Estonia v. Lithuania

Having lived in both countries, people sometimes ask me what the difference between Estonia and Lithuania is.
I tell them "Latvia"...

History Of Estonia 101: Part Four

Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...

Part four: Of Bishops, Knights, Castles and Kings

After those pesky christians started arriving in large numbers and spoiling everyone's fun,  from the early thirteenth centrury, things started to get particularly hard, not least for the hapless blogger who simply wanted a nice resume of Estonian history and now regrets this series of posts which seem to have taken on a life of their own and which noone's going to read anyway.

The country lay divided loosely between the Danish north and the German south, via the crusades of the Livonian, or Sword Brothers, order for most of the thirteenth, and the first half of the fourteenth, centuries. It would be misleading at this point to think in terms of the modern day Estonian state or that the nation's occupiers were trying to construct the modern day country of Estonia (and exactly the same would apply to contemporaneous France, Germany and most of the rest of Europe). This is medieval Europe. Lands were held as fiefdoms which could cut across linguistic and other boundaries. People didn't even have maps in the modern sense and the whole of the Baltic region was an area which had been up for grabs in effect since Pope Celestine III declared a free for all in 1193. You can read any motives into it that you like, and draw your own conclusions from the fact that the Third Crusade to the Holy Land which had ended only the previous year had failed in its objective to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims. Lands covering all of the modern day Baltics, the Kaliningrad exclave and parts of Northeastern Poland were all affected.

The 'Duchy of Estonia' comprised the Danish, northern half, which was comparatively short lived so we'll deal with that first. Despite a series of Danish raids on the islands off the west of Estonia going back to the twelfth century, these were not a component of the Duchy.

Lyndanisse (modern day Tallinn) came to be known as 'Reval' and a bishopric was established here by the Danish King, Valdemar II in 1240. Most of the lands were in fact held by German vassals, with Danes and even a few Estonians making up a small minority. The Danes did have some ambitions in expanding eastward against the Votians, once a regional power and closely related to the Estonians, after going to war with the Novgorod state but this came to naught.

As is so often the case with foreign occupations, it was turmoil at home which led to the ulitmate downfall. The death of Christain II of Denmark led to divisions in the Duchy between the pro-Danish and pro-German factions (the latter held much of south Estonia, remember). The Estonians were not slow on the uptake, and in July 1343 the St George's Night Uprising saw wholesale massacre of German settlers, churchmen and the like, and an equally brutal suppression by the German Teutonic order, a far more professional unit than the Livonian order, who effectively took on the Danes' bad debt in the form of the Duchy of Estonia. Actually the Teutonic order were confusingly renamed the Livonian order after absorbing the remnants of the Livonian 'Sword Brothers' following their annihilation far to the south at the battle of Saule, in modern day Lithuania, but we'll stick with the Teutonic appellation for simplicity's sake. One of the last battles on mainland Estonia happened in a location in present day Lasnamäe, which will raise a wry smile to the face of anyone who knows Tallinn.

The last stand was in fact made on Ösel (Saaremaa) which after much to-ing and fro-ing, fell to the Germans in the winter of 1345. The Danes were in fact recompensed by the Germans, some 19 000 Köln marks for the mainland territories, however much that was, it sounds like a lot, although they had to apologise to the Pope for giving up so easily on a territory which had effectively been gifted them by one of his predecessors and which they'd promised never to relinquish.

In fact that wasn't the last of it; Ösel/Saaremaa came back into Danish possession over two hundred years later, in 1572, having been purchased from a German Prince, until 1645 when it was ceded to Sweden. More on that in a later post...

Meanwhile, South Estonia came to be a part of the state of 'Livonia', named after the order of knights (see above) after the papal legate William of Modena said so. This state incorporated most of modern day Latvia as well, and coexisted with several bishoprics, including that of Dorpat (modern day Tartu) and the sprawling Archbishopric of Riga, though not always peaceably, with civil wars blighting most of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, along with the troubles arising from the vacuum left by the departing Danes. As noted, with the obtaining of the Danish lands to the north, two important Hanseatic towns (Riga and Tallinn) came into German possession.

Ultimately, the Teutonic Order went the same way as the Livonian Sword brothers, again at the hands of the Lithuanians, at least in part, following their crushing defeat at the battle of Grünewald by the armies of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth in 1410. The Livonian Landtag was formed in 1419 to resolve the continued bickering and sat at the modern day town of Valga/Valka, then as now on the boundary between Latvian and Estonian ethnic lands. This remained the status quo for the next few decades, until the next chapter in our story and the arrival of a new regional power or two..

Part three is here...

History Of Estonia 101: Part Three

Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...

Part Three: Of Germans, Danes and Swedes

The word 'crusade' has almost become a swear word in modern times; the rallying cry of muslim and athiest alike, it's come to be synonymous with hordes of land-hungry medieval knights, committing rape and pillage throughout the near east, absolved and abetted by equally dastardly men of the cloth. Whilst there's no doubt some truth in that image, it is, it need hardly be told, something of an oversimplification. The crusades spanned a vast period of time, from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, and, it could be said, found a natural successor in the voyages and conquests in the new world from the sixteenth century onwards. There was much that was corrupt no doubt, but there was much idealism and honour too. And the holy land was not the only recipient; southern France experienced the Albigensian crusade of the thirteenth century, and concurrent with that was the northern crusade, announced by Pope Celestine III in 1193.

The first focus was on the Livs and Latgalians of modern day Latvia, indeed the crusade came to be known initially as the 'Livonian crusade', and a (somewhat iffy, in comparison with the outstandingly excellent Teutonic Knights) order of Knights was named after this. Important settlements along the Daugava river in Latvia were established, and the hub of operations, Riga, became an Archbishopric. From 1208 raids began into Estonian territory, and a long period of foreign occupations and invasions commenced, with little sign of abatement for the next eight centuries.

South Estonia naturally endured the brunt of these intial attacks, from the aforementioned Livonian order, or 'sword brethren', and Sakala leader Lembitu (still a popular male name) was slaughtered at the Battle of St. Matthew's day on 21 September 1217, near modern day Viljandi.

However the north of the country was not to escape these predations.Weighing in on the action, regional power Denmark became an increasingly apparent presence, with maritime raids on the country in 1170, 1194 and 1197 culminating in seizure of Oesel (Saaremaa) in 1206 and Lyndanisse (later Reval and ultimately Tallinn, a name which simply means 'Danish town') in 1219, when the Danish flag, the 'Dannebrog' reputedly fell from the sky on to a delighted King Valdemar II. Northern Estonia (roughly corresponding to the present counties of Harjumaa and East and West Virumaa) remained in Danish hands until the uprising of 1343.

Finally a third national group, perhaps the least offensive of all of Estonia's foreign lodgers, came in the form of the coastal Swedes, or 'Rannarootslased' (Rootsi/Ruotsi being the Estonian and Finnish name for Sweden) who apparently first started appearing in 1294 in the western town of Haapsalu and settled most notably many of the islands, in particular Vormsi, Hiiumaa, Ruhnu and others. This culture survived right down until the Soviet occupations of the mid-twentieth century when the bulk of the populace (though one or two stayed behind) fled, mostly to Sweden itself. Saaremaa apparently continued to give its Danish occupiers a headache, and it was finally surpressed by the sword brethren in 1227.

Thus distinctions which had already emerged between north, south and west (see the last post) were further heightened by the differing pattern of foreign occupation in each region, and the process of christianization, something which, it could be argued was never really fully carried through (no doubt because it came at the point of a sword) began...

To be continued...

Part two is here..

History Of Estonia 101: Part Two

Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...

Part Two: Of Iron, mythology and the first documented mention of Estonia

One particularly cataclysmic event in Estonian history took place towards the end of the Bronze Age (see previous post) in around 660 BC (give or take 85 years on way or the other) and for once it wasn't caused by human beings. A meteorite struck the island of Saaremaa (literally 'island land') with an impact comparable with the Hiroshima atom bomb and quite probably a comparable amount of destruction. There are various theories as to the impact's influencing the folklore and mythology of the area (e.g. the making of a new sun, ordered by the god Ukko, in the Finnish Kalevala, a spark from which was in fact the meteor(ite) and even a theory that Saaremaa was the location of the Thule of Greek legend, the name deriving from the Finno-Ugric word for fire ('tuli')).

Whatever else happened, the meteorite left a big crater (in fact 9 craters of varying size) which no doubt held mystical and religious significance. During the Iron Age (see below) the largest crater, the 'Kaali crater' was apparently enclosed by a 2 metre high, 2.5 metre thick stone wall. In fact it was only in the twentieth century that the origins of the crater were found to be meteroritic; it had previously been thought to have been of volcanic origin.

After 1000 years or so the Bronze Age in Estonia gave way to the 'Pre-Roman' Iron Age, around 500 BC as it did in much of Northern Europe. Actually this was of course the only Iron Age that occured here, the Romans never venturing anywhere near this part of the world, but the period after c 50AD is termed the Roman Iron Age for convenience sake - Roman expansion into parts of Northwestern Europe around this time, reaching a peak under Trajan in the early 2nd Century, meant that Roman influence, if nothing else, arrived in the form of trade; small quantities of Roman coins and other artefacts have been found. Smelting techniques were developed from iron ore found locally from around the first century BC.

We can speak of regional differences emerging during this period too; South Estonia had more contact with areas to the south via land, whereas seafaring tended to predominate in northern and western areas. Correspondingly it has been hypothesized that three broad dialects of 'Estonian', namely northern, southern and western (including the islands) existed by this time, distinctions which continue down to the present.

This Iron Age lasted for an incredibly long time; convention holds the end date to be around the year 1200 AD, shortly after which the Baltic Crusades began, and Estonian indepedence began to be eroded, not to be recovered again until the twentieth century. The first tantalizing possibility of documented recording of the existence of Estonia came from the Roman writer Tacitus in the 1st Century AD, who referred to a tribe known as 'Aestii'. Howver, it seems likely that these Aestii were in fact Baltic tribes living somewhat to the south, in modern day Žemaitija, Lithuania, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. In the following century Ptolemy, the Greek speaking Roman citizen from Egypt, mentions the 'Osilians' as dwelling in the Baltic. These were most likely the inhabitants of Saaremaa (the Germanic name for the island was 'Oesel'). The Osilians became quite notorious sea warriors, and a battle between them and Icelandic vikings off the coast of Saaremaa in 972 AD is recounted in the Icelandic Njal's Saga. They were nevertheless apparently defeated on the land, by a Norwegian invading force led by Olaf the Holy in 1008. The first proper reference to Estonia came in the writings of the Roman Cassiodorus, who was in the service of the Ostrogoths since the Western Roman Empire had already capitulated, in the sixth century AD.


Estonia did not remain a quiet corner of Europe, however, and even seems to have become quite wealthy. Various hoards of coins including Dirham coins from the Islamic world have been found over northern Estonia, including those at Maidla, Kumna and Kose, and a large proportion of the coins found were of Anglo-Saxon origin. Estonia of course remained a pagan land throughout this period (one wonders that, with the Dirham hoard, it didn't become Islamic after the 7th century AD) and were reputedly experts in wind magic. The national epic the Kalevipoeg presumably looks back to this period, though it wasn't compiled until the 19th Century. The folk were polytheistic, and then some, with gods including the aforementioned Ukko (also known as the 'Vanaisa', or grandfather) and a sky god called 'Jumal', the modern Estonian word for 'God'. Mythical motifs often appearing in runic songs included a girl finding a fish and asking her brother to kill it; on doing so a woman was found inside the fish, and a lake travelling to another location after desecration by an incestuous couple...Former president the late Lennart Meri spent a great part of his life researching the shamanistic religious cults of Finno-Ugric groups in what is now northern Russia in an attempt to shed more light on the religious practices of his own forebears.


As the Estonians were coming more and more into contact with their western neighbours, the same can also be said of the neighbours to the east, who were in the process of becoming Christianized. The monk Nestor wrote that in 1030 Yaroslav the Wise invaded the country of the 'Chudes' (which derives either from a Russian word meaning 'strange', or an entirely different term meaning 'wonderful' or 'attractive' - take your pick!) founding the town of Yuriev, modern-day Tartu. These developments however weren't necessarily all one way; it is plausible that the 'Chudes' were one of the founding tribes of Kievan Rus', the first Russian state as such.


Political and administrative developments continued apace during this time as well. The county (Maakond) and parish (Kihelkond) developed during these centuries, and a notable circular rampart fortress was built at Varbola. By the end of our period, on the eve of the Baltic crusades, the counties (in their modern terminology) included Saaremaa, Revala, Sakala, Virumaa and Ugandi. Incidentally the Finnish and Lativan names for Estonia, Viro and Igaunija respectively, seem to derive from these last two places.


But none of this was going to last forever...

Part one is here..

Thought For The Day No. 36 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

..spiritual guru, psychologist and arbiter of good taste..

Death is better for every man than life with shame.

Beowulf

History of Estonia 101

Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...

Part One: Beginnings

There are various estimates of how long present-day Estonia has been settled, at least by Estonians or their Finnic forbears. I've heard figures ranging from 5,000 years to 8,000 years and more. However, archaelogical evidence points towards a period at least 9,000 years BC (i.e. 11,000 years ago)  when the 'Kunda' culture flourished here. Kunda is actually a town in Estonia after which this group of people, who extended across modern day Latvia and Estonia into Northwestern Russia and southern Finland. The period falls into the Mesolithic time-frame, and involved a forest hunting and fishing culture, with the usual quarry including Elk, and Seals in coastal areas. Happily both animals are still to be found in abundance in the country. Tools were made from bone and antler, decorated with simple designs, and presmably wood. One of the most important archaelogical discoveries was made in 1967 at Pulli, near Pärnu in the southwest of the country.

The next layer in development began in the 5th millenium BC, with the appearance of stone pottery (the 'Narva' culture, named after a city in the east of the country, who traded heavily in amber from Lithuania) refined with the arrival of the 'comb ceramic culture', so called because clay pottery was often decorated with patterns that looked like they were imprinted using a comb-like implement. It also marks the first hypothesized linguistic status of settlements in Estonia - which also happens to be a proto-Estonian, Uralic language. So it might be said that these were the first Estonians. In all likelihood there were other peoples in the area including Indo-Europeans (Lativan, Russian and Lithuanian are all I.E. languages) and place names even hint at other, pre I.E. or F.U. linguistic groups.

The comb culture was in turn superseded by the more advanced 'corded culture' in the early 3rd Millenium BC (so a bit less than 4000 years ago). Corded ware covered a territory much more extensive than the preceding comb ceramic material, incorporating much of northern Europe, from the modern day Netherlands in the west, extending further east than Moscow (though excluding much of modern day Germany which, of course, had their own more advanced hardware culture, the Globular Amphorae, or 'beaker folk'). Again Southern Finland hosted the same cultural milieu. Some archaeological finds have indicated that arable cereal farming had been adopted by this time, since some pottery incorporated charred oat grain in its decoration. Funereal rituals involved burying the dead in a kind of foetal position, often together with domestic animals (!).

Not long after this period, in the overall scheme of things, the Bronze Age finally reached northeastern Europe, around 1,800 BC (by the way don't let anyone dismiss biblical tales, even from the Old Testament, as being nothing more than 'Bronze Age goatherder myths' - going purely on historicity, the B.A. ended in the Near East around the time in reached Estonia, which means much of the historcial events including the enslavement by the Babylonians, and everything in the New Testament, occur well after this - anyway, religious rant out of the way..). Now people had metal, bronze being an alloy of iron and copper (a 'copper age' preceded this period but seems to have passed this region by) and everything was happening. Fortified settlements were emerging, and the first distinction between 'Estonian' people and the scum to the south (joke) started to appear, with centres appearing in north Estonia (my favorite part of the country) and Saaremaa (by far the largest offshore island). Some other developments included people being buried in boat-shaped graves, and more commonly in 'stone cist graves' (see pic below)..

so be continued...

NFL v 'Soccer'...

The NFL kicks off today so here's my chance to set out my views on American football as against association football, and why, contrary to the current of opinion, the latter has nothing on the former, and I'm firmly in the small band of limeys (David Bowie, Ted Heath, er, and all the others...) who love the game. Here's why..

Length of Season/no. of Games and Competitions
The NFL season is just 17 weeks long (used to be 16 but with all these expansion teams since the '90s it's increased by the one week) from early September till the new year, with the playoffs lasting about another month, culminating in the Superbowl in early Feb. Add to that around 4 pre-season games and you're looking at about six months in all.
This meansthat during  half the year, you don't need to think about the game at all and can get on having a life. Compare that with the English leagues (admittedly the longest and most arduous of them all) which start when summer can still be at its height, progress through autumn, winter, spring and end in early summer with the FA cup final in May...then if there is an interational competition (which there is every other year), there's about a month's respite until that starts...then about another month's respite until the next season. Each team is likely to play a minimum of 38 games (more in the lower league) since they have to play everyone twice, then there are two European competitions with about a squillion more games, the FA cup, maybe still the league cup, I don't know if they have that any more, and, for the lower divisions the promotion playoffs.
Add to that international matches and it makes up for just far, far too many hours of watching what most of the time is a rather drab affair anyway.

Climactic Differences
This can happen in the European football competitions when Barcelona have to go and play FC Godthab or something, but generally if it's wet and cold in London it's the same in Manchester or Newcastle (or more so). It's rarely cold enough to stop play, but there is none of the extra dimension added when, say, the Miami Dolphins have to go and play one of the Great Lakes teams in minus 20 blizzards, usually dying a million deaths in the process.

Variety
The Superbowl has been won by roughly 20 different teams (of currently a total of 34) since its inception in the late '60s. Compare that with the premiership or, before that, Division one, over the same period and the figure is about half that. Even more disturbing is the fact that since the premiership was founded in 1992 there have only been four winners, and one of those (Blackburn) only once (c.f. a whopping 14 different S'bowl winners over the same period). Admittedly the dominance of the 'big four' (or the big two in Scotland!) is criticism of some standing, but nothing much seems to have been done about it.
The NFL draft system, whereby the poorest performing teams get first choice from the cream of the college players in the off season, no doubt is a factor, but in any event it's quite normal for a team to have been consistently shite for many years to win the Superbowl (as in the New Orleans Saints last year) or vice versa, a once great team to be continual pariahs (e.g. the Chicago Bears). Only the Kansas City 'Griefs' seem to buck that trend by never winning anything, ever..

Rules of The Game
Up to a point, gridiron is the yankee's revenge on cricket, but nevertheless it doesn't require an above average IQ to grasp fairly quickly. At the same time, the constant stop-start nature of the game, precision of field positioning, clock time (no accusations of the watch being stuck somewhere in the match official's anatomy here), wholesale changing of players depending on who's in offense and defense, make for a highly nuanced and subtle game of tactics, again, as in cricket.
Compare this with the round ball game, where not much seems to happen for incredibly long periods of time (a phenomenon lampooned in the 'soccer' episode of the Simpsons) and matches with no score whatsoever are regarded as perfectly acceptable.
What I like most is that referee/umpires are answerable to the crowd, routinely giving an explanation of themselves. Compare this with shocking and inconsistent refereeing, in particular at international level as was seen at the last world cup. Despite being about 80 years old and wearing clothing from the 1950s, and the collossal size of most of the players, the American football officials  don't take shit off their charges in the same way that seems to be the case with soccer (yes, I call it that) either.


To be continued...

No Pope Please, We're Irish

Here's a thing...ahead of the current Pope's imminent visit to the UK, some 2,500 tickets were allocated to potential Irish visitors, from both sides of the border, who might want to make the short trip over the water. However, they've only apparently managed to shift about 1,000 of them.

Now, I remember as a kid John Paul II's visit to the UK being a massive event, even in my distinctly anti-Catholic family environment, and the Papal visit to Ireland that happened at about the same time brought a huge number of people out (around a million apparently, in an island with a population of less than 5 million at that time).

But thirty years or so, a myriad of abuse scandals and Father Ted later, and the Catholic Church is definitely a big no no in Ireland now, and yet in England, with various high profile conversions, not least that of Tony Blair, seems to be stronger than it has been since the reformation. How things have changed.