One could eat a traditional Estonian meal of potatoes, white sauce and fried meat, or pursue a healthier and more varied menu – it depends on the character. A large-scale study carried out in Estonia revealed clear links between personal traits and food preference.

Traditional Estonian food includes pork, potatoes or porridge, and pickles. Photo by Toomas Tuul.

Rene Mõttus, a researcher at the Psychology Department of the University of Tartu, observed nearly 1,700 Estonian residents with the help of his colleagues. The age of the subjects varied from 18 to 89, and they had all agreed to be donors for the Estonian Genome Centre.

Who eats what?

At first, a person participating in the study filled out a questionnaire about the amount of food he/she ate in an ordinary week, as well as details about different foods. In subsequent analyses, the percentages of thirteen foodstuffs were taken into account and, according to their balance, a person’s food preference was considered to be either health-conscious or traditional. In the first case, the menu contained more cereal and dairy products, as well as fish, vegetables, and fruit.

A more traditional choice included potatoes, meat, sausages, and black bread.

All participants filled out a test that psychologists use to measure five personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism and agreeableness. Each person was also characterised by a close friend or family member.

The ones preferring healthier food had lower scores of neuroticism, whilst being more extraverted, open and conscientious. The fans of more traditional food – potatoes, sauce, and meat – stuck out as less open.

Previous studies have already shown that people who avoid fatty foods and eat more fibre are more open. ’Openness’ is defined as tending towards alternation and diversity, and being keen to try new things.

Buying fresh vegetables and fruit at the farmers' market in Tallinn. Photo by Kaarel Mikkin.

This year, in collaboration with his Scottish colleagues, Mõttus performed a study amongst elderly Scottish people and found out that more open people preferred the Mediterranean diet – fresh fruit and vegetables, fish and poultry, and rice. They avoided fast food, (semi)artificial foods and sweets.

More neurotic individuals, on the other hand, didn’t care much for the Mediterranean fare and loved fast food.  Agreeability and conscientiousness were linked to health-conscious nutrition.

Curiosity is necessary

In an article describing the Estonian study, the scientists proposed a hypothesis that in the modern world, stuffed with all kinds of food, some foodstuffs that are advertised as healthy might seem too foreign, and one has to be more open and curious to try them out. When there is less curiosity, the traditional way is a safer bet.

The Estonian study also showed more educated people and females to be more health-conscious. The less educated, as well as males, were the ones who would rather be caught munching traditional potatoes, sauce, and steak.

Mõttus R, Realo A, Allik J, Deary IJ, Esko T, & Metspalu A (2012). Personality traits and eating habits in a large sample of Estonians. Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association PMID: 22268715

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The spring bringing the national colours of Estonia | © 2012 Cintia Elb

These days, being outside is just perfect and the fresh breeze invites us to enjoy each moment. I have been waiting for these days to take long walks around Tartu whilst exploring every detail. It arrived in a perfect combination of great weather, days off and the Student Days.

The city was full of activities and I took part of some of them. Most places are quite familiar to us, but I still wanted to see them in a different colour. After long walks, amazing concerts, flowers blossoming everywhere, new explorations, and the funny paadiralli, I can say that spring has finally arrived in Estonia.

Paadiralli - Student Days in Tartu | © 2012 Cintia Elb

It’s time to get out and about, and enjoy the long days as much as possible. It’s never too late to organise your life and spring cleaning could be a good start.

Open your windows and let the fresh air infect your house with lots of good energy. In your heart you will be very thankful and the colours will be even more colourful.

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5. Dark…and bright yellow days

“Where is Estonia?”… “Isn’t it very cold there?”… “I heard Northern people are not very welcoming”… “You will spend 3 months in a small, grey town!”

So many questions and comments I heard from relatives and friends when I announced that I would spend 3 months in Tartu. During my stay, I learned that this Aldous Huxley’s saying is true.

I had the opportunity of discovering the University of Tartu from another point of view. I’ve just finished a 3-month internship in the Protocol and International Relations Unit, in event management, and I learned more in these past months than during any other time of my life. I came to Tartu by luck.

Since I had never visited an Eastern European country, I looked for an internship there. After exchanging a few e-mails with my tutor, I was accepted at the University of Tartu, and before I knew it I was on the plane. My first impression? “How cold!”

When I first went for a walk in the city, it all seemed so different from what I was used to. It was colder than what I had ever experienced, the architecture of the city was so pretty and different, and everything covered in snow made me feel like something magical was happening. It was nothing like people told me it would be: it was not a grey town at all and I never saw that many people smile under the snow!

I walked to the University of Tartu and saw the majestic main building where I would work for 3 months. On my first day, I received a very good welcome and I was introduced to everyone. Everyone was smiling and glad to meet me, so the expression “I heard Northern people are not very welcoming” was proven wrong as well.

I stayed in Raatuse with all the international students. In a small amount of time, I made a lot of new friends and travel buddies as well. Estonia has such a good location. It is also close to the Scandinavian countries, Russia and the other Baltic States. Moreover, even if the country is small, it has a lot of treasures to reveal. To the question: “Where is Estonia? Isn’t it cold there?” I can now answer: “Yes, it is in the north and yes, it is cold. But it is one of the best places to stay if you want to travel around the Northern countries!”

My main mission during my internship was to organise a seminar. 15 people from France and Romania came to Tartu for 3 days to discuss french literature. This kind of work requires a lot of organisation, as every participant wants or needs something different. I took care of the logistics, meaning the hotels, the restaurants and the entertainment, and my colleague from the French Language and Literature Department took care of the content of the seminar.

The organisation was difficult sometimes because the budget was limited, which led me to do a lot of research to find the best quality/prices in Tartu. But it was worth it: We had a wounderful 3 days with the group!

My internship? It confirmed my first impressions and thoughts. I met a lot of people, professionals and colleagues and none of them were cold or unwelcoming. It made me discover the small French community living in Tartu, which was very cheerful and helpful with all of the Estonians wanting to learn French. It allowed me to discover a new side of the sector I want to work in and motivated me in my choice. Estonians are very open-minded and interested in foreigners: They taught me about their culture as much (and even more) than I taught them about my own.

Frankly, the saying: “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries” is true. If you want to know a country, you have to discover it by yourself and not only by rumours. So, travel and get those experiences yourself! What a smart man, Aldous Huxley…

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The author at work.

Alar Läänelaid is a docent of landscape ecology at the Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences of the University of Tartu.

We’re all used to bar codes in supermarkets. In a way, the patterns of annual rings of trees turn out to be bar codes too, as they contain information about the condition the trees have grown in.

The only difference is that the bar codes of trees have a healthy portion of individuality, so distilling data from them is a bit harder than creating beeps with a bar code reader at a supermarket checkout. It’s amazing that the patterns of annual rings also contribute to art history.

What can the bar codes of trees show us? The width of an annual ring is influenced by climate. That is the key scientists have learned to utilize. As the saying goes, years are no brothers, and that’s why a unique pattern of wider and narrower annual rings forms in the trunk of a tree. When we have a long enough succession of annual ring widths, composed by the patterns of many trees, we can use it as a blueprint to detect an unknown individual succession.

Now it’s time to link the biological part to the art. In past centuries, wooden panels were used for painting. Thin planks of oak were glued together edgewise. One can find many paintings without signatures in art galleries, with their closer origin shrouded in mystery. Paintings by famous artists were often imitated to multiply a piece of work.

Here art history can use some help from dendrochronology – the science of annual rings. The pattern taken from the edge of a painting panel determines if the time decoded in the rings fits the estimated date of creating the work. If not, the work comes from a different period and could be either a copy or a knock-off.

Dendrochronologists take a pattern from the edge of a painting panel to determine its age. Photo: Alar Läänelaid.

Amongst many other things, the Geography Department of the University of Tartu is involved with dendrochronology. It is an area that requires active international co-operation. Pieces of art were sold and they could end up in different countries.

But even more exciting is the fact that today, researchers of annual rings can determine the growth region of wood used in works of art. It’s a known fact that already many centuries ago, timber became scarce in  Western Europe.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, wood was imported from areas with lots of forests that were mainly located in Eastern Europe. The southern Baltic towns of Danzig and Riga were important timber export harbours. But the timber itself was rafted to these centres from remote hinterlands, such as Belarus and Ukraine.

Scientists at the University of Tartu are analysing paintings of Dutch artists, preserved in the Art Museum of Estonia. Examining the annual rings makes it possible to determine the growing years of trees used for making the painting panel.

The source region of trees is determined by comparing the tree rings in the painting boards to various comparative sample tree rings.

Data about the amount of sapwood (light-coloured annual rings under the bark) in different growing regions can also be used. As the light-coloured rings are trimmed away in the course of panel-making, estimating their approximate number helps to specify the painting’s age.

"Christ expelling the moneylenders from the temple". Unknown artist of the Bosch/Bruegel school. Ca. 1570. Oil, wood. Art Museum of Estonia.

A recent international co-operation involved investigation of four paintings with the same theme, „Christ expelling money-lenders from the temple“, attributed to the  Bosch/Bruegel school. One of these paintings is in Tallinn, another in Glasgow, the third one in Copenhagen and the fourth belongs to a private collection.

Dendrochronologist Aoife Daly from Dublin and myself measured the widths of annual rings in the edges of the painting boards. It allowed us to detect the approximate times when three paintings out of the four were produced. To achieve this, we exchanged the data and compared the results. It turned out that the copies in Tallinn and Copenhagen are from the same time, both painted after 1562, whilst the painting panel from the private collection appeared to be about thirty years older.

The results showed that none of the paintings could have been produced by Bosch himself.

Many kinds of studies in the fields of art history and material science make dendrochronologial research studies more complete. The age of paintings influences their value significantly as well.

Sometimes unexpected details can come from studying painting panels. For example, the difference in the dates of two planks used for the panel of a still life by Clara Peeters posed a problem: An initial study of the annual rings showed that the oak used for one plank was chopped down 150 years before the oak of the other plank. The mystery was solved by Peter Klein of Hamburg.

He applied his professional glance to the graphs of widths of the annual rings and figured out that both planks were the result of sawing one wide oak plank lengthwise into two halves. So the dates were bound to differ as one succession of annual rings started where the other ended. The painting by Peeters received an accurate date that was in accordance with the creative period of the artist.

When it comes to the Baltic countries, dating Flemish masters’ painting panels made of oak has a certain emotional resonance. The wood that was used for making painting panels in the Netherlands was often imported from the Baltic countries. In a way, as pieces of art painted on the panels, the oaks have arrived back home.

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Back then, students were mostly very poor. It wasn’t rare to see their overcoats and trousers were adorned with patches. However, there were some exceptions.

The university’s Pärnu period (1699–1710) knew one lavishly clad student who raised the ire of professors for his imitation of French courtier fashions. This trend-conscious student wore a brocaded jacket, knee-length trousers, silk stockings, a three-cornered hat on a wig of long curls, and sported a rapier.

A trend-conscious student at the end of the 17th C.

In 1710, during the Northern War, the university was closed and reopened under the Russian Emperor Alexander I in 1802. There wasn’t much room for fashion in this new period, as  students were obliged to wear military-style uniforms. Depending on the rector or curator at the time, the attitude toward uniforms was sometimes more liberal.

Until 1831, the dress code called for a dark blue frock coat with gold oak leaves embroidered on a black velvet collar, a billed cap and a grey baize overcoat with epaulets that extended to the elbows. Later the coat became dark green, the collar blue and two rows of gold buttons were sewn into the front of the jacket. On festive occasions, white trousers and a sword were part of the costume.

In 1861, during Tsar Alexander II’s rule, the dress code was abolished.

Detail from a student uniform in the 19th century.

In the beginning of the 20th century, it was again compulsory to wear uniforms comprising a coat, jacket and hat. There were three types of jackets and the full uniform also included a short sword or dagger with a ‘gilded’ handle.

In general, Russian students gladly wore the uniform, while Estonians and Germans tried to avoid it at all costs. From time to time, students were ordered into the auditorium for uniform inspection.

A quick observation easily revealed whether a student was Russian, German or Estonian. Germans and Estonians wore a starched shirt with a pressed collar, and their hair was groomed. Russian students appeared malnourished, often poorly combed, most of them with moustaches and beards, and wearing an embroidered Russian-style shirt and knee-boots.

Student uniforms from the end of 19th, beginning of 20th C.

The tsarist uniform dress code was abolished in the ‘national university’ era. After the War of Independence, some young men wore military clothing because they had nothing else to wear. Being in the educated class, students were expected to dress in a gentlemanly manner, which meant a suit and tie.

European fashions reached the university primarily through the female students. When the first Estonian women were enrolled at the university, corsets were a thing of the past, and women wore dresses with extended waists that exposed their legs.

Hairstyles had become simpler – instead of long hair worn in a bun, women wore short, wavy hairstyles. Although smoking was not deemed proper for women, it did not prevent some from elegantly holding a cigarette.

Student fashion during 1920–30s.

After World War II and up until 1947, one could acquire underwear, hosiery, footwear and other goods based on vouchers, issued by the university trade union in limited quantities. Vouchers for footwear were particularly sought after.

The same dress or gown would be worn for years and often these were hand-me-downs from one’s family. Usually students had just one set of clothes to wear at school, work, or outings; only the collars and sleeves were replaced.

Despite difficult times, young people tried to keep up with fashion. Woven patterned vests and sweaters came into style, as did floral print silk dresses and wavy hair. Stylish male students wore suits with cashmere overcoats and a hat.

In the 1950s woven patterned vests and floral print dresses were in.

Western fashion trends started reaching Estonia again in 1960s, with somewhat of a lag. New styles of dresses appeared and bell-bottomed trousers were introduced. Hairstyles alternated between long and short.

No one had much clothing, and obtaining shoes was even more difficult. Students (or their parents) who were able to travel to Moscow, Leningrad or Riga were more fortunate. The really lucky ones had relatives abroad who sent packages.

Sewing was an indispensable skill for those who wanted to dress fashionably, as stores simply did not stock the latest outfits. Quite a few young men also learned to sew trousers, and provided the service to their fellow students. Knitting was fairly popular among girls, as this could be done while chatting with friends in the dorm.

Student fashion in 1960–70s.

By the end of the Soviet period, the clothing stores were still bare, and when ‘deficit’ items came in, the lines stretched around the block. Not every student had the time or inclination to stand in queues. Parents would do this for them, sometimes more worried about their children’s wardrobes than the students themselves.

The first second-hand shop opened in Tartu in 1993 and became very popular among students. Travel opportunities also became broader and clothes were bought abroad, while sewing at home declined.

This story draws on the exhibition at the UT History Museum entitled “Studying in style. Changing times, changing customs.” The exhibition will remain open until December 30, 2012.

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