(Excerpted from my book Our Summer in Estonia: Amazon.com)
One of the delightful aspects of the lifestyle we espouse, going anywhere in the world each summer and renting for at least three months, in lieu of owning a second home, taking cruises or going on tours, is the accidental, spontaneous, occurrences that lead us to discoveries and people that otherwise are never experienced by the general tourist. Our coming home from Lahemaa National Park and deciding to detour north to the Baltic coast and the village of Viinistu is a classic example. A small guide book obtained at the Estonian national museum KUMU mentioned the location as the site of an unusual development, the creation of a museum exclusively for Estonian art. What makes it so extraordinary was that at the time we stopped, Viinistu could not have had more than 100 residents, and is located "totally nowhere."
Arriving late in the day we rushed to the site of the Viinistu Art Museum, in an abandoned fish processing plant. We were the only patrons. Inside, the building was enormous, twenty five foot ceiling, temporary lighting, walls recently whitewashed, and not all of them at that, and a dampness from sea beginning to set in for the night.Yet the walls were already displaying a large number of comtemprary art pieces.
A picture shows Elysee sitting on concrete suitcases, an outdoors art installation, with the museum building in the background. You can just feel the remoteness of this extraordinary place for a museum. The suitcase exhibit reminded me of photographs in the Estonian Occupation Museum of abandoned suitcases, left behind by Estonians who were being transported in freight cars to labor camps in Russia. Only notified the day before they were ordered to pack up their things, and later finding out only one case would be allowed.
This place, this idea for an Estonian Art Museum, is the vision of an extraordinary Estonian Jaan Manitski.
Jaan had been born in Viinistu during WWII. His father was a fisherman. As the Russian were advancing west, during 1944-45, pushing the Germans out of the Baltics, knowledgeable and capable Estonians, taking advantage of the chaos, tried to flee the country. They knew what was coming. Russian occupation. Jaan's father put the family on his small fishing boat and fled across the Baltic Sea at night to Finland, and later continued west finally settling as a refugee in Sweden. That's where Jaan grew up went into business, and became successful as the business manager of the colossally successful Swedish singing group ABBA.
With Estonian independence Jaan returned to his birthplace and immediately began to make a difference. He was their first Foreign Minister, bought and resuscitated a major Estonian newspaper, is restoring an historic island off the coast, opened a restaurant in his birthplace Viinistu and has a goal of building a major museum dedicated to Estonian art in the former fish factory.
Elysee and I were privileged to spend the late afternoon with Jaan, drinking a few glasses of wine and listening to the story of his remarkable life. Here's to Jaan. I salute you once more.
The pictures are: Inside the museum and Jaan with Elysee on the Baltic coast, and although you cannot make it out Jaan's island is in the background about a three Km away.
