Hiiumaa

Hiiumaa rose out of the Baltic about 8,500 years ago as the land lifted after the retreat of the ice, and the first seal hunters camped on the Kõpu Peninsula around 5500 BC, on shores now far from the sea. The island first appears in writing as Dageida in 1228, when German crusaders conquered it with the rest of Estonia, and in 1254 it was divided between the Bishopric of Ösel-Wiek and the Livonian Order. Around the beginning of the 16th century Tallinn's merchants, eager to make the dangerous shoals off Kõpu safer for Hanseatic shipping, built the stone tower that became the Kõpu lighthouse.

Under the Swedish name Dagö the island belonged to Sweden from 1563 to 1721 and then passed to the Russian Empire. It had a large Swedish-speaking population, but in 1781 about a thousand Swedish peasants were ordered off the island to settle in Ukraine; only about half reached the end of the winter journey to what became Gammalsvenskby, and the Hill of Crosses near Kärdla grew from the cross they raised as they left. Countess Ebba Margareta Stenbock built the manor at Suuremõisa in the 18th century, and in the 19th century iron lighthouses ordered from Paris went up at Tahkuna and Ristna.

German forces took the island in 1917 in Operation Albion, and it joined independent Estonia in 1918. Soviet occupation in 1940 was followed by German occupation in 1941 and Soviet rule again from 1944, and the surrounding waters were heavily mined. From 1944 to 1991 Hiiumaa was closed to foreigners and to most mainland Estonians, and the ruined forts and towers of the Soviet border guard still stand on the northern coast.

Hiiumaa people are known for their humour, much of it aimed at themselves and at their neighbours on Saaremaa, with whom there is a long, friendly rivalry. Many speak their own Hiiu dialect alongside standard Estonian, and the island is part of the B7 network of the larger Baltic islands. Life is close to nature: forests of pine and deciduous trees cover much of the island, and its fauna includes elk, red and roe deer, wild boar, lynx and, again in recent years, wolves and bears.

Memory of the Swedish past runs through the landscape, from the Swedish name Dagö to the Hill of Crosses, where visitors still leave crosses in memory of the exiles of 1781, whose descendants were allowed to leave Soviet Russia for Sweden in 1929. In 1944 nearly all of Estonia's remaining Swedes were evacuated or fled to Sweden.

Literature has a home on Kassari, where a museum remembers the writer Aino Kallas and Oskar Kallas. The lighthouses are the island's emblems: Kõpu, Tahkuna and Ristna each mark a different headland, and Kõpu, in use since 1531, is one of the best-known symbols of the island.

Hiiu County, made up of Hiiumaa and the small islands around it, is the smallest of Estonia's fifteen counties in both area and population. Kärdla, the only town, has a little over 3,000 inhabitants, and the rest of the island lives in the small boroughs of Käina and Kõrgessaare and in scattered villages — Suuremõisa, with about 300 people, is the largest village in the municipality, and Kassari has about 300 in four villages.

The economy rests on tourism, livestock, farming, fishing and fish processing. Tourism is mostly seasonal, and the trend has been towards smaller farms and more tourism; the island council has also agreed to the construction of a wind farm. A bridge to the mainland is occasionally proposed, but for now daily life is set by the ferry timetable, with car space hard to find on summer weekends.

The year swings between a busy summer, when holiday homes fill and the beaches of Tahkuna and Kõpu draw visitors, and a long, quiet winter. In hard winters the sea freezes and a 26.5-kilometre ice road, the longest in Europe, may be opened from Rohuküla, letting cars cross the frozen Baltic.

The island eats from the sea and the farm. Smoked cooked plaice is a traditional summertime delicacy. Baltic herring (räim), the national fish, and sprats (kilu) appear on the cold table with pickles, sausages, potato salad and rosolje, a salad of beetroot, potatoes and herring, and spiced salted sprats on an open sandwich with a slice of boiled egg — kiluvõileib — are a classic appetiser.

Inland, the staples are the Estonian ones: black rye bread with almost every savoury meal, pork, potatoes, barley and dairy from the island's livestock. Pancakes (pannkook) are a favourite, served in harbour pubs such as the one at Orjaku on Kassari, which also serves fish. At Christmas blood sausage (verivorst), jellied pork (sült) and sauerkraut with roast potatoes come to the table.

Places to eat are few outside Kärdla, which has the widest choice, and tourism — and with it much of the restaurant trade — is mostly seasonal. Beer is the usual drink with food.