IN PA R T NE R SHIP WITH TUMI


HE L S INK I


It’s like a living museum of the past, perfect for a gentle but 38


fascinating walking tour. I collect my 24-hour TALLINN Card (visittallinn.ee) from the tourist information centre in the middle of the Old Town, which gives access to many museums, free public transport, and more. Over the next eight hours I visit the Town Hall


and Square, quietly study St Nicholas’ Church and St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, climb to the bell tower of the Dome Church for wonderful views over the town roofs, and ferret around in the tunnels of the Kiek in de Kok Bastion and Carved Stone Museum. I sit in the Danish King’s Garden for a local snack of kiluvoileib, a sprat sandwich of grey fish on dark bread served with a boiled egg, then head for the Great Guild Hall, whose history museum explains the importance of the powerful merchant guilds in this region. There’s St Catherine’s Passage and St Olav’s Church,


the Old City Walls and Towers, and Fat Margaret’s Tower and Gate, but my lasting memory of this almost fairytale city comes courtesy of a festival being celebrated to mark the beginning of summer, with lots of musical and other events and performances filling the alleys, squares, coffee shops and halls. The theme this year is “One hundred steps of the century”, as the country celebrates 100 years as the Republic of Estonia. In front of St Nicholas’ Church a Medieval tournament


is under way. An old-fashioned Medieval “list” stages what many passing tourists imagine is a choreographed battle between fully armoured protagonists. Two fighters are pitted as a team against two others with different “colours”; when one goes down the victor joins his/her partner (both men and women take part as equals) to hammer the second warrior into submission. However, the crowd soon realises, with gasps and squeals, that this is no staged fight but a real contest with


SEP T E M B ER 2 0 18


ABOVE: Tallinn Old Town’s cobblestoned streets and ancient fortified walls attract plenty of tourism


Tallinn’s centuries-old walls and cobblestoned streets are kept in superbly authentic condition


some basic rules but allowing full-on blows to be struck by real (though blunted) swords and battle axes onto chainmail-clad arms, full-visor helmets and sheet-metal hip guards. It’s serious stuff – at one point one of the two referees calls a halt and summons the modern medics into the lists to check on a fallen and stricken fighter. Teams have come from countries all round the region – it seems that the old warrior ways of Scandinavians and other northern Europeans are alive and well.


ISLAND LIFE Back in Helsinki, on my final morning I walk down to Market Square waterside one more time and jump on a JT-Line ferry for an Island-Hopping Experience. First stop is Vallisaari Nature Reserve, on the eponymous island that has been left in its rural state, and was only opened to the public in 2016. It’s a lovely taste of a typical northern European forest,


with oak, linden, beech and silver birch trees growing alongside evergreen larch and pines. Songbirds warble everywhere you go; in June the meadows are carpeted with flowers in yellow, violet and white, attracting insects that in turn feed thrushes, wagtails and other birds, which flit around fearlessly in front of walkers. This was an idyllic life for 200 villagers in pre- and postwar days, but now the houses have been abandoned. At the southern end of the island the 19th-century Alexander battery faces out to the open sea, the direction from which danger invariably approached.


bus ine s s tr a v el ler .c om


JEREMY TREDINNICK (LEFT); COPYRIGHT TALLINN CITY TOURIST OFFICE & CONVENTION BUREAU (RIGHT)


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