ORAL HISTORY: MIGRATION AND LOCAL IDENTITIES - Academia

Narrating Migration in Nordic Countriesis still now my home. Sweden is my country of residence, not my homeland.Estonia remained my homeland even when I was unable to return to it, andit still is my homeland. For our children, it is less of a homeland, but stillpartly so, because of the language and frequent visits. /–/ A person can havemany homes. One may have ties to the homeland, another not.”On the subject of defining the kodumaa/homeland concept, inher book “Three Suitcases and a Three-year-old” (published in Australiain 1999) another Estonian, Anu Mihkelson (born in Sweden in 1945),places her recollections somewhere between a memoir and belles-lettreswhen she writes: I had spent my lifetime searching for what I was afraidwould die with my parents.For third-generation writers in exile writing in the language oftheir adopted countries, the question now is: who am I and where doI belong? Linda Kivi (writing in English) wants to know if home is aplace to run to or from (Kivi 1995). For refugees, the West—the awaycountry—wasalways tied to leaving, submission, losses, and dispossession.The third generation no longer has to fear someone coming totake their possessions. They have grown up in a new society, in theWest, where homes are no longer taken away. K. Linda Kivi’s actiontakes place on two levels: first there is the grandmother, the motherSofi, and their aunt Helgi in 1943-1944; next is their daughter andgrand-daughter, Esther, in 1990. For Esther the homeland is not theromantic, lost paradise that E. Toona describes in her “Kalevikülaviimne tütar”, the misty mountain realm of “Udumägi” (an Estonianclassic) to which Tiiu wants to return. Esther goes to the land of hergrandparents and finds The house was dark, but which house was this?Esther wants to know whether her “kodumaa” is tied to her nationalityor her home. Esther had come to believe that it was important notto stand out, not to ask for much, not to inspire the greed and lust of theworld’s ogres. /–/. Esther’s questions were existential questions. Sheconcludes: Home is where you are. Home is the way in which points join.“Kodu” is real and concrete; you can take it with you, you can putback together its many parts. “Kodu” isn’t only in the mind; it is alsoa real place. If “kodumaa” is far away, it is a symbolic place, a nationalemblem.190