AGENCE FRANCE-PRESS
For centuries on a small, forested island in the Baltic Sea, women in headscarves and striped red skirts have done most of the work: from farming to lighthouse keeping, leading church services and even dressing up as Santa Claus at Christmas.
The men of Kihnu island, 10km off the coast of Estonia, are away at sea fishing for weeks or months at a time, leaving the women to run what is often dubbed one of the last matriarchal societies in Europe.
Steeped in folk traditions, Kihnu’s historic way of life however is now threatened as economic hardship drives more and more islanders away in search of work.
“Around every kitchen table, every day, we discuss how to survive, ” Mare Matas, official guide and ardent defender of Kihnu’s heritage says.
Although 686 people are registered as living on the island, only 300 now do so year-round, says Matas, a 45-year-old mother of four who was instrumental in securing a Unesco recognition of Kihnu’s intangible cultural heritage in 2008.
Since the global economic crash hit Estonia hard that year, the island’s year-round population has halved.
The island of 16sq km has only a few paved roads, two small food shops, a museum, church and primary school with 36 children, down from over 100 some years ago.
Kihnu life still revolves around ancient folk traditions and songs, a unique culture which Unesco describes as a “masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage of humanity”.
Tradition
dictates that the Kihnu women must organise all of the island’s major
events and festivals, as well as funerals and weddings.
“We are going to lose it if people don’t live here any more, ” Matas says. “We don’t know what to do.”
“Seals and cormorants, they’re the biggest problem, ” fisherman Margus Laarents says, as he smokes a batch of recently-caught fish on a griddle behind his house.
The two species were given protected status by the European Union after almost dying out during the middle of the last century due to overhunting.
As a result, their numbers have skyrocketed in Estonian waters since the mid-1980s, depleting local fish stocks.
Other studies have also blamed commercial overfishing and water pollution for the shrinking fish populations.
A 2010 study found that catches of perch had fallen in size ten-fold over a decade, while roach catch sizes were a hundred times smaller.
Margus and his wife Marge say they can no longer live off their earnings from the sea.
Like many on the island, the couple sustain themselves by keeping animals and growing food, although many fishermen have left altogether, in search of construction work in Norway or Finland.
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