Interesting Estonia
Unexpected and fascinating stories of Estonia — the traces the world has left in Estonia, and Estonia in the world.
Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt (born 11 September 1935 in Paide) is an Estonian composer who for years on end has been performed more than any other living composer in the world. The tintinnabuli style…
Read →Baruto: an Estonian at the summit of sumo
Kaido Höövelson (born 5 November 1984 in Väike-Maarja), ring name Baruto Kaito — “Baruto” is the Japanese name of the Baltic Sea —, is Estonia's first professional sumo wrestler: a…
Read →Bernt Notke's Danse Macabre
In Tallinn's St Nicholas' Church (Niguliste) hangs a painting like no other anywhere in the world: the Lübeck master Bernt Notke's Danse Macabre is the only medieval Dance of Death…
Read →Ernst Jaakson
Ernst Jaakson (1905–1998) was an Estonian diplomat who, through almost eighty years of unbroken service, kept the Republic of Estonia legally alive throughout the Soviet occupation…
Read →Estonian roots in the world
Estonia's roots reach far. Some people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent, have become famous abroad — in space, in technology and elsewhere — carrying a fragment of Estonia with…
Read →Estonian science that changed the world
A small land, a large trace: Estonia — above all around the University of Tartu and its old observatory — has produced discoveries still taught in every school on Earth, and workin…
Read →Estonian sport that amazed the world
A small nation, big sport: Estonians have written pages of world sporting history larger than the country itself. The story runs through three flags — tsarist Russia's, under which…
Read →Estonians in exile
When Estonia was struck by the Soviet occupation, tens of thousands of Estonians fled west — and many of them became world-famous abroad. Poets, composers, artists, scientists and…
Read →Estophilia
Estophilia is the love of Estonia and Estonian culture by people who are not themselves Estonian. Long before Estonia was a state, Baltic German scholars — Estophiles — studied, wr…
Read →Explorers from Estonia
From the small soil of Estonia came men whose names are on the world map to this day — from Antarctica to the atolls of the Pacific and the ice-fields of the Arctic. They were born…
Read →Foreign Estonia
Foreign Estonia (Välis-Eesti) is the network of Estonian communities outside Estonia — the language, church, school, press and social life that the refugees built abroad after the…
Read →Hemingway and the Estonians: an Estonian in every port
The most famous line by a foreign writer about Estonians circulates in Estonia as: “in every port in the world there is at least one Estonian”. It was said by Ernest Hemingway — bu…
Read →Tchaikovsky and Estonia
Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), one of the world's best-loved composers, spent the summer of 1867 in Haapsalu, Estonia. Out of that summer came the piano cycle Souvenir de Hapsal (“…
Read →Tenet in Tallinn
Christopher Nolan's science-fiction thriller Tenet (2020) — the story of objects inverted in time and the saving of the world — was filmed in large part in Tallinn. It was the bigg…
Read →The Baltic German heritage belongs to Estonia
Karl Ernst von Baer, founder of embryology. Fabian von Bellingshausen, discoverer of Antarctica. Krusenstern, Kotzebue, Seebeck, Lenz, Uexküll — a line of world-changing names, bor…
Read →The Estonian Socialist Party's Foreign Association (ESPVK)
The Estonian Socialist Party's Foreign Association (ESPVK) was the exile organisation of Estonia's social democrats, active in Sweden after the Second World War. During the occupat…
Read →The Kaali meteorite crater
At Kaali on the island of Saaremaa lies the place where the sky once fell to earth: the Kaali crater is the first scientifically proven meteorite crater in Europe, and one of the f…
Read →The Kersten Committee
The Kersten Committee was a US House of Representatives select committee (1953–1954) that investigated the forced and illegal incorporation of the Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia a…
Read →The world's first Christmas tree
Tallinn carries an honour few cities in the world share: here, on the Town Hall Square, stood in 1441 a tree held to be the world's first public Christmas tree. Riga (1510) contest…
Read →Women's suffrage in Estonia: 1917, before the USA and France
Estonian women gained the right to vote in 1917 — before Britain, before the United States, before France. And more remarkable still: The Estonian state has never held an election…
Read →