Treasured Memories: Tales of Buried Belongings in Wartime Estonia

By Mats Burström

In the autumn of 1944, around 70,000 people fled Estonia in the face of the Red Army's advance; most of them believed the Soviet occupation would be short-lived and they would soon be able to return home. A comprehensive study of a common yet neglected phenomenon, this book tells the stories of the hoards of valuable belongings hidden by these Estonian escapees. The sheer variety of objects, including those that remain buried, those that vanished, and those that were recovered, touches upon all levels of history, from personal memories to high politics. In essence, this work of contemporary archaeology not only reflects upon the intimate relationship between material culture and memory, but also demonstrates how events on the world stage can shape the fate of individual families across generations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nordic Academic Press
• Release date: Jan 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9789187121272

Mats Burström

Mats Burström is professor of Archaeology at Stockholm University, Sweden. He has been instrumental in establishing the archaeological study of the twentieth century as a field of research. His studies within this field include a Nazi propaganda site in Germany, Soviet nuclear missile sites in Cuba, and personal belongings hidden in the ground in Estonia during the Second World War. His academic work is characterized by general references to art and literature.

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Preface

The idea for this study was planted at TAG 2008, the annual meeting of the Theoretical Archaeological Group held in Southampton in December 2008. By the time I had attended a couple of sessions on contemporary archaeology I was feeling frustrated and inspired in equal measure: frustrated because the archaeological element in some of the contributions struck me as being unclear; inspired because a discussion about excavations on farms near First World War battlefields in Belgium and France had touched on the widespread legends about buried hoards of gold coins. Nothing like that had been found, however, and the stories largely seemed to be popular myths about what might be hidden at abandoned sites.

Things that have been hidden in the ground, and the ideas they conjure up, are most certainly the subjects for archaeological research. I recalled reading or hearing about people who had fled Estonia during the Second World War having buried the possessions they were unable to take with them. Exactly where I first heard this I now cannot remember, but I thought that if it was correct, then their stories would lend themselves to a contemporary archaeological study of objects and memory. Back in my hotel room I immediately began to plan just such a study. A couple of months later I interviewed the first person who had personal memories of buried ‘treasure’.

With a few exceptions, the stories at heart of this study have not previously been documented in writing, and have lived on only in people’s memories. The study would therefore have been impossible without the help of a large number of people who generously shared their stories with me and supplied me with invaluable information. I would like to offer my sincere thanks to Maryam Adjam, Heiki Ahonen, Jaak Akker, Carl Göran and Tiiu Andræ, Indrek Aunver, Ädu Aunver, Rutt Hinrikus, Maarja Hollo, Göran Hoppe, Ülo Ignats, Kristin Ilves, Reet Järvik, Mare Kalda, Kaljo and Maret Kalm, Ahto Kant, Aksella Kirotaja, Regina Kirotaja, K.Linda Kivi, Adam Kreek, Anu-Mai Kõll, Pille-Mai Laas, Johan Landgren, Valter Lang, Filip Laurits, Peeter Luksep, Birgitta and Kalju Luksepp, Hendrik Mets, Aino Müllerbeck, Tõnu Naelapea, Piret Noorhani, Enn and Helga Nõu, Erwin Pari, Tiina Peil, Toomas Petmanson, Maiu Preismann, Virve Raag, Ulo Rammus, Letti Rapp, Aarand Roos, Ester Salasoo, Elvi Sepp, Andres Tvauri, P. Aarne Vesilind, Gunnar Winberg, Urmas Wompa, and a number of people who wish to remain anonymous. I also wish to thank all those who, in various ways, have contributed to the development of the study by discussing my work in progress at academic meetings in different national and international contexts. My warmest thanks also to Annika Olsson at Nordic Academic Press, and to Charlotte Merton for a splendid translation of my Swedish into perfect English.

This study is part of the research project ‘Artefactual memories: contemporary archaeological perspectives on objects’ funded by Östersjöstiftelsen (the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies). That project is also linked to two others: ‘Ruin Memories: Materiality, Aesthetics and the Archaeology of the Recent Past’, financed by the Norwegian Research Council; and ‘Time, memory, representation: a multidisciplinary research programme on changes in historical consciousness’, funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Fund. The publication of this volume was funded in part by Södertörn University’s Publication Committee, and the publication of its sister volume in Swedish was funded in part by the Längman Trust Cultural Fund.

Mats Burström

Stockholm 2012

CHAPTER 1

Hidden in the ground

We were standing in a field, Ahto Kant and I, waiting. Patiently. The field was an old kolkhoz field near the little town of Rapla in Estonia, about fifty kilometres south of Tallinn. Of the farm – Kivisilla – that once stood here there was barely a trace. It had been demolished in the 1980s to make way for the Soviet planned-economy ideal of large-scale, rational farming units. No one imagined then that only a few years later the Soviet Union would collapse and Estonia would once again become independent. All that remained on the ground at Kivisilla was a large, long heap of stones and rubble that had been bulldozed away and dumped at the edge of the field.

But under the surface there might be other traces. Ahto and I were on tenterhooks, waiting for Johan, who was systematically searching metre after metre of field with a metal detector, to signal that he had a reading. It happened every now and again, but so far they had turned out to be bits of scrap-metal in the shape of cartridge cases, rusty nails, and other bits and pieces from the demolished farmhouse. We were looking for something different; we were looking for what the eleven-year-old Ahto and his father had buried in the greatest secrecy in September 1944, soon after which Ahto and his mother had fled from the advancing Red Army to Sweden.

It was May 2009 now, almost sixty-five years since the things were hidden, but Ahto remembered it as clearly as if it were yesterday. He had carried the memory of it all those years; he had not been able to find any real peace. During the Soviet period, the idea of returning to look for the family’s possessions was just a dream; it would have been far too risky to even attempt it. But now we were standing on Estonian soil, and what had brought us together and taken us to this particular field was Ahto’s story of the objects that had been hidden here; objects that Estonia’s president had presented to Ahto’s father.

In some respects Ahto’s story is unique, but it also fits into a larger pattern. Many families who were forced to leave their homes hurriedly have similar tales to tell. The things that they were unable to carry they hid so that they would not be stolen or destroyed. And the ground was thought a safe hiding-place. Most of the objects that were buried in the ground had little monetary value. They were things that were needed in daily life; often household utensils of various kinds such as cutlery, glassware, and china. Sometimes books. The things it would be useful to have when everything returned to normal. But things did not return to normal.

e9789187121272_i0002.jpg

Johan Landgren searching the old kolkhoz field for the cache of belongings. In the background are the piles of rubble from when the farm was demolished. Photo: Mats Burström.

When the course of history turned out to be different from what they had hoped – when it was not possible to return, and family belongings remained hidden in the ground – the objects became important in another way. They became memory caches of sorts. The stories were about much more than the objects; they were reminders of the old country and the lives their owners had once lived there. With time, the memories acquired a nostalgic glow.

Then the impossible happened. Soviet rule collapsed, and the exiles were finally able to return to Estonia. Some were quick to return and look for the places where their belongings had been hidden. For others, the objects were no longer important; they had been significant only as long as they were unattainable, but now there were more urgent calls on their time and energy.

But Ahto, and many like him, wanted to know whether the objects they had once buried in the ground were still there, and if so, whether they could be located. So how did our search of the old kolkhoz field turn out? I will return to that later, but first I want to put the search in a wider context.

CHAPTER 2

Artefactual memory

This is a book of stories; stories about objects – artefacts – that were buried in the ground by people fleeing Estonia during the Second World War; stories also about the things that were buried by people who feared that they were about to be deported to Siberia, at least until Stalin’s death in 1953. The memories that the objects conjure up reach far beyond their own mundanity; the stories draw a picture of how large-scale political events encroached on individual families’ lives and shaped them for generations to come. The stories also show that hiding things by burying them in the ground was surprisingly common. The memory of hidden belongings lived on through many years of exile, and carried with it the hope of returning one day.

The hidden objects are referred to in this study as ‘treasure’. This is not a reference to the objects’ economic value, which was often small, but rather to their emotional worth, which is often great. The term also refers to the romantically coloured notions surrounding objects that have been hidden in the ground or found there.

For archaeology, for which such items are among the most important objects of study, the ability of objects to evoke memories is of great interest. This quality is often decisive for the way people relate to such objects. Things that to all appearances are identical can, depending on the stories they are associated with, be treated very differently.

In the case of buried objects, the choice of hiding-place is also of particular archaeological interest. Even if the choice was governed by practical necessity, it still leads us to think about people’s relationship to the