History, Natural Monuments, and Estonian National Identity

Conclusion

The masons and road builders who crushed, carved and reshaped Estonia’s erratic boulders also crushed or reshaped the ancient human relationships that evolved with them. It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that concerned scientists and scholars began to recognize and decry the cultural as well as the scientific loss society incurred whenever an erratic was yanked out of the natural world. Not coincidentally, this was also an era when Estonia’s built environment was rapidly expanding, thus most Estonian preservationists (of whatever ethnicity) willingly acknowledged as legitimate, within reason, the use of erratics as primary construction material. Yet because preservationists’ demands grew increasingly vociferous in light of the continued threat to erratics, and because they successfully appealed to nationalistic sentiments by delineating both physical and metaphysical landscapes, the new nation-state of Estonia ultimately embraced and championed the preservationists’ goals.

Preservationists' creation of the Naturdenkmal concept and its twentieth century application to Estonia's most conspicuous inanimate objects resulted in legal protection for hundreds of glacial erratics in Estonia to this day. Largely due to contemporary political considerations, preservationists' appeals for erratics' protected status assumed different forms ever since the issue was first raised by Gregor von Helmersen in 1878; scientific, aesthetic and patriotic considerations were all at times deemed paramount. At the core of any argument, however, lay the erratics themselves. More than any other feature of the Estonian landscape, erratics seemed to instill a sense of connectedness with the past.

Yet the meaning of “place” and of erratics themselves assumed different connotations for different people at different times. In the first degree, then, something less tangible than patriotic or scientific considerations must explain their appeal to humans and human society. Ansel Adams' observation about Yosemite's most recognizable landmark (which could have just as easily been penned by Robert Jakobson or Gustav Vilbaste about Estonia's erratics) suggests the metaphysical appeal of certain inanimate natural objects: "In the last analysis, Half Dome is just a piece of rock.” But, Adams continued, “There is some deep personal distillation of spirit and concept which moulds these earthly facts into some transcendental emotional and spiritual experience."¹⁴⁵ Thus no matter how unextraordinary or even trivial Estonia's erratics might seem when considered by the standards of an American accustomed to the enormous granite walls of Yosemite, they nevertheless hold a special place in that nation's imagination. (Fig. 8) The appeal of nature is relative. As Herbert Viiding states, "Naturally we don't find such enormous natural landscape objects as in America...We do have, however, several unique and scientifically interesting geological monuments for which we were bound by honor for future generations to place under protection."¹⁴⁶ For Estonians, erratics came to represent something even greater than the physical and spiritual equivalents of Half Dome.

Today the erratic, Lemeti kivi, stands on the shores of the Baltic Sea in the heart of Lahemaa National Park, resting in the same location where it has resided for thousands of years. Tourists might notice its stately appearance amongst the smaller stones of the boulder strewn and forested Käsmu Peninsula, and they might even pause to think about the derivation of its unlikely appearance. But had more funds been readily available to transport the boulder, or had Estonian preservationists been less diligent in their drive to protect and preserve glacial erratics, tourists would have had no Lemeti kivi to ponder. Rather, just as with St. Petersburg's (or, more properly, Konnaia Lakhta's) Grom, tourists would have been admiring a statue of Russia's Peter the Great in the Estonian capital city of Tallinn, hardly noticing the boulder at its base. For Lemeti kivi too was slated to be yanked out of the natural world, transported, sculpted and planted firmly in the built world of human ego. But as a modern observer noted, there are now plenty of monuments made of stone in the world, and the world is richer because Lemeti kivi “is also today a monument – a monument of nature."¹⁴⁷

1 John Carr, A Northern Summer or Travels round the Baltic, through Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Prussia, and Part of Germany in the Year 1804, in A Collection of Modern and Contemporary Voyages and Travels (London, 1804), as cited in Schenker, The Bronze Horseman, 160.

2 Agassiz first postulated his theory that ice had once covered the earth from the North Pole to Central Europe at an 1837 gathering of the Helvetic Association in Neuchâtel. He was led to this belief after considering theories championed by his friend Jean de Charpentier, and propounded earlier by the British Professor John Playfair in 1802, that glaciers could be the only force powerful enough to transport erratics. Upon hearing the renowned ichthyologist’s radical glacial theory, Alexander von Humboldt – a long-time correspondent with Agassiz – was hardly alone when he advised his friend to “stick to ‘Fossil Fishes,’” the advertised subject of his lecture. Gregor von Helmersen and other “Russian” researchers later determined that Estonia’s erratics were carried by glaciers to their present location from the vicinity of Vyborg, Russia (formerly Finland) more than ten thousand years ago. Their curious appearance in Estonia’s remarkably flat northern plain helped support Agassiz’s theory of continental glaciation over competing natural history theories of catastrophic flood and even volcanic eruption. See Herbert Viiding, "Eluta Looduse Kaitse," in Looduskaitse, ed. Erik Kumari, (Tallinn, 1973), 198-203; Herbert Viiding, "Lahemaa hiidrahnud ja kivikülvid," Lahemaa uurimused, I (Tallinn, 1981), 47; and Fergus Fleming, Killing Dragons: the Conquest of the Alps (London, 2000), 112-115.

3 See, e.g., Ben Eklof, Bushnell, and Zakharova, eds., Russia’s Great Reforms, 1855-1881 (Bloomington, 1994); Bruce Lincoln, In the Vanguard of Reform (DeKalb Illinois, 1982); and Aileen M. Kelly, Toward Another Shore (New Haven, 1998), 119-133.

4 Alexander Vucinich, Social Thought in Tsarist Russia (Chicago, 1976), 7.

5 Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York, 1995), 15.

6 In Anderson’s formulation, the nation is “imagined [original emphasis] because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York, 1993), 6.

7 This essay, therefore, adheres more closely to Anthony Smith’s formulation of a nation as something both ancient and modern than it does to the wholly created modern manifestation that Anderson makes it out to be.

8 Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1974), 99.

9 John Brinckerhoff Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven and London, 1984), 112.

10 Eric Hobsbawm, “Inventing Traditions,” Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), 2.

11 Friedrich Engels as cited in Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Revival (Cambridge, 1981), 2.

12 Ninety percent of modern Estonia lies less than 100 meters above sea level, local landforms rarely exceed twenty meters in relief, and the highest comparative relief in the entire country is only fifty meters. Nevertheless, a small erratic is even found at 270 meters, near the 318 meter summit of Estonia's highest hill, Suur Munamägi. M. Taagepera, Pollution of the Environment and the Baltics," Journal of Baltic Studies (12:3, 1981), 262; Toivo Raun, Estonia and the Estonians (Stanford,1991), 5; Madis Aruja, Eesti NSV looduse kaitsest (Tallinn, 1983), 10; and R. Lehbert, "Erratische Blöcke in Estland, Wierländischen Strand, Kasperwiek und Umgebung," in Beiträge zur baltischen Naturdenkmalpflege (Abt. 1, Reval, 1914), 7.

13 In 1976 Viiding found that legends were known about 150 erratics, popular customs and beliefs were connected with another 120, and over 200 were known as former sacraficial stones. Herbert Viiding, "Andmete kogumisest Eesti suurte rändrahnude kohta," in Eesti NSV Maapoue kaitsest, ed. H. Viiding (Tallinn, 1976), 154. E. Laugaste and E. Normann detail hundreds of variations of these legends and their particular relation to erratics in Muistendid Kalevipojast (Tallinn, 1959). See also Vello Paatsi, "Saarte suured ja väikesed kivid," Eesti Loodus, (1979, No. 11), 712.

14 Three folkloric characters are most commonly associated with the act of carrying or tossing about huge boulders: the giant Kalevipoeg, Saaremaa Island's mythical Suur Tõll, and the devilish Vanapagan (lit. Old Pagan). G. Vilbaste, "Suuremad rändrahnud vajavad tõsist kaitset," Eesti Mets, (1935, No. 10), 357; E. Laugaste, E. Liiv and E. Normann, Muistendid Suurest Tõllust ja teistest. Eesti muistendid: Hiiu- ja vägilas- muistendid II; esp. Eesõna and Sissejuhatus; Laugaste, Mustendid vanapaganast; and Friedrich R. Kreutzwald, Kalevipoeg: An Ancient Estonian Tale, trans. George Kurman, 1982.

15 Gregor von Helmersen, "Studien über die Wanderblöcke und die Diluvialgebilde Russlands," Mémoires de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences de St. -Pétersbourg, (St.-Pétersbourg, VIIe Série, Tome XIV, No. 7, 1869), 12.

16 Gregor von Helmersen, "Die Schonung der Wanderblöcke," Sitzungsberichte der Naturforscher-Gesellschaft bei der Universität Dorpat (Dorpat, Bd. 5, H. 2, 1880[1879]), 180. The village name, Konnaia Lakhta, is derived from both Russian (kon’, or horse), and a Russian transliteration of the Finnic laht, or bay, thus, Horse Bay. Catherine the Great, eager to spur on development of the monument, even traveled to Konnaia Lakhta to visit Grom during its transport to St. Petersburg. Schenker claims that the feat of moving the boulder some eight miles over land, bog, and sea ranks as “one of the most spectacular technological accomplishments of the eighteenth century.” Interestingly, if left to the wishes of Falconet, the stone would have been carved in situ and reassembled on St. Petersburg’s Senate Square. Eager to show off the empire’s technological potential to the wider world, it was the empress who demanded that Grom be brought to the city whole. See A. Kaganovich, Mednyi vsadnik: Istoriia sozdaniia monumenta (Leningrad, 1975), 185n; and Alexander Schenker, The Bronze Horseman: Falconet’s monument to Peter the Great (Yale University Press, 2003), 136.

17 A Russian state peasant, Semen Grigor’evich Visniakov, was the first to inform the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts about the existence and location of Grom in 1768. He claims the erratic got its name after having been struck and split by lightening, a derivation that might stem from persistent pagan belief. Pre-Christian tribes of Russia’s north revered lightening and thunder to such a degree that they frequently buried their cherished axes – popularly called “thunderbolts” – with their owners, and they revered stones found near trees felled by lightening as part of the axehead used by the god of thunder. See Kaganovich, Mednyi vsadnik, 105-106; and James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe (New York, 1970), 27. See also L. N. Belova, G. N. Buldakov, A. Ia. Degtiarev, eds., Sankt-Peterburg; Petrograd; Leningrad: Entsiklopedicheskii spravochnik (Nauchnoe izdatel'stvo bol'shaia rossiiskaia entsiklopediia, 1992), 2.

18 Indeed, in order to facilitate his grand scheme, Peter I even went so far as to order every stone mason within the entire Russian empire to relocate to St. Petersburg, and he forbade stone constructions anywhere else. Nevertheless, supply of stone was rarely a problem. Telling of an encounter with Parisian painter who challenged Falconet’s decision to use natural stone in a city where “there are no rocks,” the sculptor countered, “Does he think that square and polished pedestals grow there?” See Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air (New York, 1982), 177; and Schenker, The Bronze Horseman, 133.

19 Helmersen, "Die Schonung der Wanderblöcke," 180.

20 Viator, "Kodumaa rändrahnudest," Loodusevaatleja, (1935, No. 4), 104; M. J. Eisen, "Kivistunud inimesed," Eesti Kirjandus, (1924, No. 10), 462-463. Jackson finds that “the symbolism of stone…is an essential element in the ritual and belief of many pre-Christian religions and of early Christianity itself. In the primitive view of nature stone is not dead, it is a concentration of power and life.” See John Brinkerhoff Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, 108.

21 This boulder, found near the village of Ridase, was known to accommodate twenty-five dancing couples. On Janniöö, locals would build a bonfire on the northern half of the stone and use the remaining flatter portion for dancing. Similarly, the Laulumäe kivi (Singing Hill rock) derives its present name by having served in older times as a song stage for local peasants. Aadu Kumari, "Kalevipoja kivid Pärnu rajoonis," Eesti Loodus (1982, No. 3), 174-176; Lehbert, “Erratische Blöcke in Estland,” 20; Aadu Kumari, “Kumme suuremat rändrahnu,” Eesti Loodus (1979, No. 7), 465.

22 In 1878 Geology Professor Constantine Grewingk of Tartu University found offerings of burned lamb meat and blood on certain erratics. Sacrificial offerings left on erratics were not the only means by which supplicants could summon supernatural forces through the medium of stone, however. For example, children who knocked on a "babystone" – a particular stone common to most peasant families that was located behind the house or shed – believed that they would soon be given a new brother or sister by the magic objects. See M. J. Eisen, "Pühad kivid," Eesti Kirjandus (1918/1919, No. 7), 162; and Herbert Viiding, Lahemaa Kivid, (Tallinn, 1981), 68.

23 Uno Hermann, "Massu Liukivi," Eesti Loodus (1970, No. 12), 747. In 1988 the author visited two liukivid – rare artifacts today in Estonia and Northern Europe in general – and can attest to the unmistakable marks left by centuries of such sliding.

24 The erratic depicted in Schlater’s painting was the legendary slingstone thrown by Kalevipoeg’s younger brother. It resided near the shore of lake Saadjärv, and was well-known by Friedrich Robert Faehlmann and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald, compilers of the Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg. In the second half of the nineteenth century the erratic was cleaved to make six pairs of millstones and gateposts. According to Eilart, the transformed stone can still be seen today on a nearby farm. See Jaan Eilart, Inimene, Ökosüsteem ja Kultuur (Tallinn, 1976), 16-17.

25 These boulders became the focal point for church services during times of trouble in the Catholic era’s Livonian Wars (1558-83): priests preached sermons from the Kantslikivi and conducted holy communion and weddings in front of the Altarkivi. T. Kivimaa, "Tähelepanuväärvaid rändrahne Taeveres," Loodusevaatleja (1937, No. 4), 124-125.

26 Herbert Viiding, "Rändrahnud Loodusmälestusmärkidena," Loodusuurijate Seltsi aastaraamat, 1957, (Tallinn, 1957), 175. A guberniia (plural gubernii) is a historical Russian province. Estland and northern Livland gubernii comprised what is the present territory of Estonia.

27 Aadu Kumari, "Kumme suuremat rändrahnu," Eesti Loodus (1987, No. 7), 463.

28 The Soekivi in the Petseri region of south-east Estonia served for many years as a border marker between Russia proper and the Finno-Ugric guberniia of northern Livland. The name Soekivi (Warm stone) is a direct translation from older German (Warmstein), Russian (Teplyi kamen’), Polish (Cieply kamien), and Swedish (Warmensteen) designations for the rock that were recorded in seventeenth century documents and maps. Audu Kumari, "Ehalkivi-suurim rändrahn Eestis?” Eesti Loodus (1974, No. 8), 472; Uno Herman, “Soekivi jälgadel,” Eesti Loodus (1981, No. 11), 713-716; Viiding, "Rändrahnud Loodusmälestusmärkidena," 173; Sitzungsberichte der Gesellschaft für Geschichte und Altertumskunde der Ostseeprovinzen Russlands aus dem Jahre 1910 (Riga, 1911).

29 Although Russian authorities at times had strained relations with their Baltic German administrators, the former’s policies too were aimed to maintain the status quo. One means to keep ethnic Estonians from rising within their own society was to send those with a university education to serve the empire in Russia, beyond the borders of the Baltic gubernii – a practice later mirrored by Soviet military postings. Linda Raun, The Estonians (New Haven, 1955), 31.

30 To this day the word “saks” has two meanings in Estonian. The first translates as “lord, master,” the second as“German.” See Taagepera, The Fino-Ugric Republics and the Russian State (London, 1999), ix; and Juhan Kahk, “Peasant Movements and National Movements in the History of Europe,” Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Studia Baltica Stockholmiensia 2 (1983), 16.

31 This is all the more remarkable when one examines the German portion of Estonia’s population. In 1881, e.g., it was about 5.4 percent, decreasing to 3.5 percent in 1897. As Jansen notes, this percentage is far lower than that of Germans in Czech lands or Swedes in Finland (14 percent). Toivo Raun, Estonia and the Estonians, 56; Ea Jansen, “On the Economic and Social Determination of the Estonian National Movement,” Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis (1985) 42.

32 The epic, first published by the Estonian Learned Society (Gelehrte Estnische Gesellschaft, or Õpetatud Eesti Selts) in 1857-61, was intended not for the Estonian public, but for Germans residing in Estonia and abroad. Only in 1862 did parallel columns of German and Estonian give way to an entirely Estonian edition. Nevertheless, as Ea Jansen has pointed out, both Faehlmann and Kreutzwald took a secret oath to not repudiate their Estonian peasant origin. See Jansen, ibid., 55; and L. Raun, The Estonians, 156.

33 Russia’s greatest social critic of this era, Alexander Herzen, uncharacteristically agreed, at least in this regard, with Uvarov’s evaluation of the supposed apolitical traits of the Academy’s non-Russian scientists. Indeed, Herzen led the Russian intelligentsia to come to its view of the Academy as a “German institution,” one that threatened genuine social progress in the empire by practicing “Buddhism in science.” See Aleksandr Herzen, Selected Philosophical Works (trans. L. Navrozov, Moscow, 1956), 77, as cited in Alexander Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge (Berkeley, 1984), 44.

34 See Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge; and Social Thought in Tsarist Russia (Chicago, 1976), for thorough analyses of the policies and politics of Russia’s Academy.

35 See T. Raun, Estonia and the Estonians, esp. 59-68; T. Raun, “Culture Wars in Estonia at the Beginning of the 20^th Century,” Acta Historica Tallinnensia (2000, 4), 49-58; and Ea Jansen, “Aleksander III Venestusreformid ja Eesti Avalikkus,” Acta Historica Tallinnensia (1999, 3), 64.

36 Renowned scholars such as Karl Ernst von Baer, V. Severgin, Constantine Grewingk, A. von Kayserling and Jannes Klinge conducted early erratic research work in Estland. Grewingk in particular continued to research erratics for a long period. See Viiding, "Rändrahnud Loodusmälestusmärkidena,"169-182; and "Andmete kogumisest Eesti suurte rändrahnude kohta,"148-152; Linda Kongo, "Early history of nature conservation in the Baltic region," Eesti Maritima 3 (Haapsalu, 1988), 80; A. Köppen, "Zum fünfzigjärigen Jubiläum des Akademikers Gregor von Helmersen," Zapiski Imperatorskogo S-Peterburgskogo mineralogicheskogo obshchestva (S-Peterburg, Votoraia seriia, Chast' XIV, 1879), 174-188; C. Grewingk, "Neue Vorkommnisse von Mineralien und grossen erratischen Blöcken unserer Provinzen," Sitzungsberichte der naturforscher-Gesellschaft bei der Universität Dorpat (Bd. 8, H. 1, 1886), 83-85; and J. Klinge, "Erratischer Block bei Sotaga," Sitzungsberichte der naturforscher-Gesellschaft bei der Universität Dorpat (Bd. 5, H. 3, 1881), 78.

37 Herbert Viiding, "Eluta Looduse Kaitse Ajaloost Eestis," Teaduse ajaloo lehekülgi Eestist VI (Tallinn, 1986), 7.

38 In turn, Humboldt and Helmersen significantly influenced the scientific and (tangentially) social thought of Russia’s great nihilistic scientist and revolutionary anarchist, Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin. Indeed, during his five years of military service in Siberia (1862-67), Kropotkin so closely followed the Siberian researches of Helmersen that he subordinated his revolutionary proclivities to scientific inquiry upon his return to St. Petersburg. Because he earned Helmersen’s respect while conducting research in the Russian Geographical Society and continued to follow the eminent Baltic-German’s interest in glacial theory, in 1871 the Society funded Kropotkin’s research trip to Finland and Sweden to investigate the role of glaciers in the formation of topographical features. Three years later, however, Kropotkin’s growing political activities landed him in the Peter and Paul Fortress, Russia’s notorious prison for political prisoners. The revolutionary soon escaped to spend a life in English exile, but only after regular assistance from the Russian Geographical Society enabled him to continue his research and publish a study on the Ice Age while in prison. See Vucinich, Social Thought in Tsarist Russia, 7-82.

39 Kongo, "Early history of nature conservation in the Baltic region," 76-77. Helmersen actively disseminated other geographical works in “Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Russischen Reiches” (1839-72, 26 vols.), Russia’s first serial natural scientific publication founded by himself and Karl Ernst von Baer, Dorpat’s (Tartu’s) most eminent scientist.

40 According to Rudolph Lehbert, Helmersen used the term "geological monument" for the first time in connection with glacial erratics in his 1882 study. See Lehbert, "Erratische Blöcke in Estland: 1,” 4.