A Swedish outpost

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 Arabic. Our hosts explained it is an Estonian transliteration of Derhamn, a name of Swedish origin, and recalls a long Swedish presence at the mainland’s northwestern tip.

This was originally an area of small islands that gradually rose out of the sea, joining the mainland in the 1800s, hence the Swedish toponym, Nuckö, or Nuck Island. The Estonian coastline continues to rise, a delayed geological rebound from thick ice cover during the last ice age. This is one area for now where there is no concern in owning coastal property.

The first written records of a Swedish population in Noarootsi, as Estonians call it, appeared in the 13th century (in Latin), during Danish rule over Estonia’s northern strip. Compared with ethnic Estonians, the Swedes and their descendants enjoyed greater personal freedom, freedom of movement, and lower taxes. This is according to Wikipedia.

For sale in Noarootsi

All was going well for the Swedes until the mid-1500s when Russia invaded the German-ruled Baltic, starting the Livonian War (1558-1583). This dragged in Poland-Lithuania, Sweden, as well as Danes and Norwegians. To say the countryside was ravaged would be an understatement; a museum in Tallinn noted that Estonia’s population halved to 150,000 during that period.

It’s worth recalling – speaking earlier of climate – that this period coincided with the so-called Little Ice Age, a time of economic hardship in Europe. Warfare was a common method of gaining wealth for some people over lots of others, and the Livonian war was no exception. Russia had just defeated the Khanate of Khazan using cannon; Tsar Ivan IV “The Terrible” was ready for action, while the Swedes used the war to improve their artillery, to great effect.

We learned nothing of this history at school in New Zealand, not surprisingly, I suppose. But it’s an interesting story.

Returning to Noarootsi, Swedish rule arrived in the 1580s. This was an Estonian “golden age” during which the Hanseatic League came to an end, and it lasted until the early 1700s when Estonian territory returned to Tsarist rule, lasting until 1918.

For Noarootsi, the Swedish era saw the building of schools and churches, and also manorial farming, which curtailed the rights of the common folk. Noarootsi is, therefore, a microcosm of Estonian history.

The Great Northern War (1700-1721) involved Russia under Peter the Great who formed shifting alliances with Denmark-Norway, and Saxony-Poland-Lithuania. The British later joined the anti-Sweden coalition, as did Prussia. Basically, Sweden’s sin was that it had too much control over the Baltic. (A similar conflict is playing out now over control of the Black Sea.)

Skating over events that included the Ottoman Empire hosting the Swedish king, also involving Ukrainians and others, a bout of the plague then struck civilian folk. In Noarootsi, the population dropped by two-thirds. Some villages were abandoned, remembering the area was still islands at the time.    

So began the Estonianisation of Noarootsi, as tensions between the lords of the manor and serfs / peasants increased, in Estonia and elsewhere in Europe. The abolition of serfdom in Estonia starting in 1816 did not affect the coastal Swedes, being neither semi-slaves nor entirely free. It took until 1856 for communal self-government and compulsory school attendance to appear in Noarootsi.

The national awakening in Estonia came also with a strengthening of Swedish identity where it still existed in Estonia, by which time Noarootsi was part of the mainland. It came in the form of Swedish language schools, and, later, ship building and an export trade to Sweden and Finland, largely of potatoes and apples.

Then came the Soviets in 1939, and within 5 years close to the entire Swedish population left for Sweden, all but ending more than 800 years of coastal Swedish presence in Estonia. Refugees from northeastern Estonia and elsewhere took their place. Collective farming destroyed most of the villages in the area, erasing most physical traces of Noarootsi, as if it had never been.

To end this strange tale, the restoration of independence in Estonia has seen people returning to what was for decades a Soviet militarised zone, and it is now a popular destination for building or buying summer houses.