Estonia is also a small country where almost everyone knows everyone, inviting care and reserve in interpersonal relationships. You never know if you have to deal with the same person in the future, a quality also inherent in New Zealanders.

In contrast, Germans and Swiss-German speakers are direct, even abrupt, in their dealings with each other. There is a strength here also – Germanic people are capable of dialogue on difficult topics without physical or verbal violence, at least that used to be the case, whereas in NZ, polarised politics see people talking past each other, and unable to bridge gaps in world views.

How does Estonia fare with its careful use of language? I catch up in Tallinn with Tõnu Viik, a professor of philosophy at Tallinn University. He had visited NZ as part of an academic delegation, and we met at a function the Embassy hosted in Auckland. We agreed to meet during my next visit to Estonia for coffee.

Professor Tõnu Viik

Asked if the Russian neighbour has affected a sense of Estonian national identity and culture, he says “in a negative way, by endorsing tribalism”. There is a tendency to blame anything negative or disorderly in Estonia on the former occupier, the Soviet Union. This attitude is, of course, not unique to Estonia; New Zealand is a shining example. 

I suggest that one aspect of tribalism is “I belong, and you don’t”. Fitting in with the tribe feeds a sense of identity, Tõnu says, and he adds “the other tribe is described as hostile”.

Changing tack, I ask how Estonians survived as a culture during more than 700 years of foreign occupation. For Tõnu, there are two questions: how the population survived, and how the culture survived, at critical moments in Estonia’s history.

How did Estonians continue to speak Estonian, while also speaking other languages? Estonians generally lived physically isolated from their conquerors, and the language barrier helped the colonisers keep their cultural boundaries.

A sense of Estonianness started in the mid-1800s, ironically, as a product of German Romanticism. The philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) argued that each culture or people has a spirit of its own, organised around a central principle, or set of values. So, it was Germans who started describing what they thought was the spirit of Estonia, and then a nascent Estonian intelligentsia made it real. 

As to Estonian values today, there is a strong sense of preserving Estonian language and culture. You see this in the Constitution, the will of lawmakers, and political goals. As well, much of Estonia’s values today mirror those of liberal western democracies, e.g. in medicine and education.

While there is a relationship-based culture in Estonia, it is also a formal, western country with the rule of law and a bureaucratic culture, as is the case elsewhere in Europe.

The conversation draws to a close, and Tõnu asks after my travels. He suggests the northwestern Baltic coast for a walk among the pine trees. I follow his lead, and drive slowly to Laulasmaa – or singing land – where I notice a heady aroma of lavender-tea in flower, a rhododendron also called unerohi, the dream herb, and lots of wood pigeons flitting through the forest.

I look out onto one inlet of still water decorated in erratic boulders, where ducks and swans bob about and cormorants dry their wings on rocks. One shiny drake zooms up to a heron, which spreads huge grey wings with a disgruntled “graark” and flies to another spot, to continue its silent vigil for passing fish.     

On whether there is something in the Estonian language and culture that brings people closer to nature, and a greater sense of wellbeing, it may be simply habit. And if there is something to be careful of, it’s that Estonians are usually very private people beneath a veneer of informality, which can fool New Zealanders like myself into communicating at a level that is too casual.