"Is the World Still There?": Estonian Lockdown Diaries The Year in Estonia

Mulle meenub Ilon Wiklandi autobiograafiline lasteraamat „Pikk-pikk teekond", kus teise maailmasõja ajal jooksis laps hommikuti vaatama, kas maailm on veel alles. Mina vaatan piltlikult öeldes samuti, kas maailm on veel alles! Alles ta on, aga iga päevaga läheb olukord kõhedust tekitavamaks küll. ¹

(K. R. 1)

[I remembered an autobiographical book for children by Ilon Wikland ² titled A Long-Long Journey where during WWII the child (protagonist) each morning rushed to see if the world was still there. Figuratively speaking, I also check if the world is still there. It is, but the situation is getting scarier with each day.]

This is how a mother of two young children living in a small town in Estonia described her mood in her lockdown diary at the end of March 2020. Her diary, submitted to the Estonian Cultural History Archives of the Estonian Literary Museum (ELM), is one of the sixty-four diaries and twenty-five short recollections that people living in various places in Estonia sent to the archive in response to the public call for keeping a lockdown diary, issued by ELM a few days after Estonia declared a state of emergency on March 12, 2020. ³ As we complete this essay in March 2021, when Estonia's COVID-19 numbers are spiking not only on a European but also on a world scale, and with new lockdown measures in effect, these records constitute one of the most extensive and varied lifewriting responses to the pandemic in Estonia from 2020. They offer a unique backward glance, providing insights into problems, challenges, fears, and means of coping, and they also make visible the ways the mediation of life experience can support people during difficult times.

Having been actively involved in the ongoing collection process (a new call was issued in February 2021), we wish to focus on these lifewriting records, which underline a central principle of Estonian grassroots-level lifewriting culture: "the unique value of every(body's) life story for enriching and diversifying perceptions of culture and history" (Kurvet-Käosaar and Hollo 45). Like many lifewriting and oral history initiatives throughout the world, the Estonian lockdown diary project contributes to a (renewed) understanding of "the value of narrative as a mode for understanding this historic moment" (Kelly 249), and making visible the ways "various cultural memorial forms function as models of sense-making in efforts to understand the pandemic" (Laanes and Meretoja 7).

The idea to propose a diaristic mode for mediating experiences during the COVID-19 state of emergency was prompted by Leena Kurvet-Käosaar's teaching responsibilities at the University of Tartu, where, as in other universities in similar situations, all teaching had to be moved online in a matter of days. Instead of continuing with regular coursework, Leena proposed an interim period of one week for her nonfiction lifewriting course, during which time the group kept a joint diary, including Leena as the instructor. This decision was motivated less by a perception of the historical importance of the moment than by a need to find ways to offer some support in the midst of an array of sudden changes with varying impacts on the mood, performance, and everyday lives of the students. Perhaps one indicator of the usefulness of the task was the continuation of joint diary keeping for over a month alongside other course assignments.

Some of the diaries submitted in response to the public call mention diarykeeping as a means of coping, yet the public call itself was also subject to criticism. "Päeviku pidamine isolatsioonis ei lähe kuigivõrd hästi, seda eriti seepärast, et loll kirjandusmuuseum ütleb" [Keeping a diary in isolation is not going that well, especially since it's being done by the command of the stupid literary museum], writes one man in his late twenties, "välisele tarbijale päeviku kirjutamine on igapidi loll ettevõtmine [writing a diary for an external user is a dumb undertaking by all means] (T. K. 1). At one...