The oldest known written record of an Estonian folk song is considered to be a fragment from the song Nõelamäng (“Needle Game”):

Nedko Nedko Negleken,
Nedko Negle Neiziken

The same text appears in the records of a so-called witch trial held in 1680 at the Pärnu County Court concerning a peasant from Audru parish named Ralli Hans.

The older Estonian singing games contain runo song, originally with improvised dramatic elements (dialogue) and a competitive component, where the best were determined in running and skill-based contests. This allows us to view the older singing games as healing rituals (with elements of drama) that were performed on Midsummer and Christmas nights, as well as in village playrooms and at weddings. Although for the past hundred years these games have been part of the children’s repertoire, in earlier times they were used in rites of passage (birth, death, wedding, war, etc.) as well as for marking seasonal celebrations. These singing games were our primeval theatre — a place to test oneself:

to be agile and confident when moving from one cycle of life to another,
to discover the future,
to find out who is protected by the fairies and who has luck,
to find one’s path in a complex world and at home.

The production features Veljo Tormis’s choral arrangements of older Estonian round and circle singing games, incantations, and counting-out rhymes.

The performance takes place in the unique circular open-air “barrel” at Viimsi Artium, and this summer the performances also celebrate the 50th birthday of our conductor, Janne Fridolin.