Tallinn (Estonia) June 1, 2001
As you may remember, Estonia was an independent country for a long
time. However after the Dane's came in in the 1300s, it was owned by many
until 1991 when it broke out of the USSR and became once more independent.
| The first excuse to take Estonia was the desire by the Kings of Denmark
to evangelize the heathens. This church was built in the 1300s (but
rebuilt many times after fires until made out of stone in the
1400s). The interior is quite beautiful if stark. It's
finished in white with coats of arms of the supporters on the walls.
No photographs allowed unfortunately. As you would expect, this is a
Swedish Lutheran Church. |
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The Russians, not to be outdone built their own church (a copy of the
Cathedral of St. Nicholas in Moscow) called Alexander Njevsky. When
we went inside, they actually had a service going on at the side, but
allowed visitors and sold postcards at the back at the same time.
Again, no pictures, but it's like the other churches I've already shown
you. |
| The Danes expected Tallinn to be "a breeze" but as you can see
from these walls, it was not easy. After 3 days of siege, the King
asked the Priest to pray for a sign of victory. After prayer, all
the soldiers saw a burning cross descending from heaven and this gave them
the courage to break through the walls and ultimately win. It is
said this is the basis for the Danish flag which has a white cross on a
red field and is allegedly one of the earliest flags for a country. |
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Old Tallinn is really two cities, the upper city which is where the
nobility lived, and the lower city where the rest did. There
actually was a fortified wall between the two with only 2 gates, both
lockable between them. Here's a photo from the upper city into the
lower city. |
| Tallinn is very proud of their old city hall, even though it looks more
like a church than a city building. This photo doesn't show it, but
the right end of the building includes a built in lifting pole.
Seems that although the city was active in commerce, there are no
warehouses in the city. So every building with free space
contributes to the cause by storing goods. |
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The city streets are narrow as might be expected from a walled city with
population growth, every square inch gets used. Those who lived in
Stade with us will recognize these streets and houses. The nobles
who lived in the upper city actually were German, even during Danish
occupation, so there's a lot of continuity with Northern German
architecture. |
| We ended the tour on the main street of town. You should easily
recognize this as that because it has the old city gate on it (and it has
a McDonald's too). You will note one of the 30 guides of the walking
tour standing in the middle holding up her card trying to gather her crew
back together for their next stretch of the tour (which probably was to
get on the bus and go back to the ship).
The guides apparently were all college students who were getting
practice on their English and picking up some spare spending money at the
same time. They appeared to have been briefed on stories to tell as
there was reasonable continuity from group to group (at least it seemed
that way from the conversations on the ship as we ate lunch).
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