välismaa mees

Estonian manhood seems to be going through a crisis. Postimees journalism godfather Priit Pullerits polishes off article after article about the perils of eesti naised falling into the malevolent clutches of foreign men; columnist Jüri Pino compares Estonian men in the magazine Eesti Naine to pigs "or some other lower life form"; and the cover of Õhtuleht greeted me the other day with one question: Eesti mehed on jobud?

I really wish I could define for you the meaning of the word jobu. At first I took it to be a relative of the word joodik -- a drunk. But a jobu is not merely a drunk. A jobu is something different, something more profound. My favorite online English-Estonian dictionary equates jobu with the following words: berk, birdbrain, blithering idiot, bumpkin, daff, jerk, prat, sucker, turkey, and zombie(!) And this is how Estonian men see themselves. I've even heard talk that there is a Jobu magazine in development.

The arch nemesis of these jobud is the välismaa mees -- the foreign man. He's everything the Estonian man is not, allegedly wealthy, supposedly slick; a smooth operator. In Pino's piece, the Estonian man actually goes so far as to give up smoking so that he can compete with this imaginary foreign man because välismaa mees doesn't smoke. As much as it irks me, I find this wallowing in the meandering river of disillusionment necessary for Estonian guys, because if the specter of välismaa mees can get them to eat right and quit smoking, if their foreign foe can help them lift their chin above the bar to get the average Estonian male's life expectancy to inch over 70 years, then I'll be more than happy to play the villain. Competition is good.

Still, there are elements of the eesti mees/välismaa mees discourse that are unsettling. One is that by marrying foreigners, Estonian women are somehow betraying their country. There are so few Estonians, this argument goes. Estonians need to make more of them, together, in Estonia. By partnering with the dread välismaa mees, the pure bloodstream of the Estonians is tainted, polluted. The future of the nation is flushed down the toilet the second that välismaa sperm connects with eestimaa egg.

This is, of course, complete jama. Biological diversity should be welcomed, not shunned. National homogeneity is wonderful if you want to study rare genetic diseases across generations in one population, but it's not going to make your population any more flexible, healthy, or open to the world. And the great tragedy of the slow death of the "pure" Estonian, is that, as Rein Taagepera describes the local attitude, "There are really only two pure Estonians in Estonia, me and you, and I'm not so sure about you." Scratch an Estonian and you'll find a Swede or a Finn or a Russian or a Pole or a Latvian or a German or an Ingrian or a Seto. I've even heard there is an abundance of brunettes on Saaremaa because some Portuguese sailors once docked at Kuressaare and went on a spree. So you can mix your purity in a bowl with some kama and eat it. The well was contaminated long before I showed up.

Eesti mees. Välismaa mees. The two closest "minorities" in my neighborhood aren't Russian or Ukrainian or Finnish. One's a Swede, the other is Latvian. The Swede is a few years older than me and, naturally, married to an Estonian lady. He likes Depeche Mode and good restaurants. Svensson's cool and well traveled; a dormant rock star who pays the bills by working for a local Swedish call center where his language skills are put to good use by arranging for little old ladies in Umeå to get a state-subsidized ride to the hospital. See, that's Scandinavian solidarity for you. Old-fashioned Swedish help to self help. The only problem with Estonia, we lament, is that there is no Polarbröd, a tasty baked good from northern Rootsi. There is a spark of hope that by merely mentioning its absence on this blog, Selver might start importing it. Keep your fingers crossed.

The Latvian is the pioneer foreigner here. Born in Riga, this septuagenarian rides about the neighborhood on an old bike, wearing a Parisian black beret. Like all of us, he's also married to an Estonian lady and when I yell out "Sveiks!" to the Latvian, he usually responds to me in Estonian. Still, the Latvian is different -- he's friendly and outgoing, easily the friendliest in the 'hood. My daughter calls him "uncle." Sometimes when I see the Latvian grandpa riding his bike with his black beret, I feel as if the spirit of Old Europe has passed me by. We're all here in this neighborhood, välismaa mehed, Old Europe and New Europe and the New World. I wonder if anyone notices us.

Sometimes at the supermarket I do cross paths with tough-looking locals with tattoos and t-shirts that are covered with Germanic or Scandinavian imagery. Maybe it's a cross or Thor's hammer. I can't always tell. These gentlemen don't look especially happy as they buy their lunch of beer and cigarettes, but they never seem to pay me any mind, and they are by no means your standard issue eesti mees.

In reality, most Estonian guys are pretty helpful and I think we foreigners have a lot to learn from our Estonian counterparts. These men are our partners' fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, cousins, friends, and co-workers. They inform what is to be expected of us, and one can imagine the sharp pangs of shame the välismaa mees feels when his eesti naine discovers that, unlike most Estonian men, he a) doesn't know how to build his own house; and b) doesn't particularly feel the need to do so. Or so it seems. Because as the time a välismaa mees spends in Estonia increases, the probabilty of him becoming involved in a joyously miserable construction project approaches 1.

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A Note: when I started working on this post five days ago, Lech Kaczynski was still president of Poland. I cannot help but feel terrible about what has happened since. My condolences to the Kaczynski family, the families of all on that flight, and to the people of Poland.