Pakri islands
I
The Pakri islands have influenced many of my works directly: as the locations of filming as also the whole fate of the corner of the coast has brought me to crucial visions.
In August 2002 I made together with a friend my first trip to Pakri islands. The area had been recently opened – and you had to hire a boat to get there. There are no inhabitants nor regular traffic.
It was, as it later realized, one of the most important trips: I started genuinely to understand the meaning of the expression “holy”, and become aware that for my personal religion it seemed to be the first subject – land.
II
www.aripaev.ee
Weekend-Extra, 23.07.2003
Kadi Heinsalu & Jüri Reinvere
The trip to Pakri in August of 2002 began with the idea of relaxing for a few days on the small islands, where we both had never been before, spending time far from civilization and without seeing other people.
Pakri fulfilled these conditions. For four days we did meet a few travellers, though our blue tent hunched alone behind the horison on the disappearing seashore, and if the 15-litre water container would have broke, we wouldn’t have found drinking water anywhere. It was more difficult than we thought, and that made the trip stay all the more in our minds.
On August 9th we were transported to Small-Pakri by the guard of the Kurkse harbour. You couldn’t call it Pakri harbour that even if you wanted to. The landing place for boats was made up of three rough slanting boxes and a pile of scrap iron around it as a harbour. The buzz of the motorboat diminished in the horison. A quietness arrived. The end of the world. Nobody nowhere, just land and sea. It was hot and we swam. For any case we hid a part of our things inside the scrap iron and after immortalizing the trip with a photo started our trip inland with a food basket so we could find a place to put the tent. We looked for the view towards the open sea and the fact that we could swim. To a sandy beach. The luxury of being on our own and in peace and quiet.
In the horison was the tip of the Pakri cape along with its own upright reef and there with a softly flickering lighthouse. We headed to the islands’ interior, confused, though we reach the edge of the Pakri islands’ reef and walked for a long time straight on the edge of the precipice that went on for tens of meters. The road, which snaked under the high sky; frightened birds scattering, junipers humming – endless towers celebrating former paths.
In the first five minutes it’s clear that mosquitoes have conquered this island. They are hungry, throughout the whole day. It’s a big ordeal to keep a balance between the wheelbarrow of things found among the scrap and shooing away the swarms of mosquitoes. There is thirst, though we have forgotten the water and things to cover our head. We trugged along away for four hours. Finally we found a spot near the open sea, though to get to the coast we climbed straight up and over the rock shingle wall. There was no sand on that island. We went to the harbour again, by then the things had been brought. The last two kilometers we had to drag along the water and also the things, standing idle at the edge of the precipice. All together everything took about eight hours. We threw all that we could carry in front of the tent and sank inside the tent like mountains. The first signs of life appeared only as the sun set.
The western nose of Väike Pakri (Västr-näse), where we parked the tent, is a typical rocky shingle coastal edge. Between the rocks, short juniper bushes bristle, which seems to prove to be the very hotbed for the mosquitoes. In the distant pompous reefs, the walls of plateaus are bombed-out. Those islands were used by the Russian army as a bombing range, and consequently the bombshells and destruction are crazily jumbled up with nature. The island isn’t people-friendly. During three days we often had the feeling that nature is working against us. Everywhere something could go off and explode. The mobile phone batteries died. A natural state, a sign of which being a rowdy swarm of mosquitoes at night were right on the tent. They would have gobbled us up in a minute if given the chance.
On the second day, on a discovery voyage into the interior, we reached the connecting cove of Big and Small Pakri. From the tent we had noticed it, though the road took a long time, as the impassable thicket and marsh blocked a straight path. A quiet afternoon. The emptiness of the landscape, the reflection of clouds in the water and the foreseeable limestone area in the distance created a strange sense of freedom from time. Time, duties, and work had no importance. There was no hurry with anything, time stood still. Black guillemots flap above our heads.
A formation of rotting beams and rusted sleepers connect the two islands, where the Soviet army had driven over with machines. Now it would be even hard to cross it with a bicycle. Totally destroyed houses, not even ruins, because nature had greedily entered into everything and had devoured the houses – a picture which I hadn’t seen anywhere else. At the same time a rusty pile of machines lurks in the most unexpected of places – a truck nose-down in the water, or a huge plane. An apocalypse, which fits the landscapes of Tarkovsky’s films.
Considering the fact that we didn’t see one well and that the water is also polluted, one has to bring along everything necessary. The first morning’s porridge tasted wonderful after trudging through the previous day with a wheelbarrow along those bumpy roads. At times the view to the sea turned into something similar to miracle, for a moment there was a snoozing swarm of mosquitoes, a blazing sun and waves sinking into the coast with a rustling sound of the waves. The last dinner finished with making a death sentence for the stove, because it made an effort to push the fire in all other directions except under the bottom of the pan.
Washing the dishes in the location of the tent was easy thanks to the sharp rocks in the water. The technique was easy. First of all from the shore the porridge pot and other dishes with a sweeping blast down into the water, then on your bottom past the rocks behind, and you are on the coast. The rocks and water in the pot. Later everything is repeated the other way around, just that in order to reach above is markedly more difficult, because the land goes like a rug out from under you to the sea.
And not a single person anywhere – and every night, every night a huge fire-lit casino went right up to our tent, which had gotten full in Paldiski and was going to the open sea to digest it.
courtesy of www.aripaev.ee ©
III
HISTORY
There is no exact data of when the first Swedes reached the Pakri Islands and where they came from. The Swedish name for the Pakri Islands, which is Rogoy (Rye Island), was first mentioned in a letter of the Danish king, which in 1283 confirmed the acquisition of the landed property of Padise Monastery.
According to widespread local tradition, the settlers came from Dalarna in Sweden, though historical sources and linguistic factors refer to Finland, where in the 14th century Padise Monastery possessed a large landed property.
In 1345 Padise Monastery sold Suur-Pakri Island to five Swedes for 34 silver marks. The new owners were allowed to use the land on the basis of “Swedish Law” (or “ius Svecicum”), which guaranteed personal freedom, a settlement right passed on from generation to generation, and fixed taxes.
Väike-Pakri Island was also settled by Swedes, yet they did not have a written cotract of a land purchase. As a result, these two islands had a different legal status, which became essential when the pressure of serfdom was strengthened.
A remarkable trait in the history of Pakri Swedes is their tenacious fight for their rights. They complained about injustices to the Swedish king, and later on also the Russian Tsar. In 1555 peasants from Suur-Pakri Island went to Gustav Vasa; they also went to Stockholm under the reign of Queen Christine and King Karl XI.
During the course of centuries the islanders developed their folk culture, rich in traditions and dialects, which differed to a certain extent between the two islands.
The Estonian Swedes kept to themselves vehemently, with their folkore being as independent as they were. Foreign blood was taboo among them, and for this reason half of the inhabitants were half-stupid because of inbreeding. From time to time they went to the open market in Haapsalu or elsewhere selling embroidery work, and refused to speak Estonian as well as other languages.
Their traditions are a bit dull and a bit archaic, a strange mix of former freedom and a later total isolation. Their music is also a bit stiff and a bit rough, and from somewhere inside rotten, and beautifully decorated.
Decisions on the issues of local life were made at popular assemblies, and in official matters the islanders were represented by an elder. ”The big world” broke in during Russian times, connected with the building of a military port and the foundation of the town of Paldiski.
In the years of the Second World War they all were transported to Sweden. Before leave they danced on the stern of the ship, full of joy of the rescue from among the “wild beasts” (Estonians) – after 1000 years - far to their Fatherland and pushed and shoved into the boats. In Sweden barely anybody met them or understood their dialect, and archive scenes from Stockholm show faces ridden with fear after the long boat trip, in out-of-style clothes, and shocked speechless.
Photos of: Kadi Heinsalu & Jüri Reinvere, Annette Storr ©