Story by Jordan Eddy
Powerful Anthems
History abounds with protest songs by repressed peoples, but Estonia’s manifestation of We Will Overcome, titled My Native Land, My Dearest Love, could be called one of the world’s most powerful anthems.
Estonia spent centuries under Danish, Swedish, German, and Russian occupation, a constant shuffle that left its people with little sense of national identity. In 1869 (during Russia’s rule), a singing society pulled together 51 men’s choirs for a music festival. The idea stuck, and a Song Celebration was held every five years— regardless of the regime in power.
Then Estonia vanished behind the iron curtain, and the USSR decided to inject socialist messages into the celebration. Artists and musicians flooded out of the country, but the festival continued, always ending with My Native Land, My Dearest Love.
1988 saw the dawn of a “Singing Revolution” that was born at the Song Celebration and helped the Estonians fight for freedom. In 1991, they successfully gained independence using vocal chords and musical instruments as their only weapons.
Now, song is so infused into Estonia’s culture that it’s known for having a choir in every village, no matter how small. Many famous composers hail from the country, including Grammy Award-winning Arvo Pärt and Veljo Tormis.
The Song Celebration has been held in Estonia’s capital, Tallinn, since 1928. The seaside Song Celebration Grounds are spectacular, with a grandstand-style sounding board structure that can hold 24,000 singers. It has a special shape that distinguishes the sounds of individual choirs, but directs a crushing wave of music straight into the audience of thousands. The biggest choir that has ever taken the stage, 24,500 performers, gathered for the one hundredth anniversary of the festival.
One hundred oak trees grow on the grounds, part of a national monument that includes a massive granite slab with the lyrics to a song titled Dawn carved into it. During the Singing Revolution, previously forbidden Estonian flags were hung for the first time above these grounds.
This year’s Song Celebration, billed as “To Breath as One,” will take place from July 4-5. The first day will feature many types of music, but the second is reserved for traditional Estonian fare. The concert website describes the experience as a time when “the souls of one nation meet.”
“Soul shaking” is a perfect description for the end of the festival—everyone comes together to sing My Native Land, My Dearest Love.
It’s no surprise that Estonians don’t leave until they’ve belted out the anthem several times. After years of repression, having a voice is something to celebrate.
Wives to be Carried
At the Wife-Carrying World Championships, part of the top prize is your wife’s weight in beer. Estonians must have a knack for hauling women—or a great love of beer—because they have won the
Finnish competition for seven of the past eight years.
The annual competition began in 1992 in Sonkajärvi, a small Finnish town. Its founders were inspired by a local legend about a picky military leader, Rosvo-Ronkainen, who made potential troops steal women from neighboring villages to prove their strength.
Hence, according to the official rules, “The wife to be carried may be your own, the neighbour’s or you may have found her farther afield.” The important part is that you can carry her 253.5 meters—over two wooden obstacles and through a 1-meter pit of water—without dropping her.
Each year, regional wife-carrying winners from around the world (including the U.S., which holds its competition in Maine) travel to Sonkajärvi for the competition. However, contestants from nearby Estonia have emerged as masters of the sport. Estonians Margot Uusorg and Birgit Ulricht hold the world record for the speediest wife-carry with a time of 55 seconds. Perhaps their secret to success is the “Estonian carry,” where the man carries the woman upside down on his back with her legs hooked over his shoulders.
High-Tech Garbage Day
Microlink founder Rainer Nolvak discovered the ability to resonate little ideas in a big way when he decided to pit new-world technology against old-world views to clean up Estonia.
Since Estonian independence in 1991, ten thousand tons of waste had been deposited in Estonia’s forests. In 2008, the “Let’s Do It” project aimed to remedy this problem, but Nolvak and his team knew they had to change the public mindset surrounding waste.
So the group set a lofty goal: to clean up the entire country in just one day using at least forty thousand yet-to-be-enlisted volunteers, and starting a media firestorm around it.
They used GPS phones and geo-mapping technology to pinpoint the illegal garbage dumps in the country. Then they recruited celebrities, corporations, the media, and even their prime minister to get the word out about the project. While corporations donated materials, equipment, and transportation, fifty thousand residents signed up via the Internet.
On May 3, teams of volunteers were dotted across the 45,226-square-mile country and picked up every piece of trash in just five hours. Media around the world covered the story, tracking the clean-up project through the same mapping technology originally used to find the trash.
Four percent of the country’s population participated in the project, which cost only five hundred thousand Euros to complete.
Nolvak and Skype architect Ahti Heinla, are planning to unleash their idea on the world.

Gallery • 4 Photos