Estonia this time, and the incident is that an entire village briefly seceded — with a currency, a border, an army and a cheese ministry — and then went back to normal on Sunday. On the first Saturday of every August, one village in Setomaa, the corner of southeastern Estonia that spills across the Russian border, is proclaimed the Seto Kingdom for exactly one day. In 2026 the turn fell to Mikitamäe, in Poloda nulk, roughly halfway between Räpina and Värska. On 1 August the 33rd kingdom was declared on the Savioro open-air grounds, and by evening it had elected a new head of state, crowned a full cabinet of food-related ministers, and issued its own money.
Some scale first, because the numbers are what make this charming rather than grandiose. The Setos are a small Finno-Ugric people with their own language, their own polyphonic singing tradition (leelo, on the UNESCO list) and a long history of being administratively sliced in half. The 2020 count found roughly 12,500 Setos in Estonia and 234 across the border in Russia. Setomaa municipality has about 3,000 residents spread over 463 square kilometres. This is not a micronation gag run by hobbyists; it is a genuine minority culture that decided, in 1994, at the school in Obinitsa, that the most effective way to keep a language alive is to give everyone a really good day out once a year.
The constitutional arrangement is my favourite part. The kingdom has a king — Peko, a pre-Christian god-king of fertility and harvests, who is asleep in a cave and therefore unable to attend. Because the monarch is indisposed, the Setos elect an ülemsootska: Peko's earthly steward, the person through whom he speaks, appointed for a term of one year. The post is ceremonial and has over the decades gone to activists, entrepreneurs, scholars, politicians and musicians. It is, in other words, a fully functioning system of government for a state that exists for about eleven hours annually.
The election is conducted by rope. Two candidates confirmed by the crown council — this year the folk costume maker Ingrit Kala and Rain Oper — each stand by a wooden post with a long rope running out from it. Anyone entitled to vote walks across the field and takes hold of the rope belonging to the candidate they want. The longest line wins. There are no booths, no ballots, no counting machinery and no plausible route to a disputed result, because the outcome is a physical object lying across a meadow that several hundred people are holding.
Kala's rope beat Oper's by a comfortable margin; Lõuna-Postimees put the tally at 895 to 374. The outgoing ülemsootska, the musician Jalmar Vabarna, handed over the golden ring that constitutes the insignia of office. Vabarna's own reign is worth a footnote: he won the previous year's election in Saatse running against his sister Jane, which is a family Christmas dinner I would like to have attended.
Speaking to ERR after her election, Kala framed the job in terms of showing up and of language — translated from the Estonian:
"I must certainly be there for my people, and when I am invited somewhere, I must go and bring our blessings."
"The Seto language is spoken rarely and must be developed, especially for young people, so that the language does not fade away."
The rest of the day is spent appointing the King's masters, and the portfolio list is where the whole thing tips over into poetry. Crowns are awarded for the best sõir (the squeaky Seto curd cheese), the best bread, the best pie, the best butter, the best ale, the best handsa (the home-distilled stuff), the best wine, the best needlework, the best musician, the best dancer, the best sõnolinõ — the improvising wordsmith who makes up sung verse on the spot — and the strongest man. The children hold a separate election for their own nuorsootska. Every one of these is a real, contested title that someone holds for a year.
The apparatus of state is likewise complete. The Seto bank issues Seto kroons, in colours. Entry to the kingdom requires a visa, which is free if you arrive dressed in Seto folk costume and otherwise must be purchased, a border policy of admirable clarity. Foreign delegations attend from the neighbouring Võros, Mulks and Votians. And the day closes with a parade of the Seto sõavägi, the kingdom's army, which in past years has marched with contingents of women carrying spinning wheels.
Then the band Zetod played, the sun went down on a very hot Saturday, and Mikitamäe reverted to being a small village with an unusually good open-air ground. The best summary of the aftermath came from Setomaa municipality's own write-up of the handover, which ran under the headline «Kõigepealt tuleb palju magada.» — "First of all, you have to sleep a lot." The thing I keep turning over, though, is the rope. Every serious democracy on earth has spent the last decade arguing about whether its counting can be trusted, and here is a functioning electorate that solved the problem by making the count something you can see from a hillside and touch with your hands. Next August the kingdom moves to a different village and does it all again. Setomaa has about 3,000 people and a language under pressure, and its answer is a state that convenes once a year, appoints a Minister of Cheese, and dissolves itself by nightfall. I don't think I've read about a better use of a Saturday.