The Material Culture and History of the East-European Taiga Peoples
Heno Sarv
Through history, the cultural background of the North-Eurasian forest belt has been a lot more homogeneous than that of Europe, an idea which is also supported by material cultural heritage. A two-volume monograph by Gustav Ränk, a famous Estonian ethnologist, called "Das System der Raumeinteilung in den Behausungen der nordeurasischen Völker" (1949-51), also contributes to the above concept.
  
Figure. Division of rooms into the men's half on the left and women's on the right of the entrance in the Votian farmhouse, with a holy shrine in the left back corner (after G. Ränk). Mitten patterns from Paistu parish, Viljandi County.
Professor Uku Masing's views about the subject (1989) also confirm the intuition of this author claiming that in addition to the uniformity of material culture of the indigenous peoples living in an East-European forest area, all aspects of culture, as well as their worldview are involved.
The present paper attempts to inter-relate different research areas, e.g.:
Geography: Eastern Europe is, first of all, a geographical term, while it has also political and cultural connotations. The latter two have dimmed the contemporary geographical meaning of Eastern Europe, so that the paper might be expected to address Czech, Slovakian and Polish, rather than Vepsian, Komi, Mari, Udmurt and Mordvin cultures. Because of cultural and political aspects, the Eastern border of Europe has become a geographical nonsense: the longest border along the land between two continents, while it would be impossible to fix the agreed 60'E latitude on land amid human settlements. The Southern border of Eastern Europe is even more nonsensical, for according to the school geography programme should go along the Caucasus Mountains, while the European Union considers it to coincide with the Southern border of the former Soviet Union. Material culture, however, has a circulation which is different.
Cultural Heritage: Ancient Greek culture around the Aegean Basin divided the world into the Orient and Occident, while human settlements in the Taiga belt were unknown and inaccessible to them. Contemporary West-European culture has its elements as literacy from ancient Mediterranean cultures and sagas and myths from the Vikings on the Western coast of the Taiga belt. Yet the `Standard Average European' (SAE, the term comes from the above-mentioned work by Uku Masing) has not been able to successfully relate the two components of his cultural identity. Material culture would not originate in ancient Mediterranean culture or saga.
Estonian ethnologists are very eager to relate every phenomenon of Estonian peasant culture to that of Western Europe or even ancient Mediterranean cultural heritage, as if otherwise the research was not scientific enough. For example: "Pieces of cloth that are worn round the shoulders or are wrapped about the person are archaic garments and thus belong to the universal layer of material heritage shared by many peoples. In addition, these garments were worn by people in Ancient Greece and Rome. In Ancient Rome, a toga, a male ceremonial robe should be highlighted. In Estonia, archaeological findings confirm the use of a long piece of cloth around the shoulders since the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. This continued as a piece of female clothing for centuries" (Voolmaa 1984: 70).
Professor Elle Vunder has written a series of research papers indicating that a large amount of Estonian traditional embroidery ornaments come from German handicraft books (1992: 37). According to Lauri Vahtre, the majority of the festivals in the Estonian folk calendar originate in the West-European medieval church calendar. Yet, not a single research paper discusses whether the 19th-century German pattern books also included some traditional artefacts of Baltic Finns, or why do the cloth pieces with geometric patterns, which are stored in the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, remind one of Mordvin folk art.
Politics: Since World War II, it was convenient to settle the Eastern Border of Europe along the "iron curtain". "For communists who believed in Human superiority over Nature, regarded highly the brick wall in Berlin, because they themselves had built it. The Finno-Ugric wall marking the differences of human cultures in North-Eastern Europe, however, was not so significant. The Berlin Wall separated the people living in a market economy from those who were able to survive in a planned economy of the communist society. The Finno-Ugric wall, marked as a forest border, separates the society of isolated settlements of sustainable and settled farmers from nomadic and closely settled cattle herders. The farmers living in Southern areas, in places with no means of self-preservation provided by Nature (e.g. high mountain chains), in order to protect themselves against the nomads travelling in the steppe, built the Great Wall of China, the greatest building for protection in the world. In Eastern Europe, in northernmost areas of flat grassland there was no need for such a building: for farmers the forest served as shelter against nomads, as with high mountain chains and the Chinese wall in the South" (Sarv 1998). Now that the European Union is actively enlarging its borders in the East, it should be recognized that the impact - circulation area of North-European traditional culture might have extended East of the present Western border of the Russian Federation (and probably even East of the Urals). Sometimes material culture may remain in the way of politics, yet nowadays the lifetime of political views tends to be shorter compared to material culture.
Cultural Ecology: The forest is able to restore itself within two generations. Traditional forest area people do not use stone in building which pollutes their environment and the ruins would then provoke forthcoming generations to put their heroic acts down in written chronicles. The history of peoples inhabiting forest areas is not recorded in chronicles. Within a uniform environment, a piece of material culture, which is of vital importance in one culture, may be totally useless in some others. In the 1st millennium AD, the Southern border of the Taiga belt of continental Eurasia became a border between different civilization types. Economic activities and population density rates in the regions South of it were increasingly exceeding Nature's ability to support it, which then caused extensive migration and conquests in the steppe. In slash-and-burn cultivation the forest would restore its fertility in a few generations, while also protecting its inhabitants from outsiders who sought a quick profit. Because of Nature's ability to quickly restore itself, all traces of human action are removed within two generations after deserting a settlement, as most things and buildings were made of organic materials (e.g. lumber, hide etc.) which decompose naturally. Considering this, the forest area peoples have developed totally different lifestyles where history is not recorded in written chronicles, but rather is handed over in epic songs and beliefs in oral tradition, and with accessories and ornaments from the material cultural heritage. This is a long and uninterrupted flow of traditions over the thousands of years which would not involve stories about odd victorious battles and brave warriors. As compared with the established approach of history, cultural ecology is able to provide a better treatment of the subject.
Ethnology and folklore science: Pieces of material culture and folklore placed in museum collections belong to the period of 150 past years. Each object or a piece of text is the brainchild of its author or the one who performs it. Ethnologists, in order to realize how similar ideas emerge in geographically distant cultures, examine their material, consulting the outcome provided by archaeology, linguistics, cultural ecology and other research areas. Pieces of material culture (as with folklore texts) can be analysed within a variety of contexts. Although the available textual material may be recorded for only a few generations ago, relating their content to paleo-astronomy, their age might be some unapproachable millennium in European cultural context. Also, exceptionally long cultural continuity can be traced when comparing archaeological and ethnographic accessories of the forest area peoples. This is the case of Mordvins only, as in Maris' and Udmurts', in the tradition of the making of accessories, was interrupted by the pressure of Tsarist Russia.
History: Every witness provides a personal description of an event. Similarly, every national group should develop a special view of history. From the Renaissance onwards, the Standard Average European tries to associate the sagas of their past with ancient culture. When Peter the Great's reforms started, Tsarist Russia aimed to unite the despotic tradition of the Orient Empire with the Enlightenment of Western Europe. North-Europeans are not affected by either of them. They could, then, develop their own history, focused on their heritage. Pieces of the North-European forest area peoples' material culture should enter the world of research. During Christian millenniums, Europeans who have claimed to represent world culture have had relatively little knowledge about the cultures of other continents. In the 1st millennium AD, they were not aware of American cultures, as cultural communication and trade exchange with Eurasian inland peoples were carried out via inland waterways. In the 2nd millennium, however, when trade and cultural communication moved to the sea, inland cultures became unfamiliar to West-Europeans, as with America in the 1st millennium. The settled area of the forest peoples, as being within despotic Russia, was inaccessible to Europeans. Russia was regarded a threat to civilized world in that time already, and this was actually the case in World War II. History indicates, however, that none of the great powers has persisted through centuries, while most traditional cultures have developed and continued over the thousands of years.
References
Masing, Uku 1989. Taevapõdra rahvaste meelest ehk juttu boreaalsest hoiakust. - Akadeemia. Tartu. 1: 193-223, 2: 419-448, 3: 641-672, 4: 865-895.
Ränk, Gustav 1949-1951. Das System der Raumeinteilung in den Behausungen der nordeurasischen Völker. I-II. Skrifter utgivna av Institutet för Folklivsforskning vid Nordiska Museet och Stockholms Högskola 2-3. Stockholm.
Sarv, Heno 1998. Soome-Ugri Müür. The Finno-Ugrian Wall. (Booklet of exhibition, author is not indicated.) Tartu.
Vahtre, Lauri 1989. Eesti rahvakalendri ja keskaegsete kirikukalendrite suhetest. - Etnograafiamuuseumi Aastaraamat XXXVII. Tallinn: Valgus, 167-187.
Voolmaa, Aino 1984. Õlakatted ehk ülevisked eesti naiste rõivastuses. - Etnograafiamuuseumi Aastaraamat XXXV. Tallinn: Valgus, 70-81.
Vunder, Elle 1992. Rahvakunsti arengutendentsidest Eestis 20. sajandil. - Eesti Rahva Muuseumi Aastaraamat XXXIX. Tartu, 23-47.
Translated by Epp Uustalu
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