Sorry for lack of writing. I've been rather busy/started planning an original story, so my attention to fanfiction has been a little lacking lately.
I would highly suggest going to YouTube and typing in "Laulupidu 2004 Hirvo Surva conducting quot Ilus maa quot" and listening to the song. If you cannot find that video, then just search the song "Ilus maa" and try to find it. I formed the entire fic around that piece and tried to sync it (depending on how fast/slow you read, it'll be slight off, but). If you can't read while listening to music, give the song a listen to anyway. Even though it starts out slow, it builds in power, and it never fails to make me somewhat emotional.
If you're not familiar with Soviet history under Gorbachev or Estonia's history from 1900 until present (especially from the 80-90s), then you might be a little lost. I left a lot of notes at the end of the fic that are meant to shed a little bit more light for those who don't know. If you're still confused, I suggest reading the Singing Revolution's wiki page. The documentary "The Singing Revolution" is also very well done on this topic if you'd like to learn more, and I'm always happy to talk about history as well.
Jóhannes is my name for Iceland, but if you follow my fics you should know that already.
Derpderp lots of notes. Sorry about that.
Thank you to jceland for being my beta/inspiration for everything I do, and thank you to Melon, my Estonian contact, for being so patient with all my questions and always being eager to share things about his country's wonderful culture and history.
Laulupidu
Eduard raises his hands, takes a deep breath, and begins.
The song begins slowly, with horns and then voices, soft and pleasant with words slurring together, unsharpened but not dull. He smiles briefly and sways with the tune, eyes scanning the crowd. Eduard beings to sing along, softly and unheard, drowned out by the other voices, but he moves his lips anyway, if only to visibly show his loyalty to this land.
Eduard cannot shake the feeling that his people do not understand why he's on stage conducting them, why someone so young could fully understand the significance of this song, this festival, and the tradition that gave them another chance at living. It would make more sense to bring Hirvo Surva, Heinrich Valk, or someone of more importance to take stage and lead the people in a celebration of solidarity and peace, not some student-aged nobody. But most figured it was a sign of passing the torch to the younger generation, allowing tradition and hope to be carried if darkness fell again. It was a way of ensuring that what this festival meant wouldn't be lost.
How wrong they were.
He had performed in every single one of these festivals since the beginning. He knew all the words to every song by heart. He was the one who dared to began singing in Estonian at these mandated Soviet celebrations, linking arms with the people around him and getting them to sing with him, echoing across Tallinn a language that was going extinct, increasingly becoming taboo to speak.
He vividly remembers standing hand in hand with Toris and Raivis as together, they linked their capitals by hand and refused to let go, signifying that they were stronger than any wall and could not be stopped, that they would never give up fighting, no matter what. No power, no matter it be eastward or westward, would control them again, that they were sure of.
He remembers standing in front of tanks, protecting Tallinn's TV tower, without any armor other than courage and pride, knowing that at any moment, with a single order, suddenly he and the people he stood by could perish, as not even fear of death could stop them from uprooting themselves from their place.
He had a right to be here, surrounded by all of his people and the songs that had saved all of them.
People were often taken aback by his non-Estonian sounding last name, asking of he was the son of a foreigner. He always shook his had and said that he was as pure-blooded Estonian as you could possibly get, and he was often met with a scoff. Eduard could only shrug and move on. He had changed his name to something Germanic sounding to escape persecution when people from the west took his homeland away from him.
He would've changed his name back if only he could remember what his name actually was.
Tossing the thought from his mind, he focuses and devotes himself entirely to the existence of this song, his mind transcending his body until he has lost himself to the words and the melody.
The snow, the soil, and the sky.
In the course of centuries never have the Estonian people lost their desire for independence. From generation to generation have they kept alive the hidden hope that in spite of enslavement and oppression by hostile invaders the time will come to Estonia "when all splinters, at both end, will burst forth into flames" and when "Kalev will come home to bring his children happiness."
Now that time has arrived.
And so it began.
You stand on the threshold of a hopeful future in which you shall be free and independent in determining and directing your destiny!Begin building a home of your own, ruled by law and order, in order to be a worthy member within the family of civilized nations!
Sons and daughters of our homeland, unite as one man in the sacred task of building our homeland! The sweat and blood shed by our ancestors for this country demand this from us; our forthcoming generations oblige us to do this.
And so it had ended.
Ilus, ilus, ilus on maa
These words echo across the stadium.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful is the land.
Repeated through the stands, these simple words.
The tempo changes, suddenly and with force, something that Jóhannes, watching from twenty feet away, does not expect, and he finds some odd feeling within himself that catches him off-guard, but he swallows it as easily as he would a can of coke.
Jóhannes, too, understands the power of song, of tradition, and the struggle to maintain your autonomy when forced to eat from the plate of another. He had been faced with annihilation many times—not from warring armies—but from nature itself, struggling against frostbitten winters, infertile harvests, famine, and the scalding hiss of lava. He had shed plenty of his own tears, and when the Danish government had banned his people from speaking and writing, he carried it out in private, hunched over and playing with carved wooden toys, speaking to nobody but himself, as he had nobody to talk to. Imaginary friends, spirits, elves, whatever they were, it didn't matter. He had lost the ability to see them long ago, anyway.
Sometimes he wishes he could, just to have company.
One night, when he was much younger, his brother stroked his hair and whispered to him that no matter what happened, even if his body became broken beyond repair, nobody could ever take away what was in his mind. And maybe that was what protected him from losing his culture.
It was the same thing that had happened here. No matter how harsh the Soviet rule had been, music still sang in people's memory, a tiny whisper at night that refused to leave. And it was only when united, when together in numbers, dared people open up their mouths and let the past flow forth.
The power contained within people is what moves the clockwork, tick by tick.
And the night is lifted.
The song rises again, and up fly Eduard's hands with it, only to plunge down again and surge up again, falling and rising just like the beaches of the amber coast.
May God watch over thee
And amply bless
Whatever thou undertake
My dear fatherland!
Long live the independent democratic Republic of Estonia!
Long live peace among nations!
Manifesto to the Peoples of Estonia, 21 February 1918.
And maybe that's why, on a late day in August, idly swinging his legs on a chair in the Althing, he had urged his own government to recognize a country he had only vaguely read about. "They've struggled, just like us," he remembers saying. "And isn't it our place and purpose to support those of our kind?"
How little did he realize just how important those words were, or how much influence they had, until a page had told him later that day, that they had done just as he said.
"No matter what happens to the Baltic states," the page told him, "This is history, and you had a part in it."
And another page is earmarked and turned.
Jóhannes can't help but sway himself as the song softens as a warm breeze picks up, ruffling his hair and bringing the scent of the countryside along with it. He doesn't know if the words he spoke so carelessly had actually had any effect, if the act of recognizing a wayward nation, had furthered the Soviet Union's crumbling. Maybe it was his fault that these people could sing again.
Probably not, he thinks, as you can't stop an uprising once it has already begun. But it him proud to think that maybe, just maybe, he had allowed this to happen.
It was a silly thought, if anything.
Ilus, ilus, ilus on maa
But it was one he still cherished and thought about from time to time.
Ükskord me võidame niikuinii.
Singing is as integral to human nature as eating and sleeping are. The first forms of expression are always the most moving. Just as a silenced bird loses all will to live, a person who cannot express what is inside their being soon feels as if they have begun to rot. Flying, a bird can do without. Taking away singing, on the other hand, is as effective as any bullet or arrow and as slow and painful as poison.
Einn daginn, munum við vinna, það er sama hvað.
That is what the nation of Estonia was like; a caged bird, cast in iron with a thousand pistols pointed at its breast. Any move to escape without warning would result in death. But as long as it didn't flit around too much, it was free to sing, and only through love did it convince every gun to lower so that it could open its prison.
One day, we will win, no matter what.
Three short, poignant notes, and the song ends. Jóhannes stands and claps along with everyone else, breathing heavily and trying his hardest not to smile and cheer along with the other people around him.
Eduard takes a bow, is briefly congratulated, and leaves without another word.
He steps down from the platform, taking a few steps, and Jóhannes watches as his composure leaves him, first through his feet, then into his trembling legs, shaking arms, and finally his face, as his throat clenches trying to hold back the cries of his own voice. Eduard stops moving forward, shuddering like a leaf, locks eyes with Jóhannes, gasps for breath, eyes widening and teeth clenched, and he overflows with tears long pent up.
Eduard falls to his knees and crumples, amidst the thunderous claps and cheers of the thousands people around him.
Notes
~The Singing Revolution - From Wikipedia: "The Singing Revolution is a commonly used name for events between 1987 and 1991 that led to the restoration of the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania." Although "The Singing Revolution" is an Estonian term, since revolution tactics and goal was relatively similar, they are often grouped together. Of note though, of the three nations, Estonia's revolution was completely bloodless, with no deaths related to the mass protesting and demonstrations, while Latvia and Lithuania were slightly more violent and had a few deaths.
~ Laulupidu is the Estonian Song Festival, held every five years in Estonia's capital, Tallinn. It started in the mid 1800s as a celebration of the Estonian people, but when the forceful takeover of Estonia by the USSR left Estonia Soviet in the 1940s, the USSR took over the song festival and made the Estonians sing Russian songs praising the Soviet system and its leaders. In the late 1980s, the Estonians started spontaneously singing their own songs in protest, and the song festival became a symbol for Estonian nationalism and freedom.
~ Hirvo Surva and Heinrich "Heinz" Valk are famous Estonians. Surva has been the conductor at Laulupidu before, and Valk is infamous for coining "The Singing Revolution."
~ The Russification (in this case, the forceful adoption of the Russian language/culture) of the Baltic States and other controlled regions by the Russian SSR was rather forceful and brutal in some cases.
~ The people of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia are famous for The Baltic Way, in which people from all three countries made a chain of people, linked hand in hand, across the three states, unbroken between their three capitals, as a sign of peaceful protest against their SSR states and desire to be free.
~ The Tallinn TV tower is another important symbol for the Estonian Singing Revolution. Basically, there was going to be a standoff in the TV tower between radio operators trying to broadcast free information for Estonians and the Soviet military.
~ "Von Bock," from what I've read, isn't very Estonian at all. My headcanon is Estonia originally had a more traditional Estonian last name, and changed it at some point to fit in/seem more higher up than the rest of his countrymen so he'd have a better chance at surviving.
~ From what I've heard from my Estonian friend too, the Estonians are generally tolerant, but the idea of "don't be different" is still ingrained into them culturally (partially due to the USSR's influence), which is something a lot of Americans (in particular) don't really realize, I suppose.
~"The snow, the soil, and the sky," is what the Estonian flag represents—white is snow, black is soil, blue is sky.
~" In the course of centuries….. Long live peace among nations!" That whole excerpt part of the English translation of the Manifesto to the Peoples of Estonia, which is the Estonian version of their declaration of independence. Kalev, mentioned, is an Estonian folk hero.
~ Ilus, ilus, ilus on maa/ Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful is the land. This is part of the Estonian/English lyrics for Ilus maa, which is the song that heavily inspired this peace and is one of the songs traditionally sung at the Estonian Song Festival. It is also, probably, my favorite of the Singing Revolution's key songs, even if it's not the "defining" theme of the revolution.
~ The Icelandic drink the most coca-cola per capita.
~ The Icelandic people have had a rough time taming their environment and dealing with internal warfare, and later the oppression of the Danish. Today, the Icelanders still feel a sort of underlying dislike of the Danish, although it seems to be more playful now than actual hatred (the same way Norway, Sweden, and Denmark joke at one another)
~ Iceland has strong folklore and a large percentage of the population still believes in elves and huldrafolk. In fact, an Icelandic magic group took responsibility for the Dutch government collapsing and Gordan Brown's decline in popularity in the UK/Netherlands saying it was "their fault" since they cast a spell on the two countries after there was some political fighting about Iceland's debt crisis. The Icelanders also will build roads around rocks where it is said that the "hidden folk" live.
~ This isn't really a historical note, but I think it's really important. I personally place a lot of stress on learning, and learning a little bit of every subject so you have some basic grasp on just about everything. Because really, you don't know if the next day your house, your family, or even country is going to be there. Things change fast, and even though things are pretty settled and predictable, stuff happens. Anything material, physical, and tangible, can be taken away from you easily. What is inside your own head, however, cannot ever be taken from you (at least not yet). So the more you have inside your head, the better, at least in my opinion.
~ Amber is found along the Baltic coastline.
~ Althing (Alþingi) is the Icelandic parliament building. Iceland was the first nation to recognize Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as independent of the USSR, and the three Baltics are good friends with Iceland because of this, having plaques and culture sharing often (the 20th anniversary of this event happened not too long ago, and there was an Iceland-Estonia celebration in Tallinn)
~ "Ükskord me võidame niikuinii" / "Einn daginn, munum við vinna, það er sama hvað." / "One day, we will win, no matter what." The Estonian sentence (first) is the catchphrase of the Singing Revolution, translating roughly to "one day, we will win, no matter what". I used my really basic grasp of Icelandic/google translate for the Icelandic version (as I am not in contact with any Icelanders at the moment and don't have a person to run it by), so if anyone who knows Icelandic would be kind enough to give me a more accurate translation, I will love you forever.