Cultural loans that have given fresh ideas to the peoples of the Old World, curious and eager to communicate, have throughout the ages preferred to follow their own paths, primarily favouring trade routes plied by seafarers and merchants. In Northern Europe, the Baltic Sea, uniting Western and Central Europe with Russia and its hinterlands, reigned supreme. This might be one of the reasons why Estonia (territorially no bigger than the Netherlands) has acquired such a wealth of different handicraft techniques and products compared with many a larger country on the same latitude.

Ethnographically speaking, Estonia straddles the 'watershed' of the two influential handicraft 'industries' - a transitional zone between the traditions of maritime Scandinavia and these of the more landlocked forest cultures of northern Eurasia. Local folk culture is full of loans and influences from both.

An item of handicraft, for example, that here has extended to the eastern edge of its distribution area, is the clothes chest with cornerpillar construction.

The clothes chest was a most significant piece of furniture in a peasant household, accommodating lots of painstakingly made garments. The finely ornamented chests, besides providing protection for treasures and a delight to the eye, were also important symbols of wealth.

On the other hand, a large part of woodcraft techniques can be found in Estonia on the western border of their zone of distribution - further west there is no knowledge of weaving bast shoes or birchbark utensils.

The frontier between those two spheres of influence largely coincides with the border separating Lower Estonia (Western Islands and the depressions that rose from the onetime seabed of the country's western and north-western parts) and Higher Estonia (elevations and plains of the country's East and South).

The best arable lands are located in Higher Estonia and, consequently, a more homogeneous peasant culture developed there. Adversely, in comparison to the rest of the country, under the circumstances of serfdom that became fully established in Estonia in the 18th century, this meant tougher rents and labour dues in that area; and thus even more unbearable living conditions. That is why the scholars who took an interest in the life of rural population in the 19th century, often found the most conservative culture - quite closed to outside influence - in the more fertile regions of Higher Estonia.

Handicraft of Mulgimaa, in many ways the most inwardlooking region of Estonia, has preserved various features from the Middle Ages (probably 11th - 13th centuries), such as patterns with shoots of arbor vitae (Tree of Life), circles with inserted crosses and octagonal stars (benediction crosses and stars of felicity from Gothic Art), as well as clothes with archaic cut - wrapskirts and longcoats.

Although limiting the outside influence, it was, paradoxically, this very same closedness that also contributed to the variety. Living in isolation (Estonian peasants did not acquire full rights to resettle and move around until as late as 1863) a great number of parishes or even separate villages developed their own sets of items. In 1918, Helmi Reiman-Neggo, the first university-educated Estonian ethnologist, summarised this recognition as follows:

/.../ Because this truth must be clear to anyone who examines our antiques: however flat and even our country is geologically, thereby favourable to all movement and communication geographically: the history of its inhabitants, however, has proceeded as if insurmountable Alpine mountain ridges separated one parish from another, one village from the other. Such modest mutual influence regarding the everyday items between people living so close to one another is something to be marvelled at. Even neighbouring villages went their own way as far as national costumes are concerned, and at church it was easy to recognise a woman's birthplace by her coif.

In my own parish Kolga-Jaani, for example, the Oiu women walked around with huge white wheel coifs. In the nearby Otiküla they wore nicely curved coifs like a rooster's feather. People in the neighbouring Oorgu made do with much humbler, hemstitch-topped coif, and in Parika village Karula's tulle-topped 'soft coifs' were in vogue. And yet it is a mere 22 versts (i.e. about 23,5 km) from Oiu to Parika village, and even less by taking the paths across the mires. /.../

Life was different in Estonian border areas where over the centuries various fragments of people settled in search of a better life, or fleeing from persecution. The newcomers often retained relations with their homeland and thus introduced much that was new into the everyday life of Estonians.

In Eastern Estonia there are the Russian Old Believers who fled religious persecution and settled at the Estonian side of Lake Peipsi from the end of 17th century; but also the Setus, Orthodox South Estonians of Petserimaa. Among other, less known novelties, these people introduced red cotton yarn in the embroidery of Estonian festive clothes, as well as the sawpatterned decorative carvings - 'wooden lace' - used on the houses built in many Estonian towns in the period around 1900.

The other influential minority group was made up of Swedishspeaking fishermen, seal hunters and seamen, who enjoyed ancient privileges from the times of their earliest settlements on the Western Islands and Coast in the 13th - 14th centuries. In 1940-4, virtually the entire community fled to Sweden to escape WW II, but for seven previous centuries the people of Aiboland - the collective name of Swedish settlements in Estonia - introduced their Estonian countrymen to many a new costume fashion, fishing tool and calendar rite.

Closeness of the maritime routes of communication made also Estonians of the coastal areas more open and perceptive of the new than their inland contemporaries. Since the barren land could not feed the family, much of livelihood of the 'people of littoral', especially the islanders, came both from and across the sea - doing various jobs on the mainland or on board the ships. In Juminda on the northern coast, when farms could be bought from the landlords the peasants bluntly said: "Water will see to the debts!"

It is now probably impossible to ascertain which Baltic Sea nation introduced others to the ancient skills of making seaworthy rowing and sailing boats with overlapping clinkerplanking. Be it as it may, most of Estonian fishing boats are still built in this fashion that amply proved its worth in Viking times.

Yet, nor are those people much mistaken who claim that various handicraft techniques (and partly also ornamentation) are, at least in Europe, international phenomena, thus making it hopeless to try to distinguish anything uniquely ethnical for each nation. There is reason enough to argue that any analysis on the origin of loans and the path they have followed is doomed to failure. And that the peculiarity of each place is expressed in the interpretation of the main motifs - i.e. the treatment of material, usage of ornaments and colour, etc. - and naturally in the way all parts hold together in a culture.