When we were kids, dad had a thing about the water god of ancient Estonian tradition. In his mind, this was Taara – more of a weather god, actually, a version of Thor – and I carved the word as a name plate for a 10-foot wooden dinghy dad built in the 1970s. The boat still exists and so does its name. In Estonian myth, as elsewhere in northern Europe, the spirits reside in the trees, the water, stones, everywhere. For ancient Estonians, nature is alive, and they saw no disti

In Estonian, the word for sea is meri , which always struck me as like German Meer , Latin mare , or Russian more . I thought the Estonians borrowed the word from other languages, but it could be the other way around. “Based on different historical language sources, the use of the word ‘meri’ has been in the Estonian language for 10,000 years or more,” - Estonian Mythology for the Beginner (2023) by Marju Kõivupuu. Strengthening this idea is the word in related Finnish, also

100 blogposts in, and to collect what Estonia and its people uniquely offer to the world. This tough little country has hung onto its culture, language and traditions, despite centuries of foreign invasions and occupations, while over the last 34 years swiftly adopting western, liberal democracy, and the best of digital technology, mixed in with a can-do attitude. What have the Estonians done, and how have they earned their place in Europe, and in the world? In the style of t

Everyone loves a werewolf story. To English speakers, werewolves are dangerous, unpredictable, and incredibly difficult to combat. Neither quite animal, nor quite human, they are unearthly and supernatural. In JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, professor Remus Lupin had been bitten by a werewolf, and every month for a week at the full moon would involuntarily transform into a vicious predator. Only by taking a magic potion could he retain his human mind while transformed. This

Among Estonian girls’ and women’s names, Liivi holds a special place; it honours a Baltic territory that no longer exists, and a Finnic language  that is all but extinct. So, what is there to celebrate about Livonia? Going back to the early 1200s the three Baltic States we know today were divided between northern Estonia, ruled by Danes, and lands to the south, Liefland and Courland, occupied by land-grabbing, German-speaking, crusading orders, operating with Papal blessing,

In ancient Estonian belief, a shadowy figure in the dark sitting on the roof of a shed, or a tongue of flame flickering into the hearth recalls the firebrand, or tulihänd . The word can also mean a lendtäht , or “flying star”, and the idea extends to sparks in the fire. If a tulihänd got into the home, the head of the family had a tough road ahead, to feed it with good food – on pain of an untimely death, or fiery destruction of the home - and to keep it in meaningless work t

Another’s words can bring old memories to new life. I recently reread John Le Carré’s iconic 1979 spy novel. George Smiley is a British spymaster, and his people are Estonian émigrés whose gathering of secrets eventually forces their Moscow Centre nemesis, Karla, to defect to the West. But not without Soviet reprisals along the way, and Smiley explains the mindset of a former agent to his superiors, and hence the value he places in him: “Vladimir’s father was an Estonian and

No Estonian with a country house and sauna can do without a woodshed full of firewood. Birch splits burn well with bright, welcoming sparks, and are highly prized. Any decent rural block comes with its own stand of birch trees, for sustainable harvesting. Other types of wood are also good; alder is one, and maple and ash would be others. When visiting, our hosts would proudly show us their woodsheds - one we saw was the size of an aircraft hangar - or carefully stacked rows o

In a log cabin  in the forest there lived an Estonian. That is to say the ancestors of a people who spoke an ancient tongue, east of the Ural mountains, and to be precise, in the Ob river catchment in western Siberia. Pine, spruce and birch forests formed their home, amid rivers, bogs  and lakes, within that vast horizontal band across northern Eurasia called the taiga. To the south lies the steppe, grasslands spreading from Mongolia / China to Ukraine in the west, as far as

Spring has arrived, and the swallows and other birds are already angling to nest in the roof of, and under the eaves of the summer cabin....

I have long wondered whether the ancestors of Finns and Estonians invented the log cabin, and CA Weslager provides an answer. In The Log...

“The secret of Chimneys” is the title of a 1925 murder mystery-romance by Agatha Christie, the prolific British crime writer. It involves...

“The incredible Estonians” was one working title for this project; another, “Living at the edge of free Europe”. How have 1.2 million...

Completing the traditional Estonian regalia of a white peasant shirt or blouse tied at the waist in a woollen belt is a brooch to fasten...

The Estonians I spoke to on our cycling trip in 2023 were strangely uninterested in their own mythology. Kalevipoeg is boring and...

Dirhami was our cycling destination from a camping spot west of Tallinn. It sounded to me like Moroccan currency, at any rate, a word in...

Standing in a field on the island of Saaremaa are five wooden windmills. They make a striking arrangement when viewed from an angle....

Friends in Estonia showed me the ERR website , the state news and broadcasting service, in the hope of my improving my rudimentary...

In Viking tradition, the accomplished person is one who has mastered nine skills. The poet who wrote the list was born in Norway, and...

Asked what Estonians do at their summer houses, I was told they basically chop firewood. There’s more to it, of course: having a sauna,...