Day 45 - Seto Living

​Today we started off our journey by going to the Värska Museum. This is an open air museum, and is designed to showcase the way of life, when living a farm house in Setomaa. Firstly, we went upstairs and met our teacher for the day, Maret, who was one of the main orgaisers at the Viljandi Craft Camp. This time she was going to be teaching us some really old ways in waving men's belts. She told us that this technique but out because it's not something you can do on a machine. So once the invention of technology came about people simply stopped doing this technique because it was only done by hand. It led to this technique being somewhat lost, and she used her masters project to research and understand how it's done, and someone brought it back into how some of the belts are made here now. She did say that the technique somewhat got lost also, because men didn't know how to weave and the women could use machines or other things, such as a loom, to create their belts. She showed us some of the belts that she had made and then the little caring that we were going to try and make. We had a piece of paper with the patterns and instructions on how to make the keychain, and she had to teach us how to read it. So we gathered around one of the tables and she had set up the clamps and we had to warp the yarn in the correct order, so that when we started doing the weaving with our fingers, the intended patent emerged. She was showing us you had to go the same way around all the time, but making sure you had alternatives tops and bottoms. It was somewhat confusing because the pattern on the paper didn't really follow a pattern of warping it. In the end we finally all had something that was warped in the correct pattern, and then she started teaching his heart to do the waving with our fingers. At the beginning I thought I understood what was going on, and thought I was doing the right thing, but then when she checked it she showed me that I was just creating twists, and that I wasn't actually creating the netting that was required for this design. She showed me again how to do it and I tried again, but I still couldn't figure it out. This technique really requires you to have your hands in the right position and understand how to move your fingers, because you don't use any tools and it's simply your own hands. After a little bit of time I decided that I wasn't going to understand it, but I also had warped my yarn too far apart. Perhaps this is something that I can do quietly at home whilst watching the YouTube video that she made, and hopefully I'll be a bit more successful in this technique, because I would really like to learn how to make Mens belts.

​After we had some delicious Seto food for lunch, we set off on our journey to an old farmhouse. We met our guide who walked us along the road to get there, and there were so many beautiful flowers and open fields each side of us. As I was walking I was wondering what it would have been like to live here back in the day without all the modern technology, and really living in the Seto way of life. We walked past some oak trees and our guide was telling us that each year when people graduate they come and plant and you treat, so the oldest trees were at one part and then the trees started to get smaller because they were younger. I thought this was a really cute tradition because oak trees have so much meaning in the Seto culture. We arrived at the farmhouse and then we were greeted by a lady who we were told, established the museum, and its storage area, which is where we were. The little house that was standing in front of us is where they keep all of the old treasures that they display in the museum. There were so many folk costumes here, in various colours because it has changed over time. Originally it was a white overdress and then it went to black, then blue. Now women can wear whichever one they prefer but, there are specific things that you need to have on your dress depending on the colour that you have. For example a lady wearing a white dress cannot wear an apron, they have this kind of side apron that has red embroidery on the bottom. I also learned on another day, from Johanna, for it to be a proper Seto costume, the front of it needs to have three buttons at a minimum and the neck needs to come all the way up. There also needs to be a very specific design at the bottom of the red material on the chest, in both the way the material sits in the way that the stitches are done. This was really good information because I feel like I would not have known this, or done this creating my own costume. I was really grateful that she was able to explain this to us. We had a look through the museum, but it was very small and a lot of people so I only really looked at one thing that mum but found, which was the head pieces. They were absolutely stunning and I could see how much work in detail had gone into them. Once everyone was ready we left the treasury, and walked back museum to hear some stories how Seto people lived in these farm houses.

​When we arrived back we started off in the garden, where there was so many vegetables and fruits. You can really see how people lived off the land here, and they had to grow their own food because it was a much simpler way of life. They had storage Cellars or storage barns where they kept all their food, sometimes all year round. Our guide was telling us about the significance of a smoke sauna, and how these were used to heal people when they were sick, and a range of other things, and it became a central part of their life in these farm houses. She shared with us the reason why you have higher walls on the front of the little farm house, and it almost looks like a little village, and why you would have less of a wall at the back. At the front you didn't want people to see in to the family and how they were living but at the back you needed to be able to see your fields and how they were going. She also shared with us that if you had three barns you were rich, because you had the money to be able to build three different barns for different purposes. One was generally used for animals, the other maybe for storage of hay for the animals, and the last one would have been used as a food storage. The one that was made for food storage generally was built a bit differently so it was able to keep the food cooler in the summer, almost like a big fridge. ​She then took us inside and showed us what it would have been like to live in these farms. Only one of the rooms was heated, so in the winter entire family of maybe 10 to 15 people, would have to live in one room. During the summer people would sleep on the other side of the house, or in the hay sheds, or in the barns, where there were some beds for the young girls. Winter, we were told that there could be up to four people sleeping in one of the small beds. We were told that the winters used to be a lot colder then what they are now and they had to do this to survive. They certainly stopped not that long ago, as our guide was telling us that her grandmother remembers a time when she was a child where they had to do this. I'm not sure if the beds were as they were back then, but instead of a mattress they had hay. This would have been pretty uncomfortable, but then again they probably wouldn't have known any better. She showed us a map on the wall the border of Setomaa said where it currently is and where it should have been after the Tartu Peace Treaty. The Russians didn't recognise the border from the treaty and so they lost most of the Kingdom, and people had to make a decision whether they were going to stay in Russia, or come to the Estonian side. There is about 20,000 people in the Russian side of Setomaa, with only about 3000 on the Estonian side. She was telling us that the word “Setomaa” kind of means “not this or that” because it's not really Russian or Estonian, and really is it's own Kingdom in a way.

​We started driving back to her accommodation and Kulli wanted to show us his really cute spring. Most of us agreed to go and we were walking along this really beautiful boardwalk, along a lake towards this spring. It was said to be a holy spring and some religious people had come to bless it. When we arrived there, I could feel there was something a little bit special about this, and what I notice was there were some cups just sitting there and I wondered what they were for. Kulli told us that we could drink the water from this spring because it was so pure and clean, and so a few of us decided to do it. What I noticed about this water was but it was really cold and had a really clean fresh taste to it. I really liked it, and Kulli told us that people wash their face, especially their eyes, so that they can see better. I told her I was a lost cause and that probably wasn't going work for me. I thought it was a beautiful little pit stop on the way back to our accommodation, and it's a place i probably never would have looked for.

After dinner there was a few of us that went down to the lake and did some handicraft, and try to finish off some of the pieces that we had been working on. What I really liked about this was how people that knew how to do things were teaching people that didn't know too much, or we were supporting each other because we had all like the same things. It was a really nice end to the day, where we were sitting by the lake watching the sunset, talking, and doing some handicraft. I was making my Seto Protection Chains, and Conny had to help me start off the chain links, and showed me a really good way to do this