ESTONIA


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


From left: Kihnu folk dancers performing at the annual summer theatre festival; locally grown apples for sale at an outdoor market in Kuressaare, the capital of Saaremaa


“OUR IDENTITY IS CONNECTED TO NATURE. ON THE MAINLAND, THEIR IDENTITY IS BASED AROUND THE FOREST, BUT HERE ON KIHNU, THE SEA IS OUR SUPERPOWER”


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


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