With men often away, out at sea or working on the Estonian mainland, the women of this island have shaped and maintained local traditions for centuries
It’s Saturday evening in Tallinn, and the city is buzzing. The hop-off-hop-on cruise passengers are back on board, and the locals have reclaimed their city. Elegant couples wrapped in Burberry fill the galleries, enjoying the kind of art that would have earned the artists a hefty prison sentence—or worse—in Soviet times.
Those days are history, and Estonia’s capital is wearing its cosmopolitanism well, even leaping ahead of some of its west European counterparts with award-winning restaurants—including the two Michelin-starred 180 Degrees by Matthias Diether and the one-starred NOA Chef’s Hall—several über-trendy microbreweries, and a dazzling Kai Art Center, which opened in 2019. The past is there for all to see, in its gothic churches, baroque palaces, art nouveau theaters, and Soviet-era public buildings, but its eyes are set on the bountiful future that awaits it.
Estonia’s Isle of Women
Four or so hours by road and sea from Tallinn, Kihnu island wakes to a different world. Only 105 miles separate the two, but culturally you could measure the distance in as many light-years. Listed by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, Kihnu is remarkable for many reasons—people speak an ancient dialect that’s barely comprehensible on the mainland; women dress as they have for hundreds of years; weddings are three-day events that are as much pagan as Christian; children are more likely to spend their free time learning to dance, sing, and play the accordion than Instagramming; and there are no hotels on the island, just a handful of comfortable homestays hosted by the islanders. Perhaps most notable of all, though, is the fact that Kihnu is sometimes called the “isle of women,” because so few men live here.
