A deeper dive

So much of travel is going from one city to another, leaving untouched the spaces in between, and so it is often with me. Driving from Tallinn to Haapsalu, and then to the coastal resort town of Pärnu, through forested lands. Every now and again fields appear, sown in grain or spring grass, bordered occasionally by a talu or farmstead, large buildings and smaller sheds with steeply pitched roofs, built in wood or masonry. Thanks to google navigation, some travel is on gravel roads and no traffic. The rented Toyota Yaris enters a wilder world of silver birch, ash, aspen, oak, poplar, sycamore, the ever-present pine and spruce stands, and occasionally navigating past white silicate brick ruins of the Soviet era. The trees convey a different message, each one standing tall to grow as they can or choose.

A sign points to Taara taamik, a sacred grove honouring Estonia’s equivalent of Thor, in earlier times a guardian spirit of the forest. After 2km of uncertainty, a gravel track dives into forest, passing some tumbledown wooden sheds surrounded by rubbish and dumped cars, slowing down to avoid curious chickens, and then tall bands of oak trees in bright-green spring leaf, some more than 300 years old. Tsarina Catherine II recognised the site, forbidding its disturbance, an age-old tactic to keep the Estonian peasantry from revolt. Here, where Christianity only ever took a surface hold, and consciously or unconsciously ancient truths were lived.  

The cities are foreign institutions: Tallinn a medieval city built on the salt trade of Hanseatic League merchants who expanded Pärnu for the same purpose. Haapsalu is a seaside resort town of well-preserved wooden buildings, in earlier times favoured by the Russian aristocracy. My visit there is not to see the beautiful railway station where the nobility alighted in search of mud baths and healing waters, or Tchaikovsky’s bench where he used to sit and admire the grey-green waters of the Baltic. As I pass by, a stiff breeze whips the sea surface into a streaky and matt finish, floating grebes make ratchet sounds in their shelters among the rushes; a brightly coloured male climbs painfully onto a large round nest of sticks to mind the eggs as mother slides off in search of food. Further along, a statue of a white polar bear out at sea draws visiting families closer to take snaps. I pass by, eventually stumbling upon Castle Square by the ruins of the loss, and find what I am looking for, Ilon’s Wonderland, a museum dedicated to the beautiful and expressive children’s book illustrations of Ilon Wikland.

Now 96 and much celebrated in Estonia, Ilon grew up in Haapsalu with her grandmother in a yellow house (after her parents abandoned her as a little girl to a train ride from Tallinn, with only her dog and battered suitcase for company – a famous story, don’t do this to your kids). She later fled to Sweden, in 1944 as so many other Estonians did, where she studied drawing and met Astrid Lindgren, well known to English speakers as the author of Pippi Longstocking. Lindgren and Ilon worked together for years to inspire children’s imagination in words and pictures.

The museum has a floor showcasing the illustrations for another Lindgren book, and says, “In Ronja’s world, nature is not merely a backdrop but a living companion. The forest teaches her courage, freedom, and respect for all living things. Nature was equally important to Astrid Lindgren. When she thought of her childhood, she did not first recall people but forests, meadows, rivers and paths.”

Looking at the pictures, Ilon has captured a world of imagination, as children may see the world. A feeling stirs within me, and on impulse I buy a copy of “Ronja, the robber’s daughter” in Estonian, and drive to a campsite in a forest by a lake for the night. Stands of pine and fir are carpeted in blueberries, wild strawberries in flower, and clumps of sorrel; forest edges lined in hazel brakes; plentiful rowantrees and wild apples stand dotted about, bursting into white blossom. Raspberry canes and rushes guard the lake edge, songbirds chatter in the trees, and a cuckoo sounds - like a Swiss wall clock but deep and resonant.

Only one or two mosquitoes as the sun sets through the trees painting the tops of pine trees in bronze, and the air cools. Wandering the forest floor in gathering twilight, I decide Raejärve would be a good place to hunt for chanterelle mushrooms when they appear in August. I tested this idea later on a local who gave no answer. Like fishers, mushroom gatherers are secretive about their favourite spots. So, it’s plausible I am correct.  

Whole and complete, and that is just the campsite. The Estonian word for health is tervis, and terve means whole; terviseks is “to your health” when clinking glasses, although here, I suppose, there can be too much of a good thing. The campsite authority thinks so too, and a sign by a lakeside jetty encourages visitors to stiffen their spine and to warn their tipsy friends to not go swimming. In the morning a breakfast of blueberries and Kalev chocolate, washed down with mineral water, then picking up scattered litter – empty beer cans, chippie packets, cigarette butts, the trash of western civilisation. A swim in the lake, the brown water cold but refreshing, to then dry off in the sunlight, pack up and head to Pärnu to meet the Napp side of the family.