Conclusions and Future Perspectives

Abstract

In the history of Estonia last major crop failures date back to 1860s, but also later, during the war times in 1920s and 1940s, shortage of cultivated food requited adding of wild edible plants into the population’s diet. In such times all kind of greens that popped up around the household were eaten in the spring, prepared in the variety of way: boiled into soups and stews, added to the bread to substitute for the ending flour, etc.; often not the healthier options were used. Also, the use of tree sap and (other) fermented drinks, as well as various (light) alcoholic beverages, was widespread. On the other hand, berries were preserved little and used mostly for medicinal purposes, as sugar was expensive and short in supply. While in “relatively good” times in end of the twentieth century the need for wild food supply decreased, Estonians still used a lot of wild plants, but in quite a different way: the stress was on using berries for making jam, juice and the variety of desserts; greens for healthy or tasty salads and the snacks (most probably just gone unnoticed in earlier ethnographic reports). Soups were still done, but with less variety in taxa, mostly used once a year, the same decrease occurred with fermented and alcoholic drinks. The only habit that went relatively unchanged in number (although taxa varied) was making of recreational tea. From the need for the nutrients it changed to the need for diversifying diet and getting diverse taste experiences. Although there have been no studies conducted to evaluate the quantitative use of wild edible plants in modern Estonia, our fieldworks show that the changes have even more accelerated into the direction of acknowledged (healthy and tasty) choice and the need to control the origin of the food. Hence, in the less than a century, the wild food diet of Estonians had changed from the nutritive to gourmet, still allowing the preservation of at least some of the knowledge to be used in future times of need.