WITCHING HOUR

Estonians are very mysterious, and from what I have observed so far, their secrecy is largely connected to the obscurity of their language. One of only three Finno-Ugric tongues (the others being Finnish and Hungarian), it is a musical language needed to break the code of its people. English-speaking Estonians aside (which in the countryside are seemingly few), the people are suspicious of us, and of letting outsiders into their world – so every morsel of insider information is a treasure.
They’re especially wary of sharing the secrets of their magic. During Kliima, I kept trying to discuss the legendary Estonian witchcraft, but to no real avail. (Sorry Jess, I’ll keep trying!) I was told, however, that there is no sort of system of beliefs or practices to unite Estonian witches, no specific shared dogma, the witches are simply people in the countryside with healing abilities, people who I’m sure know how to use every plant in the wilderness.
A fun custom: Every village or network of villages has a swing – a big wooden swing that you stand on with two or four people and create a swing of about 225 degrees (very dangerous by American standards!), that was apparently legendary in rural Estonian culture for being a matchmaker, as young people would just go the swing at night for fun. The swing is in the next village over, Laho, a fifteen minute walk away filled with birds and beautiful farm houses. The swing is in a small park simply filled with a see-saw for adults, a stage – Estonian country people are famous for their singing and dramatic clubs - and a catapult for cans of flaming lard that young men attempt to catch. I kid you not. The spruce trees lining the edge were budding young green tips, and we pulled them off with our fingers and chewed their tangy sweetness for a snack. A fat birch had a tap that in March you can drink from – apparently its watery sap is especially good if you let raisins ferment in it for several days.

Some good advice: If you’re feeling sick, have a shot of vodka. If you want to get drunk, have a glass of vodka – and eat pickles between sips to mask the taste. (If you’re lucky these pickles will be the single best dill pickles you have ever eaten in your life and be homemade by Evelyn’s mother.) Keep said vodka in the freezer. If you are already sick, soak your socks in cold vodka and wear while you’re sleeping. If you have one mosquito bite, use calendula cream. If your whole body is a mosquito bite, let the poisons out in the sauna.

Sauna. Estonians are fanatical about the sauna, and most people use it every Saturday – sauna day. Country people often have one in their house that people usually use alone or with their significant other, and there is always one for a village. The Mooste village sauna costs about $6 an hour to rent out, or there are open hours during the day on Saturday with separate hours for men and women. When groups rent it out as a social thing, as we did this past Saturday night to mark the end of Kliima, it is not gender restrictive – so delightfully un-American. We spent three hours – from about 10:30 at night on – at the sauna, taking turns in the heavenly hotness, in the cold shower, in the waiting room where we kept an arsenal of alcoholic beverages, or cooling ourselves in the night air. We poured beer over the coals to emulate baking bread. We beat each other with birch branches we had collected in the park, that you dip in hot water and leave welts on your legs that are definetly worth it. We ran into the Mooste Lake, which had mist rising above it like a mystical glow in the bright night, and water breathtakingly cold. Running naked in an Estonian forest is joyous and exhilarating, it looks like if a Ryan McGinley photo were unplanned. Afterwards, we walked together back home while the nightingales sang, and somehow in the darkness in the middle of the night I found a perfect bird’s nest lying on the side of the road.