Hiiumaa
Hiiumaa island belongs to the group which has come to the forefront in many of my important works – and which I am connected with the least.
For a large part of its history, the island was empty, or had a sparsely populated settlement, which at the beginning tried to be more Swedish-speaking. During the reign of Catharine the Great the the Swedish settlement was brought to an end: they were simply deported to Ukraine. Even today one can find Estonian-Swedish loanwords on the steppes of Ukraine, though there are no Swedes there anymore.
Wide marshes are located in the middle part of the island, and a thousand vipers. Southern Hiiumaa is low and full of bulrush bushes, with villages wrapped in idyllic deciduous trees. Eastern Hiiumaa is a typical inland-ring which is a bit stuffy, some villages, and everywhere an encroaching thicket.
Western Hiiumaa stretches towards the west with a graceful wave of the hand, right in the middle of the Baltic Sea. This cape is untouched and magical, soft like velvet and soft like oil. Estonia’s most famous lighthouse glimmers on the elevated middle part of the cape, which in its own time lured the boats moving towards the reefs from the south in the direction of St. Petersburg.
Hiiumaa island is rough, rocky and extremely vivid: as if it was drawn in black and white. The island is saturated with morning light: with the sun rising from the sea and setting into the sea, which soften neither trees nor shadows, but whose tones the rocks make sharper than before.