The university city of Tartu is said to have a vaim or spirit to it. And yet when we visit Estonia’s second city, set astride the Emajõgi, the mother river, the place resists definition. Tartu presents many faces: a stroll along the tree-lined river in golden evening light, streets lined with wooden buildings, sculptures here and there, including the famous kissing-students statue, which was dwarfed by scaffolding and other civil works in the main square when we visited in 2023.
Tartu was gearing up to be the European cultural capital in 2024, and one hopes all went well. Perhaps, the lack of a coherence to Tartu is because the place formerly known as Dorpat has been invaded and destroyed several times over the centuries. In a way, it is amazing that anything still stands in Tartu after all the depredations it and its people have suffered.
A highlight of our visit was some hours spent at the national museum, in deep contemplation of Estonia’s history, reaching far back into Uralic times when migrants from western Siberia speaking a Finnic language reached this flat, forested and fertile land fringing the Baltic Sea after the ice age had ended.
To make sense of Tartu, the key to the city would be the iconic façade of the ülikool or university; its six Doric columns would be recognisable to every Estonian. I had seen it depicted in books long before I set eyes on this centre of learning.
Tartu's university facade dates from 1809
This was the home of Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876), known to biology students worldwide as “the father of embryology”. The Baltic German aristocrat determined that the mammal embryo passes through the stages of evolution of life from fish through to tadpole, reptile and then mammal, an extraordinary observation.
Academic pursuits aside, Tartu seems a city full of full of humour, starting with a house on a pronounced slant to the vertical in the townhall square. Now an art museum, this building is Estonia’s answer to the leaning tower of Pisa, although Tartu’s seems to have been a deliberate construction, and more recent.
Tartu’s existence dates back close to 2,000 years to a fort on a hill, now called the Toomemägi, or cathedral hill. Today it’s a nice spot for a stroll among the trees, grass, ruins and other buildings. Even so, the beating heart of Tartu is more likely today to be the cafés that students (and everyone else) frequent in Rüütli / Knight Street.
One has the feeling that if you sit long enough at an outdoor kohvik drinking coffee and using the free Wi Fi, someone you know will inevitably walk past. This, perhaps, is the spirit of Tartu. At least for this itinerant son and grandson of Estonian exiles, reconnecting with his heritage, and in the case of Tartu, the city where his grandfather was born.
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