Inspired by a walking tour, a traveller vows to track down the legends that bring the Baltics to life. Between Tallinn, Estonia, and Riga, Latvia, she squares up to faceless ghost monks, peeks in the window of a Devil’s wedding, and crosses the border where a chain of singing revolutionaries once brought freedom to the region.
Inside Europe’s oldest working pharmacy, I shuddered past a pickled snake. In avoidance, my gaze drifted to the painted wooden beams and the beak-shaped plague mask that once held dried herbs to counter “evil” smells. Tallinn, Estonia, was truly a living museum.
My guide led me out of the pharmacy and into the town square. Julia pointed to the spot where the first public Christmas tree was raised in 1441, taking the opportunity to tell the story of the merchants who shaped this city. Somehow, I’d ended up on a solo tour, providing space to ask endless questions without annoying other travellers. I tried to probe about the Christmas tree–how did that come about, exactly? But Julia could only share what was documented, what had been passed down. Perhaps other tour guides were more willing to sprinkle in made-up details (I hear this happens), but that wouldn’t have been right either. I wanted true representations.
Fascinating as Julia’s tour was (and it really was interesting), I wanted sweeping stories–be they legend or history. I wanted to discover the characters, narratives, and folklore that made Tallinn tick. The history of Tallinn was fascinating, but it didn’t quite scratch my itch for great stories.
And so, off I went on a quest for stories, searching beyond the sights for the legends that bring this city to life.
At the corner of Pikk and Hobusepea Street, there’s a statue of a man peering through opera glasses atop an Art Nouveau building decorated with swirling patterns and carvings of faces and fish. If you weren’t looking for the Old Town Pervert, you wouldn’t have noticed him. A merchant had the bust created so that his leering neighbour would be confronted by his reflection the next time he tried to get a glimpse of the merchant’s wife getting dressed. This was the kind of thing I was looking for, this relic from an argument between neighbours, the character of this unsavoury man now immortalised in stone. It was a good start.
There was something else I wanted to see, but it would have to wait for nightfall.
I was in Tallinn just a few days before Midsummer, when the days are long and the nights are short, so the sun set well after 10 pm. I tried not to twist an ankle on the deeply-cobblestoned paths, and felt my heart flutter at a mixture of the steep incline and the anticipation of an eerie nighttime excursion–alone.
At the top of the hill appeared the haunting glow of three faceless monks–one waiting, one praying, one observing–the bronze statues towering above as light spilt from the open gaps where their faces should be, everything else plunged into the darkness that had finally arrived. This was the Danish King’s Garden. I took out my phone (creating a fourth source of light), and read about the legends that swirl around this place: how during the Danish invasion, the Danish flag (the oldest in the world) was born in this very spot, after fluttering down from the sky.
The myriad ghost stories centred here, particularly one about a monk. I don’t believe in ghosts, so why was the sight of teenagers, joking on the garden wall, drinking from soft drink bottles that definitely did not contain soft drinks, so reassuring? These monks were so tall. So looming. Perhaps it was the memory of that Doctor Who episode where the stone angels come to life that was keeping me on edge.
I stayed to read more, despite the fear. Unease crept up as I read about a ghostly monk who could be violent, who sometimes appeared with blood on him, who may have been the spirit of a novice who was formerly an executioner’s apprentice. Perhaps the monk statues should feel protective, but in this darkness with their green glow, they made the ghost stories feel immediate. Threatening.
I descended the hill, giddy with my own bravery, and found myself right in front of a Gothic building with a curiously blacked-out window at the top. 16 Rataskaevu Street. I’d passed this place earlier, but it was so different at night. This was the site of another legend, the story of the Devil’s wedding party. The story goes that the owner of the guest house allowed the Devil to stay, and agreed not to look into the room–a promise which he, of course, broke. When he peeked in through the keyhole of the room, he saw the Devil’s wedding celebrations underway.
The sinister window that was sending chills down my spine now has curtains painted onto the glazing to stop passers-by from seeing in. I could hardly stand to look at the window, imagining revellers from hell dancing around a Medieval room, the bride of Satan surely dressed in black, holding a bouquet of deadly nightshade. It looked like you could still stay here, and I wondered if I’d ever be brave enough.
My heart was thumping as I returned to my room. The pharmacy and the Old Town pervert had been interesting, but this was different. Why? Because I had really felt something. And that, ultimately, is why I am completely obsessed with stories, why I spend so much time with my head in a book–because of the emotions they stir. My story adventure was well underway.
In the morning, the old staircase of the Telegraaf Hotel offered a healthier route to breakfast than the lift. It was grand, the walls painted butter yellow. This historical building was once a telegraph and post office. Yet, at the bottom, a plaque on the wall told a story that suddenly filled the stairwell with ghosts.
In December 1924, Communist rebels attempted to take over this building so they could send a telegram to the Soviets–part of a plot to overthrow the Estonian government. By chance, a famous Estonian military commander happened to be passing. He shot a rebel on this very staircase as the man took aim at him from above, and took back control of the building. The coup failed.
My footsteps echoed in the staircase, the ghosts of Estonian history lingering. I’d seen plenty of evidence of the long Soviet occupation that dominated the Baltics for much of the twentieth century, and standing at the site of such an important moment was chilling, knowing what was yet to come. I looked back up through the staircase, the scene playing out so clearly in my mind. A few other guests walked along the adjoining corridor, and I wondered if they had any idea about what had happened here a century ago.
These stories of Soviet history were all over Tallinn. In the museums, in the way that the old city walls are reinforced with concrete, in the trinkets that fill cabinets in antique shops. And I wondered whether these stories are easier to give a solid shape to than those earlier tales, the history being that much more recent and well-documented.
Sitting in a famous café, Café Maiasmokk, where the carefully preserved interior showcased cabinets filled with its famous marzipan creations, I looked through the spokes of a teacup Ferris wheel in the window. Right outside was a protest against the war in Ukraine, stretching across the façade of the Russian Embassy. I’d talked about this a little with Julia and other locals–the shadow of Estonia’s most threatening neighbour. How did it feel, I wondered, to have that in the back of your mind, and to live in a city where local folklore intermingles with the stories of occupation? They just try to get on with life, a couple of people told me.
It was with all this in mind that I travelled to Riga, Latvia, another Baltic city that was only a few hours away, in search of more Baltic stories. My friend had told me about a guided sightseeing trip she went on, so I thought Why not? Perhaps I’d find some more tales along the way.
When we pulled up at the Latvian border, our tour guide Ruta opened up the minibus and brought us to the main road, which we’d been driving along. This, she told us, was the site of the Singing Revolution that took place all the way through Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. A daisy chain of people had held hands along the Baltic Way in protest against Soviet rule, shortly before its collapse. I’d seen for myself how long the road connecting Tallinn and Riga was, and how immense this feat must have been. Had storks and cranes paced through fields then, too, walking alongside the chain of people?
I’d seen photographs of the singing revolution in the KGB cells in Tallinn, and would later see a video in a museum in Riga, but it was standing here that was so moving. The determination all those people must have had to put their bodies on the line for a singing protest. I got a sense of how exposed they would have been. How important the hand next to them might have felt.
After some more poking around the Latvian countryside, the final stop before Riga was the Sigulda bobsleigh track, built by the Soviet Union in 1986 in a bid to win more Olympic medals. We took the lift up to the top, peering down the steeply pitched track, its harsh concrete nakedness on show without its icy winter coat.
I walked down the luge track, marvelling at the tight twists and sharp drop over the edge, thinking about what an odd parting gift it was from the Soviet Union. As we walked down this concrete structure, I wore a flower crown of daisies and red clovers. Ruta had taught me to make it while we sat cross-legged in a field at an earlier stop, explaining how they’d all make these on Midsummer in a few days, and how lovers would go out into the forest claiming to be looking for flowering ferns. The flower crown felt like pretty odd attire for the bobsleigh track, and yet here it was again, just like the Medieval walls in Tallinn that were reinforced with Soviet-era concrete–Baltic tradition butting up against stories of the Soviet occupation.
The next day, I sat in a basement room in Riga with a glass of black liquid that smelt like cough syrup, poured out for me by Eva, my guide on an Old Town walking tour. The drink was Black Balsam, a liqueur made from herbs and spices, and it came delivered with a story. In 1752, a pharmacist created this concoction, which he claimed cured all sorts of ailments. The legend goes that the Russian Empress Catherine the Great had a terrible stomachache while she was visiting Riga, and a dose of Black Balsam cured her. Drinking down the liquid, I could imagine the scene. It certainly tasted like medicine anyway.
Eva walked us through old Riga, painting a picture of Medieval life just as Julia had done for me in Tallinn. She led us past the Swedish Gate and told the story of the local executioner who had lived above. He was a lonely man, she said–who would want to be friends with an executioner? But he had a romantic side. Every time he had to carry out an execution, it’s said that he put a red rose in his window. Eva told this particular story with a heavy dose of scepticism, as perhaps legends should be told, but the story span in my head. I could picture the executioner. I was at once furious that he felt he had any right to those emotions, yet intrigued by that show of humanity, and an image of this person grew in my head. What a fascinating character he must have been, if the story was true.
As I left the Medieval buildings of the Old Town, I was confronted by a towering statue. A woman made of copper, holding aloft three golden stars–the three historical regions of Latvia. She stood on a plinth surrounded by sculptures symbolising Latvian strength and independence. This was the Freedom Monument.
Standing before her, I imagined for a moment I was in Riga a few decades earlier, when it was occupied by the Soviet Union. I could see how this statue’s imposing height, a constant reminder for Latvians of the freedoms that had been torn away, would irk the Soviet occupiers. The Soviets couldn’t demolish it–that would have risked an uprising, after the public had spent their own money on the monument in 1935, the statue marking Latvia’s first period of independence. And so, the Soviets attempted to control the narrative, declaring that the woman was Mother Russia holding the three Baltic states in her hands. Looking at the statue for too long was forbidden, her importance minimised.
Gazing up in awe at the Freedom Monument, thinking about all the tales I’d chased, I thought about how the stories of Estonia and Latvia have been subject to manipulation under occupation. How even this towering monument was brought under Soviet control, and has now broken free to tell the story of Latvian independence once again. I couldn’t look away from her. She had seen so much. She was holding those stars up so proudly.
I’d come to the Baltics wanting to chase exciting tales, but while I’d been doing that, something else had happened. I’d gained a new understanding of the importance of story and of how both countries have taken back control of their own narratives after such a long period of occupation.
I’d wanted to find stories that would make me feel something deeply–but perhaps I needed the other pieces of the puzzle too, the context that made these tales really mean something. Julia, Ruta, and Eva’s tours set a backdrop, gave me a deeper understanding of the context, and showed me why these stories matter.
Ultimately, if I’d been sitting at home reading about a ghost monk in Tallinn, I’d probably have forgotten it again in an instant. But standing there, in the darkness of night and almost alone, three faceless monks watching over me, the stories gripped me and have not let go since. The same goes for the Freedom Monument–standing before her and imagining that invisible Soviet force field of control made me feel so much more than I would reading about it in a history book. Taking the time to understand the world around these stories–and to sit quietly within their shadows–allowed me not just to hear the legends and stories of the Baltics, but to feel them in my very bones.
