Why you should go island-hopping through Estonia’s western isles

In western Estonia, drama unfolds not in the landscapes, but in the stories that bubble beneath their surface. My first inkling of this comes when I board a car ferry called Toll the Great, bound for the island of Muhu. The modest strip of land I find myself gliding towards is so flat and featureless it looks like it’s been ironed onto the water, whereas the tale of Toll — mythical strongman, sauna master and hero of Saaremaa, an island connected to Muhu by bridge — has all the theatrics of a rollercoaster epic. I imagine Toll towering in his farmer’s garb, muscles bulging, as he rushes through the waves to help embattled sailors in stormy weather. Or wielding an iron axe as he single-handedly fends off encroaching armies and foreign bullies.

Armed with Toll’s legends — which are pasted onto the wall of the boat like everyday adverts — I drive off the ferry gangplank an hour later ready for adventure. With five days in front of me, my plan is to island-hop, dropping anchor in Muhu, Saaremaa, Abruka and Kihnu to explore the unique cultures and common histories of their communities.

It’s peak summer, but you wouldn’t know it as the car slips down Muhu’s empty, spruce-lined roads. Chalk driveways corkscrew off towards isolated thatched-roof cottages and wooden farmhouses encircled by moss-covered dry-stone walls typical of the islands. It’s as still as a watercolour. When I arrive at Muhu Veinitalu for lunch, I have it almost to myself — and owner Peke Eloranta is happy to show me around his vine-bordered passion project. Wearing a faded blue blazer and a stained, torn cowboy hat, he pours me a glass of his sparkling rosé and proudly introduces Veinitalu as a B&B and restaurant but, most importantly, the only winery in Estonia — and, he believes, the most northerly in the world.

“We’re not Tuscany, of course, but we have the most sunshine in Estonia and we have really good soil,” he says. “When we started this as a wine house in 2014, there was just a five-star manor hotel and us on Muhu.” Now, he tells me, this tiny island of just 2,000 residents is drawing increasing interest from the mainland. During the pandemic, Peke and his family — like many others from Tallinn, just a two-hour drive away — embraced the western islands’ relative isolation. “Many people began building here,” he explains. “I started to love island life more and more. Nowadays, from spring until late autumn, I’m pretty much here all the time.”

Into the bog

It doesn’t take long to see the quiet appeal of these islands. The next day, there’s a seamless transition of spruce, farmland and rustic thatch as I cross over to Saaremaa by bridge. Though it’s the largest of Estonia’s islands, with a fortress-topped capital and its own airport, the roads remain quiet. I pull up at the entrance to Koigi bog to find just one other car there. Waiting for me is local guide Kairid Toomsalu, her long blonde hair shining like a silvery moon against her black hiking outfit. “Estonians love to go bog-walking, but most people only come here on the weekend,” she says, as we set off into a thick forest of towering pines and silver birch, their lithe limbs creaking in the breeze like the sails of rusty windmills.

Bogs are an important ecological feature of Estonia’s western islands and Koigi is queen among them. It covers around 10,000 acres, with more than half designated a protected habitat. “All the stages of swamp are here,” says Kairid, as our hips brush past tall reeds sparkling with water droplets from the light morning drizzle. “And there are important birds here, like sea eagles.”

Though I can hear birds, I can’t see any until the trees thin out, disappearing completely when we reach Lake Pikkjärv, one of four interconnected water bodies at the bog’s heart. White water lilies grow around its edges like an old man’s beard. “It’s a peaceful place. There’s something here — a good aura, you know?” says Kairid, scanning the flat horizon. Perhaps this is why the lakes are enshrined in local folklore. “There’s an old legend that two landlords near the Koigi were fighting over a beautiful place they found here. They couldn’t come to an agreement over who had more rights to it, so eventually they went home. The next day, they came back and there was a lake in the spot they were arguing over,” she says. “I think the moral of the story is that you shouldn’t fight over places like this.” Estonians, she says, think nature should be for everyone.

“Some locals also say there are treasures hidden in the bog lake,” adds Kairid, as we follow the lakeshore along a wooden boardwalk. While I see no hint of buried treasure, I do spy tiny jewel-like berries among the spongy carpets of moss and bracken around us. “It’s a good berry year this year. There are lots of them! Spring was very warm,” she says, pointing out cranberries, wild raspberries and low-lying lingonberries, which she insists I try: tiny pops of juice, but quite sour.

Foraging is a way of life for Estonians and part of the islands’ food culture, as I learn that evening in the vaulted cellar of Saaremaa Veski restaurant — a restored windmill in the island capital of Kuressaare. “Berries and alcohol have been mixed here for centuries,” says Kaupo Pastak, co-owner and chief distiller, lining up tiny glasses for a tasting. The tips of his fingers are dyed indigo from blackcurrants he’s just finished pressing, and he has a story for every variety of berry. “I only make schnapps with fruit from the island. Everybody picks it for me — friends and family.” Among flavours, such as rhubarb, lingonberry and sea buckthorn, it’s black chokeberry that brings the biggest wallop and surprise. Dry and tannic, the syrupy spirit produces legs on the glass like a fine wine.

Before dinner, there’s time for a tour of the Dutch-style windmill’s upper levels, which have their own tales to tell. All wood beams and tiny ladders, it was built in 1899, but permanently put out of action by the Germans in the Second World War. “They sawed its wings off,” Kaupo says, throwing his hands up — explaining that the Germans were fearful the locals would use the windmill’s tower to signal enemies. When the Soviets then occupied the island in 1944, they destroyed it. Now, the restaurant is one of a number of restored and repurposed windmills dotted across Saaremaa. Some house tiny museums; one or two have been converted into places to stay.

Layers of history

Visiting Kuressaare Castle the next day, I find a fortress of thick-set stone riddled with stories, whose history similarly mirrors the rise and fall of the powers that have occupied Estonia over the years. Built in 1340 by the ruling German bishops of the time, bastions for cannon were added during Danish rule in the early 17th century, while moat islands and pointy terracotta turrets were built by the Swedes in the early 18th century.

With so many outside forces to contend with, I’m curious to know how Estonians managed to maintain their national identity over the centuries. “This is a good question,” says my guide Anu Lomp as we wander into town. More than a third of Saaremaa’s population of 33,000 live in Kuressaare; once a thriving resort town famous for its mud baths, its centre is a rich mix of townhouses with grand classical columns, northern baroque plaster carving and Jugendstil (art nouveau) design. “Maybe it’s in our genes. Or our culture was kept alive in the countryside. We had to fight. Under occupation, people secretly celebrated things like Christmas, which wasn’t allowed in Soviet times.”

During the Soviet era, these islands became the western frontier of the bloc. Closer to Gotland in Sweden than Tallinn, Saaremaa was an escape route for those fleeing Communist persecution and asset stripping — and the Russians, who didn’t leave Estonia until 1988, tried to stem the flow by effectively shutting off the region from the rest of the country. “Not all the islands were closed, but most. These islands were important military bases for the Soviets,” explains Anu. “I think this helped keep a lot of areas empty. And now, the west coast has well-preserved nature and a lot of the coastal areas remain untouched.”

Today, the rural way of life remains a point of local pride. It’s also part of the region’s attraction for holidaying mainland Estonians. I get to experience this one afternoon on Abruka, a 3.5-sq-mile island only reachable by speedboat or yacht from Kuressaare harbour. Two thirds of it is designated a nature reserve, home to lynx and eagles, and its population fluctuates between seven people in winter and 50 in summer. One or two of the residents run cafes out of their back doors in summer for visitors who come to cycle the quiet roads or take tours with locals in converted trucks.

“I like the nature and the peace and quiet here,” says my guide Riho Leppik, a towering, ruddy-cheeked man and sixth-generation islander who I find myself drinking espresso and blackcurrant schnapps with in the back garden of one cottage rimmed by sunflowers.

The 500-year-old village of Leedri, back on Saaremaa, is another delightful throwback to simpler days. Its compact structure and dry-stone walls are so unique and well preserved that they’re under national heritage protection. On a walk through its silent streets, I find a restored wooden windmill and houses immaculately painted in cornflower blue and mustard yellow. And I meet one enterprising local woman, Liisi Kuivjogi, who’s built a juniper syrup business with a kitchen and tasting room housed in converted barns.

“We use it like maple syrup or honey,” explains Liisi, as she shovels pancakes onto a plate she’s laid out for me on her tasting room terrace. The syrup is sweet, herbaceous, almost smoky, and the pancakes are still warm, having come straight from her mum’s thatched-roof house across the road. As we eat, a soft breeze brings a hint of wood smoke from her mother’s garden. Everyone around the table chimes in to explain: “It’s Saturday: sauna day!”

Just like in Finland and Sweden, saunas have deep cultural roots in Estonia. With the weekly wash being thought of as a balm for the spirit, they’ve also traditionally been used in rural communities as birthing rooms and places where Estonians come to be healed or to die. Almost every hotel in the islands has its own sauna — some floating on water, some housed in custom-built wooden igloos — but at Pilguse Manor House, where I’m due to spend the night, the speciality is the traditional smoke sauna. It’s a 10-minute drive from Leedri, and I arrive at dusk to find a bare-chested sauna master with an armful of firewood outside a small wooden house, its one window blackened above the lintel from the daily exhalation of thick smoke.

“The smoke sauna is very much a Finnish, Baltic and Russian thing,” says owner Maria Tamander on a tour of the property. She cuts an incongruous figure in her cream jumpsuit and gold jewellery as we stand at the door to the sauna in a field of grazing horses. “It’s totally multipurpose. In summer, traditionally, it’d be a kitchen — there would be a big stove and you’d hang meat in there and smoke it — and in winter, it’d be where the animals would sleep.”

Estonia’s stories are written into the walls at Pilguse Manor House, an old farm that was converted into a mental institute during the Soviet era and hosted many political dissidents. Before the Soviets, the 220 acres on which the manor stands had been part of a swathe of coastal land belonging to Maria’s family. “My mother escaped from Estonia to Sweden in 1944 with her parents,” she tells me. Though half-Swedish, she now lives here for part of the year, then spends the rest of the time in London with her family, who — like many other Estonians from the western isles — have spent years fighting to regain ownership of their lands.

It’s easy to see why they were worth fighting for. The day’s dying embers cast an ethereal glow on the reed marshes by the sauna house, as barn swallows twirl around the roof of the old dairy farm behind me. Beyond a pathway through the reeds, Maria points in the direction of unseen lakes and a wall of pine forest that leads to a beach on the Baltic Sea.

It isn’t until darkness seeps into the fields at around 10pm that I finally slip into the sauna, feeling its heat like a warm hug in the coolness of the night. Smoke has been absorbed by the wooden floors, its walls and the tiered benches inside, and the lingering smell recalls memories of sitting beside an open fire as a child. It’s fully dark by the time I emerge, running barefoot to a nearby natural spring at the foot of the reed beds for a dip so crisp and chilling it steals my breath.

Different strokes

Of all the western isles, I’d heard that Kihnu is the most culturally unique. So, the next day, I make the 80-mile drive back over to the mainland and south to catch the one-hour ferry from a port near the city of Parnu. The petite island guide who meets me at the dock delivers a curious first impression. “My name is Mare — like the sea!” she says warmly, beckoning me over and holding out a hand as she dismounts a Second World War motorbike with a tank as broad as a horse. Her outfit — a lipstick-red patterned headscarf tucked neatly under her chin with a bow, gold-rimmed sunglasses, a floral apron tied at her waist and a 1970s-style buttoned floral blouse — has all the charm of a sunny morning in a country garden. The bike, on the other hand, is as uncompromising as her gaze.

Mare Mätas, one of the community leaders on Kihnu and a cultural ambassador of sorts, is such a fan of these relics of the Soviet era that she uses hers to guide tours. I jump into the motorcycle’s sidecar and we shoot off, passing visitors on bicycles at the shore before cutting inland on a road through a forest of tall pines. With Kihnu measuring just over four miles long and two miles at its widest point, this small crop of trees is the only thing that stops us seeing from one side of the island to the other.

“Our identity is connected to nature. On the mainland, their identity is based around the forest, but here, the sea is our superpower,” she says, as we pull up at Kihnu’s lighthouse — a tall, white spindle on the island’s southern promontory. Once the bike’s engine is cut, the only sounds are the wind and the birds, whose twittering drifts from tiny islands not far from shore.

Here, her stories flow out like the tide. “There are more than 50 islets around Kihnu. In the springtime, we wade out and collect birds’ eggs. And we also hunt the seals that come here,” she says, as we sit on the rocky boulders beneath the lighthouse looking out to sea. The island’s superstitions also speak to Kihnu’s maritime heritage; Mare tells me if a fisherman beds his wife the night before he sails, it’s said he’ll come back with many fish. Whereas if a man touches his wife before seal hunting, it’ll ruin the hunting equipment. “So, no seals.”

The sea also plays an important role in Kihnu’s biggest annual event, a summer theatre festival that’s drawing to a close on my visit. It’s a dramatisation of the weeks in August 1944, when islanders took to the water to flee for Sweden in the face of Soviet occupation. Mare tells me that the event may have brought about the tight-knit community and well-preserved culture that exists on Kihnu today: those with ancestral ties to the island chose to stay, and became increasingly isolated under Soviet rule, while those descended from the Swedes who once occupied Estonia chose to go back to Sweden.

As an accordion strikes up and the garden stage becomes a dance floor for pairs of laughing women, Mare tells me more about what makes their island community unique: their singsong local dialect; the women’s handwoven woollen skirts; their strong community bonds — all of which have contributed to the island being listed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage register. “Here, we have a collective mentality, which means we don’t celebrate difference,” she says. In recent years, it’s been suggested that Kihnu may be Europe’s last matriarchy, because the women govern much of the island’s day-to-day life and land-based industries while the men typically spend much of their time at sea, chasing Baltic herring and other northern fish. This isn’t how Mare sees it, though. “I just think it’s equality. It’s not a matriarchy, just balance.”

Yet women are, unquestionably, the custodians of Kihnu’s rich culture. At 49, Mare has made it her personal mission to make sure the Kihnu way of life survives. Back at her farmhouse, a smart pitched-roof wooden building where roosters are crowing in an adjoining field, Mare tells me about her campaign for an offshore wind farm to help bring jobs, income and free electricity to the islanders. She also has an ambition to start a cultural academy here where people can learn about living sustainably. “The main thing would be nature, but also folk dancing and local culture,” she explains, breaking apart a four-pack of beer and offering me a can as we sit on her porch.

“It’s a final opportunity. Because of globalisation, our culture is going to disappear after 10 years if we don’t do anything.” I have every confidence Mare will grasp that opportunity with both hands. On first appearances, she might look unassuming, but there’s far more beneath the surface than I’d expected — just like these islands.