by Draw a horizontal line back across the globe from the northern coast of Estonia and it will pass through the southernmost tip of Greenland. So I am very surprised to look out on the Estonian beach and see sunny sand where children are playing and their parents are having their picnics.
My guide, Signe, is hunting along the vegetation line between the sand and the pine trees.
“There will be wild strawberries here next month,” she says.
The sun peeks out into the Gulf of Finland where a white sail can be seen. An old man sits on a log, methodically carving some driftwood into what might be a bear. Signe found wild blackcurrant bushes and is picking the leaves, they seem to be good when added to pickled cucumbers. I head along the foreshore, stopping to examine an old boathouse and some tracks, perhaps moose, then watch a flock of wading birds drop off around the huge boulders, remnants of the ice age, that dot the coast. It could be a scene from Tove Jansson’s luminous tranquility of Baltic beach life, The Summer Book.
My journey to Estonia started with a train from London to Vilnius, a bus across Latvia, then a bike up through Estonia to a bear watch hide. Now I am walking and driving along the coast of the Gulf of Finland, heading west from near the Russian border towards my final destination, the capital of Estonia, Tallinn.
I feel that the beach is the Estonian people’s connection to an older, slower lifestyle, one that also involves a lot of food.
Signe has got her blackcurrant leaves, but is looking suspiciously at a patch of elderberry and nettle.
“It’s too late for this season. When the shoots are young, I cut them up with flour and egg then fry them. Delicious.”
I feel like the beach is the connection between Estonians and an older, slower lifestyle, one that also involves a lot of food.
Like Sophia, the main character of The Summer Book, Signe used to come here with her grandmother who always had an eye for seasonal wild produce.
“Chocolate-dipped spruce tips were a favorite,” she says.
The real culinary feast, however, is the berries. Wild strawberries in June followed by cloudberries, lingonberries and raspberries, then by August come blueberries and cranberries. “But the best berries are not here,” says Signe. “They are up in the raised bogs. Viru has a good one – we have to go there.”
That will be a swampy, swampy misery, full of mosquitoes, I think. Let’s stick to the coast.
We are at the fishing village of Altja at the eastern end of Lahemaa national park which is formed by four peninsulas and bays. The plan is to explore further back so we drive to Käsmu, a small seaside town with a rich history.
In the 1880s this was an outpost of the Russian Empire and the tsar built a customs house next to one of those huge ice age boulders. It’s a museum these days, but not like any other. Inside we find the owner, Aarne Vaik, a professorial type with white hair, talking to a Japanese tour guide. This quaint little museum is famous, and I’m about to find out why.
“I’m originally from Tartu,” Aarne tells me, as Signe translates. “But when I came here in the 1980s, I was interested in the history of the town. It was famous for the number of sea captains who lived here. At one time there were so many ships coming from places like Hull and Newcastle that sterling was a law of tender.”
Inspired by the town’s 19th-century history, Aarne began collecting memorabilia and maritime artifacts, seeking out anything from captains’ uniforms and letters home, to their favorite pipe tins (it was Waverley Virginia). As communism fell in the early 90’s, the collection became enormous and Aarne needed a home for it. The customs house was a Soviet naval station. “I marched in and told them I wanted it to be a maritime museum. In those crazy times, they accepted it and moved out.”
The story of the foundation somehow shows that the man and the museum are connected by a kick-ass alarm. The first room I enter is full of dried herbs, oil paintings and maps. There are piles of old postcards, letters and books – a fascinating array of artefacts. A red fixer is also sleeping under a mysteriously laden table objets trouvésa brass telescope and a half-eaten sandwich – this fund of a house is also home to Aarne and his wife, Triin.
Next door is a room that recreates a 19th century sea captain’s parlor with original furniture and possessions. What is his most valuable display, I ask. He rummes in a corner and picks out a crusty black sword. It is a Viking weapon that a local farmer dug out of a bog.
“It was dated to the 11th century, a period when the Vikings came through here on the way to Byzantium.”
In another room I meet Triin, who shows me postcards and letters sent home by the old sea captains, then sepia-toned photographs of the women they left behind, sometimes for years. “The women were so heroic and I’m proud that their stories are also included in our museum.”
We move along the coast, exploring villages of beautiful summer cottages set in flower gardens. We have lunch in one, the MerMer Restaurant, by the sea, then explore an abandoned Soviet submarine base at Hara. A top secret facility today, we screech past dilapidated concrete piers and offices, the sea visible through holes in the floor. All the metal was looted after the Russians abandoned it in 1991. Now it is becoming a seabird colony and graffiti archive.
Finally, Signe asserts herself. We’re going to Viru bog, it’s too good to miss.
A few miles into the wooded countryside, we park and walk through some trees. Let’s just get it over with, I’m thinking, five minutes should be enough.
We come to the start of a path that winds over a large dome of sphagnum moss. I find myself looking down on the forest: tiny stunted trees couched in a micro-world of water droplets, starry green moss and pink flowers. We reach an observation tower from which we can see a large network of ponds, the black mirrors of water catching the plume of white clouds. Birds and dragonflies move through it. Back at ground level, Signe shows me that the “ground” is just a sponge. “When we come to pick raspberries in August, we don our winter snowshoes. Otherwise you would be going under.”
I am beginning to see the magic of Seamus Heaney’s poem Bogland:
The earth itself is kind, black butter / Melting and opening under pressure, / Lacking the last definition / Millions of years
Raised bogs are formed as moss slowly grows on top of itself until the entire landscape is raised several meters above the water table and becomes completely saturated with rain. Mineral levels then decrease and the giant sponge becomes acidic, creating a unique and wonderful environment, one with its own vocabulary. The water that runs from the enlarged dome creates ridges, or strings, where trees can grow. Meanwhile there are floes, elongated pools of dark water that drain down into a lagg, a wet edge. And as our core, as we find, there is a central pond, the soot or bog eye, a name that gives insight into the pupil-like darkness.
We reach an observation tower from which we can see a large network of ponds, the black mirrors of water catching the plume of white clouds. Birds and dragonflies move through it
Around the soft, treacherous edges are carnivorous slug plants, the sun waiting for him on their pink-green jaws. With no nutrients or soil, these plants evolved to catch insects drawn to the water. Europe was once full of such places, but they are rare due to incessant turf ravaging. Swimming in these ponds is a special experience: like diving into a black mirror and becoming part of the bog life.
Today, however, I left it too late. The warm sun has dipped behind the trees. I lie down on the boardwalk and examine the tiny cosmos of the bog up close. I test the surface with my hand. It is soft and wet. My hand slides in and I slide my fingers through the layers of fibers. Maybe somewhere down here is another Viking sword. I touched something. It’s just a fallen log, but in my mind it becomes a sword.
In Jansson’s book, nothing much ever happens, except for moments like this. In one scene the girl, Sophia, finds her grandmother picking up bones from the beach and putting them in trees. She asks what she is doing.
“I’m playing,” says the old woman.
Because he was reluctant to visit, Signe has to drag me away.
I spend the night in a forest cabin on the coast, then explore the coast all the way into Tallinn the next day. In town I walk through the Telliskivi district, a post-Soviet industrial zone, now an arts hub, centered on the Fotografiska building, a photo gallery with a restaurant. But it is the narrow alleys of the old town that finally draw me in, stopping to sit in the cool tranquility of the church of the Holy Spirit, its galleries and walls beautifully painted by 17th century artists.
Related: The best Baltic beach holidays: where to go for summer, sea and sand
In the evening I go back to the sea, walking down to the old port facilities of the Gulf of Finland, the Noblessner, which has been turned into a stylish neighborhood of bars and restaurants. It’s a great area to spend an afternoon, ending with a stroll along the seafront (there’s a fine maritime museum).
I look across the Baltic Sea towards Finland, midsummer afternoon light playing on the water. A necklace of terns dance in the past and I imagine Jansson’s characters, the grandmother and six-year-old Sophia, strolling with them in search of things that have washed ashore, things to play with long into the white summer night.
Kevin was a guest of Visit Estonia, traveling to the Baltic States by rail. A four-day EURail or Interrail pass (for UK residents) costs a£245 (27 and under: £183, over 60: £220). In Laheema, Kevin stayed in a forest cabin öd mirror house for £118; in Tallinn at Nunne Boutique Hotel, double from a£65
