Why Tallinn is the first city whose streets on our website “StreetSpeaks” begin their story about the history of humankind?
Hometown of website’s authors
The creators of this website, who record the stories of streets, lanes, nooks, and squares, were born in Tallinn. The first city in which a person’s conscious life begins, where childhood and youth take place, is apparently the most important one. After all, as we know, we do not choose the place of our birth—therefore, it was meant to be. And for whom was it meant—ourselves, or someone else—who can say? And so, unlike Pyotr Vail, whose “Genius loci” lacks the writer’s own native city—the capital of our neighbors, Riga—we begin precisely with Tallinn.
Genius loci
Tallinn is by no means a world city. In fact, very few people even know of its existence or where it is located. A city becomes famous thanks to the great people whose fates are closely intertwined with it—thanks to those Vail called the “Genius loci”: Paris is Dumas, New York is O. Henry, Moscow is Bulgakov, Rome is Bernini, Athens is Plato, Jerusalem is Christ, Mecca is Muhammad. At first glance, Tallinn seems to have no such genius. This modest northern land has produced famous people of global renown, but no double-dash connection has formed between their names and the name of the city. And this is understandable, for, in the words of the storyteller Hans Christian Andersen, “It is no misfortune to be born in a duck yard if you hatched from a swan’s egg.” But the problem is that a swan will not live under burdock leaves in a swampy ditch—by its very nature it needs boundless spaces: sky and sea. Just like the geniuses of Riga—Isaiah Berlin, Sergei Eisenstein, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Vera Mukhina, Arkady Raikin, Leopold Bernstamm (author of the well-known monument to Peter I, which stood only briefly on Tallinn’s main square), Alexander Rizzoni (portraitist of Roman popes), Georg August Schweinfurth (founder of the oldest geographical society in Africa), and many others—they all flew from their native nests and made other points on the world map famous.
Tallinn does have its own genius loci!
And since no Cervanteses, Shakespeares, or Byrons—let alone Messiahs—not only did not live here, but their feet never even touched its medieval cobblestones, the name of Estonia’s capital does not shine in the starry sky of the world’s celebrated cities. Locals may be indignant—how can that be? After all, Tallinn is famous; our Old Town is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List! But, objectively speaking, Europe has other cities with well-preserved medieval fortifications—Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Visby, Carcassonne… Bricks and cobblestones alone are not enough; one needs the genius loci that breathes life into them. Yet Tallinn, like Vail’s Riga, has undergone a certain metamorphosis. They preferred to remain in the shadows, behind a mask of modesty uncharacteristic of capitals. They are silent cities, cities “sealed by seven locks.” Their genius loci are walled up in an invisible underground chamber, where they, like the stone giants chained in Pushkin’s famous fairy-tale adaptation, patiently wait for someone to descend into these dark cellars of history and bring to their lips a sip of living water…
Tallinn’s genius loci is a simple daisy
The genius loci of Tallinn is a daisy—a modest flower belonging to the heliotropes, the plants that always follow the sun. And now we invite you to take a journey into the underground vaults of history, thousands of years deep, from which stretch toward the light the roots of this flower—thanks to which, we believe, we have managed to dispel the dense veil of fog that hides from us the prehistory of these very ancient places. The story about the sun and its faithful companion, the daisy, can be read here.
