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This is a birch bark notebook which “Viktor” crossed out days whilst in exile. The 20 September 1942 was the last time that he crossed a day out, as he sadly died of TB three days later. That’s all the museum says, a hopeless lack of information and half a story.

However, a bit of research shows that there’s far more information known that the museum tells visitors. This belonged to Viktor Köster, born on 13 April 1921, who was deported in June 1941 with his mother Hildegard Köster to Ust-Churulka, Novosibirsk Oblast. This is located around half-way between Tallinn and St. Petersburg, relatively near to the Estonian border with Russia. Viktor died of tuberculosis on 23 September 1942 and his mother died of the same disease one year later, on 26 September 1943. Viktor’s father was arrested in 1941 and sentenced to death on 28 February 1942, with the killing taking place on 1 April 1942.

I did wonder for a while about the purpose of putting a stamp album on display, but this one is really rather cunning, indeed “a plan so cunning, you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.”

Unfortunately, due to the clumsy way that this museum seems to tell its stories, it just refers to the owner being “Karl” even though I think the museum knows the surname. Anyway, the text of the exhibit notes that he was arrested in the summer of 1950 as he wanted to flee to Finland, so he was sentenced to 30 years of hard labour. He then promptly attempted to escape on three occasions, he certainly sounds like a strong and courageous individual. The museum then states that this was a way to get information and documents back from Siberia, but I don’t know if this was the case with Karl and without a surname, I can’t find out anything more about him. But, I still like the stamp album as a way to transport hidden documents and I think it’s original.

This museum doesn’t make it easy to find out more about their treasures, the numbering system by items requires finding them on the phone they give you which promptly bounces around thinking a visitor has moved room. I’m all for the radical system of putting details about an object next to it, but there we go. Anyway, after persisting, there is much more to some of the exhibits at this museum than might be apparent. The Association of Estonians in the UK was founded in November 1947 and it still exists, publishing Eesti Hääl (Estonian Voice) for members and acting as a way of meeting other Estonians. This membership card is from Bourton, although this particular branch closed in 1948 when the Estonian agricultural workers left.

Unfortunately, trade unions in the UK were not all welcoming to the European Voluntary Workers who came to the country, in this case from Project Balt Cygnet, and they were described as “hostile” to the refugees. Manny Shinwell had an answer to that, he forced the workers to join trade unions even if they didn’t want to, which I suppose appeased the unions somewhat. Despite the trade unions seeking to harm the project, it was an exceptional piece of work from Attlee’s Government to tackle the post-war refugee problem and to help Estonians, and those from other Baltic countries. It also helped filled vacancies in the healthcare, textile and agricultural communities.

I rather like seeing bits of the Berlin Wall and I was certainly supplied with enough bits of it when I visited Berlin a few weeks ago, although I doubt anyone would be surprised to read that’s the best place to see them. There are also bits I’ve seen in a Las Vegas toilet, the Imperial War Museum, Montreal, the JFK Presidential Library and Schengen, although perhaps the highlight of them all is in a Lewisham shopping centre. There’s a Wikipedia page about these and this segment in Tallinn is from Potsdamer Platz and was a gift from the Senate of Berlin. I partly wonder whether these bits of wall should be protected by moving them inside, but since it is a wall that was designed to be outside, I can see the logic here.

There will be more to follow on some of the individual exhibits that interested me in this museum, apparently the first structure built in the country for the purpose of being a museum. This is one of the museums I didn’t get to last time using the Tallinn Card and I thought it would be one that I engaged with as I’m more than a little interested in the period under communism. This is a theme explored by numerous museums in Poland and it’s an intriguing story.

Reading through the reviews, there are a few people who had a similar experience to me, but we’re in a considerable minority as most reviewers seem to really like the museum. I couldn’t engage with it at all though and I got fed up with how the museum had been curated and gave up after thirty minutes.

This is the reason I struggled to engage, most things are audio based in the museum and the technology wasn’t very robust in terms of how it jumped thinking I had moved room. I like walls of text with the option of audio rather than what felt like walls of audio with minimal text. Even though the museum was relatively quiet, there was a logistical issue that visitors were clumping together in the same spot, so it was hard to see the exhibits. Unlike with text, where it’s possible to go to another room and read the information there before returning, the technology wasn’t set up to work like that here. A few people have said they would have preferred if the audio speed could be made faster, which would have been useful as I routinely listen to podcasts at either *1.5 or *2 speed in order to get through them quicker. Maybe TikTok has reduced my concentration span somewhat.

There weren’t that many exhibits on display, so the museum was very much dependent on its audio guide to tell the story of the Soviet occupation from the perspective of eight individuals. I did want to listen to a couple of these audio stories outside of the museum, but they’re not on the web-site even in an abbreviated form. I suspect that the stories were really very interesting, but the presentation of them didn’t work for me, but it evidently does for the majority of visitors. Perhaps on a more important point (or to me), the museum did seem to try and tell visitors what they should be thinking and although I agreed with the sentiment of the whole institution, I’d rather be told what the facts are rather than what told what I should be thinking.

Anyway, a few photos of some of the exhibits to come now in this riveting blog. As an aside, this reminds me that I must revisit the Museum of Occupation in Riga, Latvia as they had a similar set-up (although it was text rather than audio, so I got on better there) as they’ve now opened up their new site and permanent exhibition.

This is the Tallinn Fotografiska, a combination of art gallery, shop, restaurant, cafe and events space. I got in free of charge with the Tallinn Card but otherwise it’s quite a punchy £15 or so to get in, which feels a bit too much to me for Tallinn. Having noted that, the target audience they’re aiming for is probably not entirely price sensitive although most of the negative reviews are about the cost and not the contents. There are two floors of exhibitions and these are rotational, with the three exhibitions in early February 2025 being:

Peegel Pildis
Feng Li
Shepard Fairey

The whole atmosphere is laid back and welcoming, with the signage being clear and well laid out. I can see the interest in coming back regularly as the exhibitions are ever changing, but I can’t see many people spending more than about an hour here. I was glad that I popped along, it’s located near the city’s main railway station and the Shepard Fairey exhibition was the one that I enjoyed the most. And, visitors are allowed to take photographs, although it be an awkward situation for the gallery to try and stop them.

The third exhibition at Fotografiska was about sport, marking that this year Tallinn is the European Capital of Sport. It’s based around the work of Lembit Peegel and Pildis is Estonian for “in the picture”.

This reminds me of my friend Dave Morgan on one of his walking exploits, not least one of the Spine Races that he’s just completed. He’s that bit braver than I am, although I know that I set the bar really high.

Perhaps inevitably, I’m not really going to have a close interest in Estonian sports from the 1970s to the 1990s, but the imagery is human and shows the personality of the sportspeople. There was a freedom for Estonian photographers specialising in areas such as sport and culture, as they didn’t have to get too caught up in journalistic limitations that the Soviet influenced regime might have placed on them. There is quite a lot of raw emotion visible in a number of the photos and the exhibition explains the important role that he had in the newly independent Estonia in the 1990s and forging that new national identity. I was more intrigued by this exhibition than I expected to be, it’s an interesting way of seeing the evolution of sport in Estonia and it gave the collection a real purpose. And good luck to Tallinn in their year as the Capital of European Sport, I hope that they concentrate on the toughest and most challenging of all sporting endeavours, namely long distance walking.

Following on from Shepard Fairey’s Photo Synthesis (which is on reflection a really rather good name for an exhibition), the next exhibition I meandered to at Fotografiska was photography by Feng Li.

It’s all very lovely, but I didn’t really find much to engage with here, although I like the collection of street art from around China. This felt to me like one of those exhibitions that would perhaps have a deeper meaning if shown in forty or fifty years time, being something of a snapshot of the era. There are some powerful street scene images of New York from the 1970s and 1980s that now seem to encapsulate the period rather well, but I couldn’t really get the irreverent excitement here.

I think it’s all a bit decadent for me, just a bit too jazzy. Unfortunately, there was no-one else visiting this exhibition for me to watch and see how they were engaging with the photos. It’s a nicely laid out space though, the lighting is at an appropriate level and there was information about the artist and the concept. But as I’m not an art critic, that’s as much as I can usefully put (and claiming any usefulness might be pushing things). I suspect that Bev and Susanna would have liked this.

I feel like I’ve only just finished writing up my last little adventure in Tallinn with Steve, Bev, Ross and Susanna. Anyway, I’m back in the city but on my own this time and that’s an opportunity to work through all the places that we didn’t have time to visit before. I received a discount of 20% off for filling in a survey about the Tallinn Card and so I’ve bought another one as they do represent decent value for money, so that’s three days of museums and galleries coming up.

There are two floors of exhibitions and they change every few months, so there’s no permanent exhibition here. I didn’t check in advance what was on display, but the first exhibition was from Shepard Fairey who I confess that I haven’t heard of. I’m not really very artistic, but new perspectives and all that.

I do though know one of the most important images of the Obama campaign and this was one of Fairey’s works.

If only. Just verging into politics for one moment, I looked at the on-line news edition of a couple of Estonian newspapers and I think I was surprised that there was nothing about the Trump administration, it was very focused on the Russian threat and other national and European news. All somewhat different from the UK news at the moment.

One in the “these sunsets are to die for” series by Fairey. It’s based around the old Soviet propaganda posters and uses a rather dark humour to bring awareness to pollution damaging the landscapes. The punchy message might be that pollution needs to be stopped and quickly, but there’s another one which is more that the environment is so damaged that it’s best to enjoy what we can now if it’s all going up in flames.

A beautiful ocean scene, with an oil rig.

There’s a lot of artworks with bold imagery going on.

The OBEY series is one of Fairey’s longest running themes, about questioning norms.

Fairey is American, but I can see why these Russian style images have a resonance in Estonia.

This wasn’t the best attended art exhibition that I’ve ever been to, but I rather liked it as it had a political edge which gives some meaning to arrangements. There were some documentaries playing about Fairey’s work, but they didn’t tackle his little issues with copyright over recent years and I only discovered that from subsequent reading up on him.