Martinmas and St. Catherine’s day – Mart makes noise, Kadri decorates 

10th of November from 11 AM to 4 PM

November is the month of souls, when all the autumn farm work outside has been finished and masked characters go from door to door. These are noisy Mart guisers, who bring good luck for the next year’s harvest, and pretty Kadri guisers, who bring good luck for farm cattle. These guisers always get a great welcome because they add variety and bring fresh energy to mundane life. Besides, there’s always plenty of fun where they are!

Why don’t you dress up as well, come over to the Estonian Open Air Museum and go guising? Do a ‘farm crawl’ from door to door with many games and riddles. You can meet other guisers here and sing or dance together.

And there’s more! If your name is Mart or Kadri, show your ID at the gate, and you will get a free entrance!

Admission to the event is free for Tallinn Card holders!  

Köstriaseme farm – Know your tools!
Some farm works and household chores were forbidden on St. Martin’s day and St. Catherine’s day. There were mainly women’s tasks that had to do with linen and wool. As soon as the celebrations were over, the female part of the family would go back to weaving. Will you recognize the tools needed for processing wool and linen?

Pulga farm – Know your guises!
Martinmas and St. Catherine’s guisers go round as families consisting of a number of characters and fascinating animals. Try to guess the character! Is it the mother, the baby or the stork, the bear or the goose, the goat, the horse or the creature known as ‘kroogutill’?

Härjapea farm – Gifts for guisers and oat flummery
Guisers would get gifts from the farm folk for their fun performance and blessings. These were mostly fruits and vegetables grown on the farm. Come by Härjapea farm to see what has been set aside as gifts for the guisers, and if you get hungry, you can try some of the oat flummery cooked by the hostess.

Lau shop – ‘Mart’s bread’ / Marzipan workshop?

Not only does Mart have his own name day, but Estonian writer Jaan Kross wrote an inspiring legend, in which Mart has a type of ‘bread’ named after him: Mart’s bread or marzipan. Hanseatic cities of Lübeck and Tallinn claim they were where marzipan was invented, but so do a number of Italian and French locations. Go figure! Anyway, at the back of the shop we have a small marzipan workshop where you can make this confection yourself.

Kuie school – Reading skills test
Guisers on Martinmas and St. Catherine’s day would both check how the farm folk were doing with their work, fitness and preparedness for the winter ahead. School-aged kids would have to demonstrate their reading skills. There’s one task in the school building that needs to be done urgently, but will you just look at the shape of these old letters! Can you read this?

Kolkhoz apartment building – Masks and cooking soup
Guisers on Martinmas and St. Catherine’s day must dress up so that no-one recognises them. In Soviet times, schools organized autumn masked balls. The most popular characters were fairy tale characters, cosmonauts and beautiful princesses. In the apartment, you can make a Mart’s or Kadri’s mask to hide your face or make a newspaper necklace.
While the kids are the masked ball, the father can heat the sauna, and the mother can cook soup in peace. Guess what soup it is!

Kolu inn – Sing along!
The inn is a perfect place to stop at after a long day of guising on Martinmas or St. Catherine’s day and treat yourself to a nice meal. But, if you want to get a prize in the singing contest, you will have to learn a special festive song or improvise to sing one. You can also watch clips about guising in the old times and nowadays.

On St. Catherine’s Day, people often dressed up as representatives of other nationalities. Gypsy dances will be performed by Dance Hayat at...

 

Come by to see the Seto farm, Russian house from Peipus and our recently opened barn-shed on Kolga farm!

NB! Organisers have the right to make changes in the programme.