Camille Saint-Säens, composition of Danse Macabre is one of Mom's favorite works, so seeing this piece of art and learning about the significance of the characters was pretty incredible.
We each came up with our own interpretation before reading the material and Pia's version was the winner. There are mortals in hierarchical order (Pope, Emperor, Empress, Cardinal and King) dancing with skeletal figures of Death. The higher echelon didn't want to "go with Death" because they realized they would be equal to the peasants in the afterlife. This canvas used to include more figures, including peasants, but unfortunately that part is missing. We're curious to know how the peasants would have interpreted Death and how that would be different from upper class.
This former church was stunning. It had been a fortress during the medieval times before the City Wall was built.
We also visited the National History Museum to learn more about Estonia. We learned that in its more than 1,000 years of existence, Estonia has been occupied by another foreign power for most of that time; by the Danish, Swedish, Germans, Russian, and more that we've already forgotten. They declared their independence from Russia in 1918 after the Bolshevik Revolution, but were again occupied during WWII and after by the Soviets. In 1991, Estonians once again gained their independence after a Singing Revolution.
After the History Museum we couldn't pass up a chance to visit the Music and Theater Museum where we got to play dress up and play with fun instruments!
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| Estonian folk tune |
After some shopping and a quick bite of lunch with Santa, no joke, we hopped the boat back to Helsinki and are back at Pia's lovely guest house.
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