„Ju lapsena igatsesin merd ääretut mina“. Sinihumanitaaria saabumisest siia maale / ‛Even in Childhood I Longed for the Limitless Seaʼ. On the Arrival of Blue Humanities in This Country

Abstract

Teesid. Artiklis vaadeldakse, kuidas läänemaises ilukirjanduses on läbi ajaloo suhestutud veega, ning juhitakse tähelepanu käesoleval sajandil humanitaarias toimunud nn hüdroloogilisele pöördele, mis otsib viise käsitlemaks vett meie planeeti ähvardava kliimakriisi tingimustes. Teema tutvustamise aluseks olevad seisukohad pärinevad sellistelt sinihumanitaaria põhiteoreetikutelt nagu Steve Mentz, Sidney Dobrin, John Gillin, Serpil Oppermann, Stacy Alaimo ja Astrida Neimanis. Lisaks antakse ülevaade mitmest lähiaastail Eestis toimunud sinihumanitaarsetele teemadele pühendatud seminarist ja konverentsipaneelist, mis ongi viinud eri humanitaarerialade esindajate panust koondava erinumbri sünnini.

The emphasis laid by blue humanities on the role of water on Planet Earth can be set side by side with cutting-edge space science: NASA’s research activities tackle water’s role in the history of the solar system and underscore the importance of liquid water in determining the ‛habitable zoneʼ capable of sustaining life on faraway exoplanets. The function of water in connecting each of us to the outer reaches of space is emphasised on NASA’s informative poster that highlights the story of water as a powerful linking narrative that connects us with processes that shape the universe. Water’s sustaining and connecting function is even more intensely felt on our home planet, particularly in face of the looming climate crisis. Throughout history, human cultures have been engaging with water, which has resulted in countless significant water narratives that have been afforded careful study. Yet transdisciplinary academic treatment of water as a global environmental phenomenon of vital importance is still relatively recent, and this is the first publication in Estonia appearing under the label of ‛blue humanities’.

Based on the work of blue humanities scholars Steve Mentz and Sidney Dobrin, as well as historian John Gillin, the introduction to this special issue first sketches a concise survey of the sea’s position in Western literature and humans’ attitudes to it throughout the ages up to the ‛hydrological turnʼ in the early years of the 21st century. The discussion also evokes Serpil Oppermann’s Stacy-Alaimo-inspired new materialist take on the field of blue humanities and Astrida Neimanis’ hydrofeminist scholarship as helpful frameworks in addressing the immense wealth of watery topics facing us today.

The article proceeds to observe the gradual advent of explicitly blue-humanities-branded events on the Estonian academic scene. In retrospect, it seems the moment of crystallisation was a conference on hydro-poetics and Eastern European arts at the Humboldt University of Berlin in the autumn of 2023 that the editors of this special issue attended. Thereafter, the Estonian notion of ‛sini(ne)humanitaaria’ was tentatively launched in the title of a panel proposal for the First Estonian Annual Conference of Humanities held in 2024. The panel eventually comprised six thematic papers with specific topics ranging from the study of literature to human geography. In 2025, two intensive focused seminars followed. One of these took place at the Under and Tuglas Museum in Tallinn-Nõmme and its motto derived from the prose poem ‛The Seaʼ by the classic Estonian writer Friedebert Tuglas (the work’s iconic opening line also serves as the title for the present introduction). The other, held at the Estonian Children’s Literature Centre tackled watery environments and their inhabitants in works of literature and art meant for children.

The present special issue has gained contributions from all these events. Its inaugural article is by the literary scholar Julia Kuznetski, a notable representative of the blue humanities approach even before its ‛institutionalisation’ in Estonia. Linking the blue framework with memory studies, she proposes the notion of the sea as ‛a liquid archive’. A glimpse into the conceptualisation of water from the perspective of the history of ideas is offered in Kaarina Rein’s article on the treatment of water as one of the four elements in a 17th-century oration and its intellectual context. Literary scholars Ene-Reet Soovik’s and Elle-Mari Talivee’s contributions discuss the Emajõgi River and the intersection of the riverine with the urban in the city of Tartu, observing the evolution of the student communities’ river relationships in academic novels and discussing the specificites of an artistic working-class girl’s childhood and young adult years in a riverside slum in Leida Kibuvits’ novel Armoured Girl. In a third literature paper Jaanika Palm charts the representations of the sea in Estonian children’s fiction.

Thereafter, a couple of articles are concerned with conceptualising not fictional but lived water experiences. Folklorist Katre Kikas analyses contemplations of water in a South Estonian miller’s life writing records, while philosopher Ave Mets observes the possibilities of interpreting specifics of river navigation, using concepts from Don Ihde’s philosophy of technology. The special issue concludes with two contributions linked with water as a space of the fantastic. Semiotician Ott Heinapuu reviews the comprehensive volume on water spirits in Estonian folklore, compiled by Mare Kõiva and published in the series Monumenta Estoniae Antiquae. An essay by visual artist Liina Siib places reminiscences of the Soviet science fiction film Amphibian Man (1962) against her own creative practice and the war being waged in Ukraine. Yet the sci-fi quality of the (still uninvestigated) underwater world once again creates parallels with outer space as both realms keep stimulating human imagination and thirst for knowledge.