Estonian Life Stories

Linda Põldes

My father’s father, Juhan Martinson, was born in saaremaa as the son of a farmhand1 on the Muratsi estate. He began as a herd boy; during his adolescence years he tended the baron’s pack of hunting dogs, and went on to be a stableboy. My father’s mother Marie came from a family of free peasants in Muratsi village. Her parents had been able to purchase their land from the baron’s estate.2 My grandmother was strong-boned, with long, healthy, black hair that hung down below her hips in braids. Despite her strength, she was tender-hearted. after their marriage Juhan and Marie went to live on a sharecropper’s property at saadu, in the village of Vaivere. My grandfather went to riga, where they were dredging the river, to earn money toward purchasing his own farm. five children were born in the family. Grandmother tilled the patch of land, kept a cow, went fishing with the men, and worked as a day-laborer on the estate and on farms. Grandfather stayed in riga for years, until a load from a lifting crane came loose and fell on him, severely injuring his back. for a long time he lay in bed in a cast, and until the end of his life wore a supportive corset vest stiffened by metal rods. He purchased the Välja-Mihkli farm in Vaivere village.3 1 Estonian word moonakas. 2 Peasant landownership cf. raun p. 68. 3 it is useful to compare the rural life Linda Põldes relates in her life story, especially her descriptions of the family farm and its surroundings with the life stories of selma tasane (also from saaremaa), and asta Luksepp. a brief account of life in saaremaa around the same time can be found in tanni Kents’ life story. Linda Põldes born 1928 224 Estonian LifE storiEs the children received their schooling. the eldest son, GustavErnst , finished school with “a gold-lettered certificate of excellence,” which was shown to me as a child. He got the best education possible in saaremaa. Gustav-Ernst became a ship’s officer. the last news his relatives heard about him came from st. Petersburg, and it was thought that the Bolsheviks did away with him. Karl, the younger son, was killed by mine-shrapnel during the first World War. one daughter, anette, married the owner of the Koordi farm from the village of Muratsi ; Kristiine went to Viljandimaa as servant-girl at a farm, and lived there until old age. When the family was deported, she kept up the farm until their return. My mother’s father, Karl Lember, was a house servant at the Muratsi manor; my mother’s mother Marie a maid. she was a quiet and modest woman. they met, fell in love and married at the manor. the baron gave the young couple a sharecropper’s plot in return for their good work. Marie and Karl Lember also had five children, one of whom died in infancy. aleksander was the most fortunate of their children: he did not get caught in the war, and only served in one army, that of the Estonian republic. another son, Johannes, suffered from poor health at an early age: he became deaf at the age of 9 as a result of chronic sinus infections.4 the youngest son, rudolf, was a young man with literary interests, who wrote poetry and short tales about the local people; he was mobilized by the russians in 1940. Later the rumor spread that he had last been seen, weak and flat on his back, during the Leningrad blockade, saying that he would not rise until the junipers grew leaves. My father, Jüri-aleksius Martinson, was born in 1894 in saaremaa , in Vaivere village on the saadi sharecropper’s property in the fields. His mother had come from sea with a sackful of fish when her labor-pains began. she did not even have time to come into the house, and it all happened in the hedgerow: she gave birth on her own, took the baby into the house, made a fire in the stove, warmed the water, bathed the infant and then lay down for a little while.5 in the evening, 4 Linda Põldes uses an idiomatic expression here: Johannes “got caught in the gears of life.” such expressions, along with the use of the term “fate” are important to the interpretation of life stories: they signal the...