Killing of Taara Padu trees

Submitted by Looduskalender EN on Mon, 19.09.2016 - 10:28
Autorid

Text and photos Kristel Vilbaste
Translation Liis

Body

Surmamärkidega puud

Death marked trees

Tuesday morning was a morning like any other. You can still go barefoot across the grass to the mailbox to get a fresh Postimees newspaper to the morning coffee. The cold has still not crept into your marrow on returning from the trip.

But cold bit at my heart when I read the newspaper. The report that told that on the Toomemägi slope at the Pirogov site a felling of trees that are dangerous to people will start today.

Why did such an icy cold take hold of me? For me it has always been a sacred place. Here I crammed for the exams for university, near here all my children have been born, here I went walking with my children later. From the same hilltop there is a photo of my father from his childhood in our family album. Here I went to see the hoisting of our blue-black-white flag, here I always bring my foreign friends to see one of Estonia’s holiest sites. Here the Struwe median arc starts; its other fixpoints I have visited, up to the Arctic Ocean.

For me this stand of trees is a sacred hill, where you can ponder in the silence of the trees and find new strength.

Of course the place has been belittled, that it is a meeting point of punks and drunkards. But it is worth considering why these independent people free from the daily grind love this place?

Talking about cleaning up the Toomemägi slope started when the new glass house rose in the old town. It is rather difficult to understand even now how such a new structure could be allowed just beside the city hall. But immediately after that stories of how the Toomemägi trees threaten people started.

pilt

The article stated that 51 trees must be felled because they were infected by fungi or weakly rooted in the soil. This is usually seen as a danger to passers-by. And precisely this amazed me. As far as I know in most of this area there is not even a tiny path, the trees simply bind the soil of the rather steep slope. It is a miracle that these trees can grow there at all and protect the entrance of the town hall of the city fathers during torrential rains from the flowing mud.

It has also been said of this place that here was the famous Taara Padu – one of the three most sacred sites in Estonia, together with the Ebavere hill and the Võhandu river. At least Mathhias Johann Eisen has claimed so. His contribution has been to collect the knowledge which was not noted in the earlier Baltic German records. And since the destruction of the sacred grooves over 700 years was not a victorious feat of the literate conquerors, then other historical records of this grove are lacking.

But researchers still argue about what the oldest name of Tartu, Tarbatu, might have meant. According to some, here was the Taara Padu, a sacred grove, where a broad rock or a stone table or sacrificial rock was situated. But as the present sacrificial rock was brought to the Toomemägi only in 1927, then the story about the grove is confusing.

It is also believed that in the reconstructed Vanemuise tales the oak forest that was set growing on Toomemägi by singing was brought by our fathers of songs to Estonia from the Väinamöinen stories from Karelia. And as long as the linguists argue the Toomemägi or Taara Padu has no legal protection as a sacred grove. It is as if Tartu never had a grove.

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Yet  the landscape shape of the  so-called Pirogov site is fascinating. There is nearly the highest point in the Tartu surroundings. So important that here instead of the ancient Estonian fort a bishop’s castle was built. And if we look at the other Estonian strongholds then there  was also a sacred grove in the vicinity. People of old were simply practical. It can also be seen that here was probably a quite high red sandstone naked rock, a high vertical wall as in Tartu at the banks of the Emajõgi and everywhere in southern Estonia. The perhaps best known of such walls is the Taevaskoda with its caves and springs. But images of the Merioon or Paeläte or Vooremäe Hennu Raudläte or Sõjatare also at once come up.

Is it not possible that here was such a Pagukoobas? The nearest spring is known to flow out from the former chemistry building cellar immediately by. Or how did the idea arise  to set up a Püssirohukelder (Gunpowder cellar). And from where were the oak logs for the building of the castle and the city fetched?

In any case here quite likely has been a sacred and quite significant site. Nobody can deny that. And in a sacred grove trees are not felled just like that. There must be a reason. A hope to improve health with the picked leaves and twigs or bark. Or there is a need of a sacred fire. Or access to the sacrificial place ensured. Otherwise not.

Tartu is famous for its greenery but during recent years Estonia has got ever more newly-examined arborists, they too need work.

pilt

The stranger then that the only company that took part in the Taara Padu tree felling was from Tallinn. The have also been working at the tree-felling on the Ebavere hill.

When I asked the company director why he accepted such work he said that this should firstly be asked from the expert surveyors and the customer. The amount of money that is offered for such work is 80 000 euros. Should I abstain from this money?”

The stranger it is to see that although the felling was supposed to begin on the same day the skylift had stood still the entire day. The trees simply did not let them in, and when the technology finally is in working order the official workday was at an end. But the workers pull iron masks on to their heads, and like knights in armour they hang on the back of their long-necked iron horse.

The maples in the  copse rustle mournfully in this hellish racket, as if they were  saying, whom do we disturb, our branches do not nearly reach the paths, only the branches of one tree stretch to the hotel windows … What will happen next spring during the high waters when our roots no longer are here holding the soil. And those few of our brothers who don’t have the red or blue death mark, how will they manage to survive in the storm gusts with their broad leaves, our hands can no longer reach each other.

I asked a workman before he started his saw what it felt like to fell trees in sacred sites; he replied that he always asks the trees for permission but they do not answer. When I look at this knight in his modern equipment with headphones there at the trees I understand that he just simply cannot hear.

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