Estonia in winter

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 fine when it falls and sticks to the ground - clear sightlines at night, and a chance of skiing - but it doesn’t snow as much any more. In short, winter is a grim time in Estonia, lasting as much as 8 months. How do people survive?

By getting drunk, was one answer; a lot of reading and introspection, a more serious one. Winter is traditionally the time for collecting firewood. We discussed the topic with academics and artists we met at the Puhtu ecological seminar in August. Winter is a social time, we were told enthusiastically, dinner parties with friends and family. A good time of year for a sauna.

At one memorable dinner in Tallinn, our host showed us several pairs of cross-country skis, each having a different purpose. Even if skis today are used more for sport than as a means of transport, the Tartu marathon is still held every February, starting in Otepää and ending in Elva (63km). It is a popular event, and Otepää in summer is busy with skiers practising for it in the off-season, poling along fast on thin wooden planks equipped with little wheels.

And if ski jumping is not your thing, ice skating might be – a shopping mall in Tartu has a slice of winter at its central core, a carefully maintained rink populated at lunchtime with students practising their pirouettes and axels.

Asked how one dresses for -30 degrees, Estonians told us it’s much the same as for minus 50C. I suppose I will have to find out in person, recalling a very cold winter working at a ski resort in Canada, many years ago. At 30 below, nostril hairs freeze, and at minus 40, Greg got a frost-nipped nose when downhill skiing. He was the star of our ice sculpture team, working on a frozen lake in -440C. We hauled buckets of lake water out of a hole in the ice, and had seconds to shape it before it froze solid. Under Greg’s leadership, we made a life-sized walrus, and he used the instant freezing property of water to make long thin tusks.

Other winter past-times include writing poetry, wood carving and furniture-making (our great-grandfather used to do this), and, of course, the digital transformation known as e-stonia, the subject of a future blogpost.

Winter festivals include the Tallinn Christmas market, and – a work in progress – making marzipan pigs.       

Estonian friends recently spent part of their winter holidaying in New Zealand, and it seems likely that others would do similarly, seeking sun and warmth further south. To return home, hopefully at a time when the days begin perceptibly to lengthen, the distant promise of spring.