Yep, that's a sculpture of a sculptor. I found this gem nestled in a park in Tallinn - just outside of Kadriorg Palace - on my last morning in the country. It was one of the last things I saw before flying out of Estonia, and I found it strangely appropriate. You see, by the time I found this sculpture, I actually recognised its subject (in name, at least)... from other sculptures.
Quite often, in my rambles, I would come across a monument or sculpture that was originally created by an Estonian sculptor, before being destroyed by the Soviets and rebuilt after Estonia reclaimed its independence, and quite a few times the original "author" was none other than Jaan Koort. Heck, my accommodation when I first got to Estonia was right next to his deer sculpture in Tallin's Old Town.
The thing is, there are stacks of statues and sculptures in Estonia. They're all over the place. Walk through any given park in any given town and you're bound to come across a monument of some sort. Most of them are statues of people who contributed to Estonia's scientific knowledge, literary heritage or culture.
Like these two:
That guy at the top, Ferdinand Veiki, was a puppeteer (the founder of a puppet theater). Raymond Valgre was a composer of "pop" music. You would never get sculptures of people like that in Australia. We just don't think of our cultural history that way.
Did you carry the sick and wounded through battle fields on the back of a donkey? Well, then we'll give you a statue. Were you a monarch nominally in charge of the country? Then I suppose you should also get a statue. Were you some public figure who could afford to donate important things to the city? Okay, you can have a statue, too. You were really good at cricket? Well, of course you can have a statue! You discovered a breakthrough in the genetic coding of sea sponges that could potentially save thousands of lives? That's really nice, but no statue, sorry. You were what? The founder of the most influential theater company in Australian history? Pffft! No statue for you.
Not so Estonia. They happily and willingly celebrate every citizen who contributed, well, anything. Scientists, poets, playwrights, newspaper editors, athletes... sculptors.
Then there are the "big guns". Like this guy:
Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald - the son of a shoemaker who wrote a poem and went on to have a street named after him in almost every second town in Estonia. I saw about three or four statues dedicated to him during my two weeks in that "Great Little Country", and his name just kept popping up on maps all over the place - along with the names of Lydia Koidula (I saw her statue in Pärnu), Johann Köler (Viljandi), Carl Robert Jackobson (I'm pretty sure he was in Viljandi, too), August Weizenberg (I didn't actually see his statue, but I saw some of the statues he "authored")...
Who were these people? Writers, artists and scholars, mostly. Sure, they were also political activists, in one way or another, but it was their cultural output that earnt them the streets and statues. Their works became vitally important to the Estonian people during the cultural revolution/National Awakening. When the country needed to say "Look, this is us, this is ours, we have a vibrant culture all of our own", these writers and artists gave them works to hold up, like a mirror, to their budding nation to see a reflection that wasn't German, Swedish or Russian - it was Estonian.
When you think about, that's something worth celebrating in stone and street.
Having grown up in Australia, where we're only proud of Australian things if they involve a ball or a battle of some description, it was strangely refreshing to see a country so thoroughly in love with it's own culture and the people who contributed towards it. Maybe, one day, when Australia grows up and has it's own "National Awakening", we'll have statues of Ray Lawler and streets named after Oodgeroo Noonuccal.
Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?
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