Piret Jaaks novel probes the meaning of home and freedom

In a review published by ERR, Teele Pärn describes Piret Jaaks’s novel Päikeseuskujad as a place-specific story about freedom, identity and the meaning of home.

The novel is set on Vormsi, an island also known as Ussisaare, at the beginning of the 19th century. The island is home to coastal Swedes, a community with its own language and customs that has been caught between historical forces. They have neither the support of the Baltic German manor owner, the Russian tsar nor the Estonians.

The coastal Swedes call themselves “freie Leute”, or free people, and trace their status to a mythical charter of freedom granted by the Swedish king. But as the empire tightens its grip, they face a choice between two bad options: flee the island for Sweden, which has become a foreign homeland, or remain in a place they may soon no longer be allowed to call home.

Freedom is the novel’s central value, but the story repeatedly asks where that freedom exists. One answer is that no one can take freedom from a person’s soul. Yet the question of place remains unresolved, as does the connection between identity and location.

Ida, one of the novel’s main characters, weighs whether to leave the island and questions what home would mean after departure. Her sister Maria faces the opposite fate. Once rejected and longing to leave, she stays behind and grows from a simple girl into a community leader whose influence, freedom and danger are greater than they first appear.

Ida and Maria have archetypal qualities, but Pärn writes that the novel ultimately seems less concerned with either woman’s individual story than with the community itself. The book incorporates extensive folklore, often explaining the possible meaning of beliefs and rituals.

It also portrays several events based on real history, including the abduction of children for the nobility of Courland, the deportation of Hiiumaa Swedes to Ukraine, the escape of survivors to Vormsi, the spread of the Moravian movement, the phenomenon of sky-walkers and the dispatch of Russian soldiers to Vormsi.

Päikeseuskujad was edited by Anu Saluäär-Kall and Ivar Rüütli and designed by Maris Kaskmann. The review originally appeared in Sirp.