In the Baltic Sea, there’s a chain of islands where the map doesn’t always tell the whole truth. From a meteorite crater revered as a pagan holy site to a kingdom founded on a bureaucratic typo, the West Estonian Archipelago is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve that doubles as one of Europe’s most enigmatic historical puzzles.
As the bright orange ferry breaks the waves of the Baltic, its steady movement feels like a drift toward the edge of the continent. Mainland Estonia is disappearing behind us, while the West Estonian Archipelago, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve made of 900 or so mostly uninhabited slices of land emerging from the Baltic Sea, is getting closer.
For most visitors, the draw is the region’s wilderness. Waves splash into cliffs and abandoned lighthouses, agricultural lands negotiate for space with dense pine forests, and dark-sand beaches shapeshift year after year due to post-glacial rebound, the ongoing rise of land resulting from the Earth slowly springing after being crushed by the massive ice sheets during the last glacial period.
Yet, the impression of moving toward the fringe couldn’t be more misplaced. Saaremaa, where I’m headed, is one of the contenders for the title of Europe’s geographical center. And its location at the heart of the continent may be the very reason why much of its heritage has long been buried under the weight of the grand events of the 20th century.
But, like the limestone crust lifting millimeters each year, it’s a heritage that is now re-emerging.
“This was the front line,” explains Mari Lepik. She is one of the founders of the Sõrvemaa Heritage Society, a local NGO active since 2009 dedicated to the preservation of nearly-lost traditions of the Sõrve region in western Saaremaa. From the harbor in Muhu, I’ve crossed the causeway that leads onto Sareemaa, then past the island’s capital, Kuressaare, toward the Sõrve Peninsula, to meet her at her home.
Only a few hundred people live here permanently. Strategically positioned Saaremaa, and the whole archipelago, have particularly suffered from heritage loss during the Nazi-Soviet clash for the control of the Baltics (1941-1945) and the Stalinist terror that followed. “Russians came from one side, Germans from the other,” she tells me. “After the war, this region was ruined. Like, really ruined. No trees, no posts. Everything was gone.”
“We had been meeting for about 15 years, studying and learning old Runo songs. Then, a couple of years ago, we set out to record our first album, the first in our dialect … The most valuable thing in Estonia are these songs. Every region has its own.”
- Mari Lepik, Sõrvemaa Heritage Society
Tall linden trees surround Lepik’s home, one of the few buildings standing in this silent, forested area. Over the past 80 years, nature has reclaimed an area once scorched. But destruction wasn’t total. While material traces may have disappeared, memory has survived through a collection of songs—recorded just in time.
“My family has been living in this village for some 10 generations, and many of our local peculiarities stem from the fact that Estonians were ‘slaves’ until about 150 years ago,” says Lepik. Until the mid-19th century, the Baltic German nobility held Estonians in a grip of serfdom. This enforced isolation created the conditions for a constellation of microcultures to flourish, although many were later pushed to the brink of extinction by war evacuations and Sovietization. “In Saremaa, every parish has different traditional clothing, because people couldn’t move across parish lines. They developed their own dialects, songs, dress, and separated between parishes.”
Today, such microcultures are experiencing a revival. When I meet her, Lepik and a group of 12 other women had recently released the first music album, Siiruviiruline, of nearly-lost songs from Saaremaa. “We had been meeting for about 15 years, studying and learning old Runo songs,” says Lepik. “Then, a couple of years ago, we set out to record our first album, the first in our dialect.”
These ‘dead songs’—meaning, they were no longer sung—had been collected over a long period, starting in around 1880 by Jacob Hurt, a folklorist, theologian and significant figure in Estonia’s ‘national awakening’. The lyrics have been preserved in the archives of Tartu’s Literature Museum, where millions of verses fill the archives. “The most valuable thing in Estonia are these songs. Every region has its own,” Lepik tells me.
It’s hard to overstate the importance music has acquired in contemporary Estonian culture, especially since the ‘Singing Revolution’ of 1988-1991. This period of non-violent resistance saw hundreds of thousands of Estonians gather in public to sing national hymns and songs, using the power of music to defy Soviet rule and eventually regain independence. Today, the Estonian Song Festival has grown into one of the world’s largest choral music events, where tens of thousands of people, from all all parts of the country, gather in the capital Tallinn to sing together every five years.
But the idea that stories passed down orally through generations could become tools to preserve a community’s identity is far from new. In Saaremaa, the obscure process through which collective memory is built may be traced back to the disastrous collision of a rock fallen from the sky that happened thousands of years ago: The Kaali Crater.
Back on the road, I cross the eerily quiet island to reach the Kaali Crater. A narrow, dusty path winds down the steep slope to the lakeshore. Like an eye looking upward, Kaali mirrors the thick vegetation all around.
The murky lake is the largest of nine craters that resulted from the impact of a meteorite crashing into Saaremaa, the most recent event of its kind in Europe estimated to have occurred approximately 7,500 years ago. It was an explosion comparable to that of a tactical nuclear weapon and left its mark on the island in the form of a lake that would be deemed sacred, as animal bones believed to be linked to sacrificial ceremonies point to, and formed into myths that have shaped Estonian identity to this day.
Ironically, when the time for nation-building arrived, not all voices in Saaremaa were equally represented. Back at the westernmost edge of the island, I cross the invisible border of the Kingdom of Torgu.
In 2025, the first English translation of Silverwhite (Hõbevalge), the 1978 speculative history book by former Estonian president Lennart Meri, was released. Lepik makes the case that the collision of the inflamed meteorite, or ‘fallen sun,’ may have been so great as to be seen as far as the opposite side of the Baltic. It would leave its trace in the oral stories passed down through generations, eventually becoming the backbone of Finno-Ugric mythology contained in the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, and the Kalevipoeg, the Estonian national epic.
Despite Silverwhite lacking the cold proofs of carbon dating, it served as an important manifesto during a time of cultural erasure—a tool to reframe Estonia as a protagonist in northern Europe’s narrative, rather than a peripheral territory of the USSR. A tool capable of shaping collective memory through its mythologizing power.
Ironically, when the time for nation-building arrived following the collapse of the USSR in 1991, not all voices in Saaremaa were equally represented. Back at the westernmost edge of the island, I cross the invisible border of the Kingdom of Torgu.
Besides the black-and-white lighthouse at the tip of the Sõrve peninsula, there is, admittedly, not much to see in this windswept micronation borne out of an administrative error. Following Estonia’s restoration of independence, the new government introduced a reform to establish the administrative territories of the free country. It did, however, forget to list remote Torgu, a territory of 54 square miles (140 square kilometers). Torgu became technically stateless.
The error was fixed rapidly, but not rapidly enough to stop the people of Torgu from electing their own king, policeman Kirill Teiter, aka King Kirill I, and issuing their own currency—tied to the price of half a liter of Viru valge vodka.
As of August 2022, Kristian I, son of Kirill, is the new King of Torgu. Between the hypnotic refrains of songs that nearly vanished, the 35-year-old joke still echoes from lighthouse to lighthouse. A joke that, in all its abstraction, is rooted in a profound local truth: In a land that has been bargained over by Teutonic Knights and Stalinist commissars, if you do not claim yourself, someone else will.
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Angelo Zinna is an Italian-Finnish journalist currently based in Florence. He is the author of several Lonely Planet guidebooks, regularly reports from the Baltics, the Caucasus, Italy and Finland, and his words and photos have been featured on National Geographic, BBC, New Lines Magazine and more. He is interested in the relationship between place and collective memory. He likes tomatoes and ugly buildings.
