Estonia’s points of difference to the rest of the world have been a running theme in this series of blogposts. One claim is that Uralic...

Mystical and magical is how Estonian tourism websites describe two sandy beaches in Estonia that make melodic sounds in the right...

An English writer’s fantasy epic of a ring of evil power and of a wizard, hobbits, men, a dwarf and an elf who seek to destroy it has...

For a non-PC sport, men moving as fast as they can through an obstacle course carrying a woman on their back would be a prime candidate....

In Estonia, as in much of the world, flickering marsh lights were said to lead unwary travellers to their doom. All the stories describe...

Around 1,300 years ago two boatloads of hardy, young warriors received the shock of their lives on landing at an Estonian island....

Naming a people and the place where they live stamps their identity. Eesti and eesti rahvas  or eestlased  do that for a subset of...

There is no sensation quite like losing at chess, especially with a draw in sight and failing to escape. That’s what happened to me...

Shamanism was at one time, and still is a thing in Estonia. This tradition of entering an ecstatic trance to enter the spirit world...

Golden light on the hills, sitting on a friend’s deck drinking cold water, tired from trimming and tying grape vines, and listening to...

Small in flow, the Kääpa northeast of Tartu runs thick in legend and inspiration. This gently flowing stream is where the epic hero...

“I drove west from Leningrad towards those troubled Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania – whose tragedy has been their tiny size,...

Like the sauna, the ski is an invention of Finnic peoples, dating back as far as 8,000 years, in what is now Finnish-speaking western...

This is less easy to do than you might think – after all, Estonia has 2,300 islands. One situated 80km from Tallinn spans 1 hectare and...

The West seems to be losing its way in the world, while in Estonia the will to live is stronger than ever, digital technology leading the...

Our family gave us each an Estonian flag and pennant. I am flying the lipp today at an event hosted by Estonia’s honorary consul, David...

The university city of Tartu is said to have a vaim or spirit to it. And yet when we visit Estonia’s second city, set astride the...

November is the worst month, we are told, cold and dark and no snow. December has on average 18 hours of sunshine, also no good. Snow is...

Hundreds of Estonian place names end in “of blood”. A sign seeking blood donations plays on this oddity - “Estonia has 650 locations...

Estonian winters were too long for Juhan Liiv. He wrote melancholic poetry, comparing the processes of nature with that of his own...