The Language of “Blink:” A Hot New Diversity Tool
By Judith Aftergut, Executive Director, the Honoring Institute, Portland, Oregon

Estonia is located in northern Europe. It shares a border on the east with Russia. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is due east of Stockholm and of the southern portion of Sweden, and south of Helsinki, across the Gulf of Finland. Estonia is one of the Baltic countries, and until August 1991, it was a part of the former Soviet Union. In size, it is slightly smaller than Massachusetts and New Hampshire combined, and it has a population of 1.5 million people.

Estonia joined the European Union in 2004. It is a beautiful land of deciduous forests (trees cover 40% of the land of Estonia). It is a flat country with offshore islands, more species of large mammals than remain in most of Europe. (Among other animals, Estonia has populations of wolves, bears, elk, wild boars and roe deer, and seals.)

After the Winter Camp, held at a resort at Lake Pujajarve (Holy Lake), I spent two days exploring Tallinn’s amazing old medieval city, built on one of Estonia’s few hills. I could tell you about the wonderful shops, restaurants and bars in Tallinn’s old city; the winding cobblestone streets and alleys of the old town where the Parliament and other government buildings of Estonia are located. I could tell you of the old Dominican monastery where they make a fine sweet liqueur and a chocolate shop where they sell chocolate that tastes of chili and ginger. I would rather tell you of the spirit of Estonia’s people.

When the Estonians speak of daring to dream and honoring the world, they know whereof they speak. It takes something to dream again after years under Soviet domination. By honoring the world, they mean dreaming about the future and the economic well being of their country without sacrificing the health of the land and the environment that they treasure.

The Estonians are capable of combining dreams for the future of their economy with honoring their relationship to the landscape, because they are careful and clever people. They have proven their cleverness by the way they conducted their “revolution” against the Soviet power that dominated them. Soviet tanks and soldiers were based in their land, so the Estonians had to be careful about their “revolution.”

The revolution in Estonia is called the “Singing Revolution.” The Estonians love singing, and they love large choral groups. They have yearly competitions among choral groups in their country. Some of their favorite places to show tourists are the places where these choral competitions take place.

As part of their revolution, a chorus of 35,000 people sang to an audience of 200,000 listeners. It was a clever strategy. It would be unlikely that tanks and guns would fire upon 35,000 people singing. Thus, the “Singing Revolution.”

The Estonians also joined with the Latvians and the Lithuanians in a human chain of people that stretched from Tallinn south through the whole length of Estonia and of Latvia to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. People stood next to each other and held hands.