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Legends Connected with the Sinking of the Ferry Estonia on September 28, 1994

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Legends Connected with the Sinking of the Ferry Estonia on September 28, 1994 Legends Connected with the Sinking of the Ferry Estonia on September 28, 1994 Eda Kalmre The Estonian folklorist Oskar Loorits (1900–61) has observed that most religions of the world have developed around death and funeral. Even today a great deal of folklore is created follow- ing catastrophes. Traffic accidents involving numerous victims have already become a part of our everyday life. Radio, TV and newspapers allow us to follow all major natural disasters, mass murders, acts of terrorism or nuclear catastrophes occurring all around the world. Life and death are no longer strictly family or clan matters. In the late 20th century, Europeans have become used to the idea that progress in science has eliminated hunger and epidemic disease, and progress in technology can prevent catas- trophes. The stronger the belief, the more severe is the shock following a setback. The ferry Estonia sunk on the stormy Baltic Sea during the night of September 28, 1994, taking the majority of its crew and passengers along with it. Only a few people managed to escape from the ship during the twenty or thirty minutes it took the ship to go down. There were 137 survivors, 852 people were reported missing. The sinking of the Estonia is the worst acci- dent that has ever occurred on the Baltic Sea, if we do not count the horrors of the Second World War. After the Estonia catastrophe, oral traditions connected with the accident began to spread, just as it had happened after the Titanic went down. Quite similar rumours and legends appeared simultaneously in Estonia and neighbouring countries, Finland and Sweden. The Finnish folklorist Leea Virtanen has briefly mentioned them in her book on contemporary legends and rumours Apua! Maksa Ryömii. Nykyajan Tarinoida ja Huhuja (Virtanen 1996: 68). The Swedish folklorist Maria Hanberger 288 Eda Kalmre (Hanberger 1996: 109–121), and the Finnish folklorist Ulla Lipponen (collections in the Folklore Archives of the Finnish Literary Society) have collected and studied jokes that appeared after the sinking of the Estonia. On the analogy of such terms as Xerox-lore or Aids-lore, this phenomenon has been called catas- trophe-lore (Hanberger 1996). The treatment of catastrophes has developed into an inter- disciplinary area of research where the studies of historians, researchers of journalism and folklorists have several points of convergence. Hannu Salmi, a Finnish historian, provides a good example of the historical approach that can be taken with re- spect to catastrophes. The term catastrophe was originally asso- ciated with dramatics; it came from Greek and marked the turn- ing point in a drama in the Aristotelian prosody (Salmi 1996: 21– 22). Hannu Salmi argues that disasters, catastrophes and ac- counts of disasters are modern contemporary tragedies, which could be treated not simply as a piece of news but as an Aristote- lian tragedy, a mimesis of fear and sympathy. According to Aris- totelian theory, an accident caused by ignorance – and not mal- ice – was the most tragic of all. Accounts of disasters often emphasise the results of mistakes caused by ignorance. Therein lies the tragedy of shipwrecks like these of the Titanic and Esto- nia. Travel across the Baltic Sea on m/s Estonia was something everyone could understand. “Unawareness”, a midnight voyage where nobody can anticipate potential disaster stirs deep emo- tions and feeds the imagination. The descriptions of possible di- sasters become a part of the narratives of eyewitnesses, the sto- ries depicting the moments before the catastrophe, the “blissful unawareness”. The blissful unawareness and the ultimate disas- ter have been successfully employed in disaster fiction, movies and literature. Tendencies of the supernatural and the meta- physical are rather characteristic of contemporary media lore. The recurring components of news broadcasting catastrophes are: (i) the reproduction of the tragic incident (the case as a vi- sual image); (ii) the search for the culprit and cause; (iii) describ- ing the destruction following the accident. Also, testimonies of witnesses play an important role. It is namely these narratives that illustrate the metaphysical essence of disaster (Salmi 1996: 21–40). ... the Sinking of the Ferry Estonia ... 289 Andres Kõnno has analyzed the media coverage of the disas- ter of passenger ferry Estonia from the angle of Clifford Geertz’s concept of chaos and Roland Barthes’s theory of myth.1 (Foot- notes) The dividing line between the known and the unknown has always been veiled in secrecy and has never lent itself to sufficient and unequivocal explanation. Chaos being one of its integral parts, a catastrophe gets inevitably labelled as ‘mysti- cal’. (Kõnno 1996: 88) Folklore, jokes, rumours and legends that have sprung up during catastrophes partly contribute to the construction of the semantic field of the shocking event. There is a reason why rumours and legends have been studied by focusing on the ‘Three Cs’: crisis, conflict and catastrophe. Both narrative forms pro- vide the community important models of interpretation of the tragedy that happened to them. The story might be presented in both journalistic and liter- ary form. An important factor in the material is its surrounding psychological and social context. From a certain perspective ca- tastrophes are even entertaining; the bigger the accident and the higher the number of victims, the more it finds coverage in the mass media, resulting in a larger number of popular songs, proverbial expressions, legends, jokes, beliefs, etc. Whether the disaster assumes international dimensions depends on the ex- tent of the catastrophe, how many countries and nations are involved and how it affects society. The shipwreck of Titanic, for example, inspired more songs than any other event in American history.2 The focus of my paper is primarily on the Estonia catastro- phe and narratives, particularly legends, concerning this inci- dent. I will attempt to discuss the behavioural patterns charac- teristic in the media after major catastrophes and to observe the interaction of folklore, media and society. The present paper is based on materials published in the Estonian media after the shipwreck, and those collected by the Estonian Folklore Archives. 1) Andres Kõnno’s findings on the journalistic studies about the sinking of MS Estonia more or less coincide with the findings of Hannu Salmi and the ones proposed by author of this article. 2) The American folklorist D. K. Wilgus came to this conclusion after study- ing traditional ballads about the Titanic disaster in the United States, Ire- land and the rest of Europe (see McCaughan 1998: 140). 290 Eda Kalmre This Estonian postcard (Digipress Est. /P&S/ Printall) still carries just one meaning: blue, black and white are the flag colors of Estonia. In Estonia, Ilmar Soomere gathered parapsychological experi- ences, omens and dreams connected with the accident and pub- lished them in the parapsychological magazine Paradoks within the first three months after the accident (see Soomere 1994). These publications are now prime source materials. Literary visions published so far have nothing substantial to add to news- paper accounts and appear rather to be based on them.3 The 3) Novels and stories published till 2000. Ehlvest, Jüri: Päkapikk kirjutab (Dwarf’s Writings), Vikerkaar 1995, no.4. Paju, Juhan: Katkenud romaan (A Disrupted Novel), Tallinn 1996. “More than 100 kg of osmium was being shipped from Tallinn to Stockholm on board the liner. The market price of the shipment exceeded the price of the liner several times. The ship was wrecked in the middle of the sea and a special submarine collected the valuable contraband from the wreck. Russian Mafia, the KGB and well-known Estonian politicians had their hands in the incident.” In addition to the above two, five publications on media materials have been published in Estonia: Mayday Estonia. Tragöödia Läänemerel (May- day Estonia. Tragedy on the Baltic Sea), BNS 1994; Mayday Estonia II. ... the Sinking of the Ferry Estonia ... 291 only exception here is a biographical narrative about the acci- dent and the ensuing events by a Swedish survivor, Kent Härstedt.4 THE MEDIA, THE COMMUNITY AND TRADITION Many of us have personally experienced accidents involving nu- merous casualties. In smaller communities mass media intensi- fies the shock felt by each individual. During the Soviet period talking about death was a taboo, discussing major catastrophes was avoided. Victims of catastrophes had to manage on their own. Today’s society in contrast encourages people to confront the death. A belief in the purifying effect of death has become a truism. After the Estonia catastrophe crisis centres and crisis lines were established and church doors opened to the wider public for the first time in Estonia. Details of accidents spread extremely rapidly via media, and the status of eyewitness is forced on each one of us. Through communication channels the victims of catastrophes are brought closer to us. After the catastrophe of the Estonia, the Estonian author Astrid Reinla wrote indignantly that: One of the paradoxes of the end of the 20th century is that life, but especially death, are not private matters any more. They reach newspapers, broadcasting, TV screen and become everyone’s property. Mass media show and multiply the ill Pope, Miterrand dying of cancer, as well as nameless heads chopped off during a bloody feud in a remote Chechen village, or a schoolbus which has driven into an abyss on a mountain road in Peru. (Reinla 1994) Aasta hiljem (Mayday Estonia II. A Year Later), BNS 1995; A fictional story by Andi Meister, member of Estonian investigation committee Lõpetamata logiraamat. Mayday Estonia III (Unfinished Log-book), BNS 1997; Miks Estonia? Sajandi laevahukk Läänemerel (Why the Estonia? The Shipwreck of the Century on the Baltic Sea), Eesti Ekspress 1994; and Witte, Henning: Uppunud tõde.
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