Street Art in Tallinn

 

One of my brothers and sister-in-law had visited Tallinn a year ago and raved about the street art there [1]. Actually, I only came back with one important photo of street art and when I showed it to them, they said, oh, we didn't see that one. But I missed the spontaneous strett art. Actions where artists really put art on the walls without completely having planned it for a client, like the example I'm showing here. Anyway, the picture itself on the wall is beautiful and I hope it stays there for a long time. And what else? I took a few more photos, which I'll come to in a moment.

But first I'd like to talk a little about Tallinn itself. Tallinn is the capital of Estonia [2] and thus also the most populous city in the country. Tallinn used to be called Reval. We'll look at Reval and Tallinn etymologically in a jiffy. For me as a child and teenager, Reval was more the name of a cigarette brand [3]. The Reval brand and the Roth Händle brand were considered strong, but I can't find out how strong, because the half-hearted conscience of industry and politics agreed on upper limits for tar content and nicotine levels instead of banning cigarettes altogether. There was a joke: "Anyone who smokes Reval will eat small children too." I think that all cigarette brands, no matter how "light", or smoking products in general are detrimental to health. I have just revived an old article about ginseng cigarettes, because the writing on the pack simultaneously lists health risks and makes claims about how much these cigarettes are good for your health [4]. In 1976 a Reval cigarette cost around €0.06 in Germany, now a cigarette costs €0.45 - still too cheap!

Tallinn means Danish castle. And that goes back to Danish rule after the Battle of Lyndanisse [5] in 1219. Reval comes from the Estonian Rafala. The German form Reval was used internationally (adapted in each case), because Tallinn received city and trading rights from Lübeck and the Hanseatic League in 1248. The place itself has certainly been inhabited for 5000 years.

And what else am I showing? A painting on the wall of a church; would you call anything but street art?! And historical at that! On my last trips I saw a lot of anti-Russian street art, i.e. politically motivated street art, which I did not see in Tallinn. The embassy and the outside walls are free of it, although the railings in front of the Russian Embassy are used for protests. And I took photos from the old pharmacy [6] looking outside through a fishbowl [7], the water was colored blue.

Links and Annotations:
[1] Here are some example from the net: https://www.visittallinn.ee/eng/visitor/ideas-tips/tips-and-guides/street-art-in-tallinn and https://streetartmap.com/tallinn/ ... as my article isn't about street art in sensu strictu.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallinn
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reval_(cigarette)
[4] Ginseng Cigarettes https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2024/12/ginseng-cigarettes.html
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lyndanisse
[6] I'll write later about the old pharmacy, which has been operating since 1582.
[7] And yes, I thought of Pink Floyd's „Wish You Were Here“, too.

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