We spent a few fine days in Tallinn.
The Estonian capital feels more Nordic than Baltic—and so do its prices. It’s a very modern city built upon a medieval foundation. You can walk the ramparts of a thirteenth-century city wall and glance down upon the shining facades of upscale shops and restaurants.
It’s a particularly nice town for a Dane to visit. The name itself is apparently derived from the Estonian “Taani linn,” meaning “Danish castle,” dating from Denmark’s conquest of the nation back in the 13th century.
In 2019 Denmark and Estonia commemorated the 800th anniversary of the Danish flag descending from Heaven onto Estonian territory while Danes and Estonians were slaughtering each other in battle.
That’s the legend, anyway.
It’s a good enough yarn as legends go, although it’s a little light on pirates and lusty wenches for this moron’s taste. In compiling an English language version of the legend back in 2004, I therefore took some liberties.
The Legend of the Dannebrog
(starring Valdemar II, with a special guest appearance by Erik the Pirate)
Once upon a time there was a Danish king named Valdemar (and sometimes Waldemar). He died. This eventually led to the arrival of a Danish king who was also named Valdemar (and sometimes Waldemar), and was therefore called Valdemar II for purposes of clarity—although you’d think if they were really interested in clarity they would have straightened out the whole Valdemar/Waldemar thing before they started throwing Roman numerals around.
King Valdemar II was a Christian king, and like most Christian kings he was troubled by the existence of filthy pagan bastards. And so, in 1219, King Valdemar II got up an army and made his way to conquer one particular group of pagan bastards—sometimes referred to as “The Estonians”—and convert them to Christianity. Either that or kill them, whichever came first.
As Valdemar led his flotilla toward the Estonian coast, his ship was engaged by the Baltic’s most notorious brigand, Erik the Pirate. After a brief skirmish at sea, Erik boarded Valdemar’s flagship.
“Yar!” cried Erik the Pirate, brandishing his mighty sword.
Valdemar’s men hacked him to pieces and the Danes continued on their journey. Soon they arrived in Estonia.
At Lyndanisse (the medieval Danish name for Tallinn), the Christian Danes and Pagan Estonians fought a fierce battle all through the day of June 15th. Neither side had the advantage. Evening came on and the fighting let up as the armies returned to their camps to eat, sleep, and freshen up for the next day’s carnage.
Back at their camp, many Danes gathered round the tap at Saucy Shirley’s House of Ale. They drained barrel after barrel of ale and exchanged bawdy jokes with the lusty barmaid Shirley.
The wily Estonians didn’t actually return to their camp, in part because they had no lusty barmaids with whom to exchange lewd pleasantries. Instead, they made a sneak attack. Their bloody onslaught overwhelmed the unprepared Danes.
An elderly Danish Archbishop watched the slaughter from a nearby hill, and raised his arms to heaven to solicit God’s assistance. Miraculously, God complied: the Danes suddenly surged forward against their attackers and began making headway. But as soon as the Archbishop lowered his poor arthritic arms, lo!, the Danes fell back. Wearily he raised his arms again, and once more the Danes pressed forward; the pain compelled him to lower them once more, and again the Danes fell back. And so it went, on and off, until the Archbishop could raise his arms no more.
The logical course of action would have been to fix his arms aloft—by nailing them to a tree, for example—but the Danes have always been fiercely independent and contemptuous of frailty. If the Archbishop couldn’t hold up his arms under his own power, by God, no one was going to prop them up for him. So they began to take heavy losses.
The old Archbishop began to weep as he stood helplessly by, knowing that if only he could lift his aching arms he could save the Danish army. No sooner had the first tear run down his cheek, however, than a mighty peal of thunder sounded and a red banner emblazoned with a white cross fell from the sky into the Archbishop’s limp and lifeless arms.
A voice from the clouds announced, "When you raise this banner before your enemies, they will yield before you!"
“If I could raise my arms,” the Archbishop lamented, “I wouldn’t need the damn flag.”
And so he sent a messenger to carry the flag to the King. Valdemar raised the flag as soon as he got it, the Danes became delirious with courage, and the battle was swiftly won.
The Dannebrog has been the Danish flag ever since.
The Danish Queen’s Rose Garden was established as part of the octocentennial celebrations in 2019. It’s supposed to have 800 roses to mark the 800 years since the first written mention of Tallinn and the 800th anniversary of the events related above, but all that could be seen this week were clusters of thorny branches sticking up out of the snow.
The Queen’s Rose Garden is right around the corner from the “Danish King’s Garden,” advertised as the spot where the flag fell from the sky. There’s a sculpture there entitled “The Flag Descended.”
These tributes to Denmark are located alongside the Kiek in de Kök fortification. The name translates to something like “Peek in the kitchen.” That’s an unusual name for anything, much less a military installation. The name is reportedly derived from the fact that the fortification was built upon a hill and soldiers were therefore able to look into the kitchens of all the neighboring homes. Obviously that was quite a thrill—ah, for the blessed life of an Estonian military man!
Kiek in de Kök is apparently one of the city’s prime draws. It offers guided tours of its underground casements or bastions (kiek in de basement!). There are also legends of the ghosts that haunt it to this very day. None of that’s relevant, however, because by the time we got there we’d already been walking around all day and were ready to get back to our hotel’s saunas and jacuzzies.
And bar.
Estonia’s a small country. In American terms, it’s about twice the size of New Jersey and has half the population of Brooklyn. About a quarter of its population is “ethnically Russian,” whatever that means, and that’s obviously a complication these days.
Tallinn didn’t feel like a city on a war footing but one sensed a general anxiety not far beneath its surface. The airport, for example, was swarming with soldiers when we arrived and departed—NATO troops, we assumed, based on the variety of national insignia on their uniforms and the languages we overheard. There were easily as many soldiers as civilians in the airport, though this moron has no idea where they were coming from or headed off to. (Based on this video posted Friday, they appear to have been arriving to participate in NATO “winter survival” training exercises.)
On the other hand, there are only 1430 NATO troops (from the UK, Denmark, France, and Iceland) stationed in Estonia as part of the NATO Enhanced Forward Presence, which suggests their presence is mostly symbolic—a sort of NATO tripwire to ensure that Russia can’t violate the Estonian border without killing the citizens of multiple NATO nations, with all the consequences implied.
Here's hoping nothing more than a symbolic presence is ever required.
A sweet young bartender we spoke to at length on the night of our arrival articulated sentiments we would hear repeatedly over the course of our visit: Estonians love their ethnically Russian countrymen and are working hard to ensure they aren’t stigmatized, while at the same time they’re eager to see Russia absolutely crushed in Ukraine and seem willing to do whatever it takes to facilitate that outcome.
That’s what we were told and we had no reason to doubt it.
The main square of the city had been transformed into a virtual monument to Ukraine, and the familiar blue-and-yellow flag of Ukraine was flying all over the city. The Russian Cultural Center was just a block or two over from our hotel but didn’t seem to be open; the Russian consulate was fronted with dozens of anti-Putin, anti-war, and pro-Ukraine placards, as well as the flowers and candles one typically finds at the site of any human tragedy.
There were plexiglass coin bins requesting donations to support Ukraine in every grocery store checkout line—in a country that’s already contributing more money to Ukraine on a per-capita basis than any other. But in the course of our short visit we never encountered any animus directed toward Russians beyond some vicious comments on the website of a Russian restaurant we’d hoped to try. (It was closed.)
Only later, at home, surfing the net to learn more about the country did I come across articles that belied our bartender’s words. That’s not to say she was misleading us, only that her own nice ideas about the Russian minority were not in fact representative.
Most of the parties running in the March 5 national election, for example, had been calling for the elimination of Russian as a classroom language in Estonia’s primary schools. That included the Reform party of the incumbent Prime Minister, who appears to have held on to her job. Soviet-era World War II memorials have been torn down throughout the city. Russian citizens who live in Estonia have recently been denied the right to carry firearms.
Many articles from the run-up to the March 5 election suggested that more than a third of Russian-speaking Estonians might sit out the election. No (findable) articles since the election break out the vote by ethnicity or language, so it’s impossible to say whether there was any truth to that speculation. The vast majority of Russian-speaking Estonians are reportedly just as opposed to Putin’s invasion as their Estonian-speaking countrymen, but a certain amount of uneasiness is understandable.
None of that mattered during our visit. Not really. We stayed at a spa hotel and spent a lot of time in its saunas, jacuzzies, and pool; we had some fine meals and saw most of the city’s main sights; we never got lost and were only caught in one snowstorm.
Mainly we enjoyed being alone together for the first time in a long time.
Ever since moving to Denmark back in 2003 I’ve felt the American itch to tour the continent. My first full year living here I managed to make it to five countries. I was sure I’d be moving back to America at any moment and should therefore see as much of Europe as I could, and as quickly as I could. I might have taken a more relaxed approach if I’d known how long I’d end up living here, but even after 20 years there are a lot of European countries I still haven’t visited—and there are still five continents I’ve never set foot on.
The last few years have been a valuable reminder that if you want to go somewhere and it’s within your power to do so, you ought to go right now. The lockdowns blocked our booked trips to Sarajevo and Rhodes. The current conflagration has made our long-deferred visits to Ukraine and Russia impossibilities. You never know when another pandemic’s going to arrive, or another war’s going to break out, or a meteorite’s going to hit. The city you long to visit could be swept away in a flood or an avalanche, reduced to rubble in an earthquake, taken over by a madman, or laid waste by Godzilla.
We seem to be living in a very unstable period. You want to see stuff? Get the hell out there and see it while you still can and while it’s still there.