Tallinn & a portrait of the little country that could

Are we at the right place? A middle-aged lady in a jacket as fair as her blonde tresses asked. We were at Gate 22 in Helsinki Airport, waiting for our flight to Tallinn to take off. There was nobody else.

By then we've checked at least thrice, and assured her that it's still early, probably. We learnt that she's been leaving in Ottawa, Canada, for the past 24 years and that she's headed back to Estonia to see her mother over the festive season. I regretted not pursuing the conversation further, because I'll never find out why she left. 24 years ago was when Estonia regained its independence upon the implosion of the Soviet Union.

From Soviet-imposed obscurity (there was no such country in the atlas, published 1989, which my Dad bought me as a child), Estonia has since become the foremost Baltic Tiger, the little country that could. While Estonia's land area is 63 times that of Singapore, Estonia's 1.3 million souls is more than quadrupled by Singapore's 5.5 million.

So who are these plucky people who've defied the odds?

Below: Tallinn's old town, a jewel box of handsome facades, narrow alleys and lofty spires.

The Estonian tongue belongs to the Finno-Ugric group, which is quite unlike most other European languages. Finnish and Hungarian are two other well-known members of this language group. No other Finno-Ugric speakers have achieved statehood, which for the Estonians has been briefer (in 2015 totalling 45 years over two spells - 1918 to 1939, and since 1991) than for Singaporeans (50 years). Foreign rule predominated for much of Estonian history - Danish, German, Swedish and most recently Russian.

Tallinn in fact betrays the Danish strain in the city's heritage, taani in Estonian being Danish and linnus being castle, although until 1917 the city was known as Reval. Perched astride the trade routes linking the Baltic Sea to the Russian interior, Tallinn had a long history of inhabitation. Like the written histories of most other urban settlements in the southeastern Baltic littoral before their absorption into national states, Tallinn progressed from being an outpost of the northern crusades against the pagan Balts and Slavs in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, to prosperous members of the mercantile pan-Baltic Hanseatic League in the late medieval and early modern periods, and then to pawns vied over by the emerging regional behemoths of Romanov Russia and Hohenzollern Prussia.

Below: one of the ways leading up to Toompea, the upper part of the Old Town.

We spent much of our time in Tallinn in the Old Town, which has been divided into upper and lower parts. The upper part, known as Toompea, was reached by a long sloping street and was where the Danes set up after winning control of the city in the twelfth century. From the Kohtu viewpoint on Toompea, an impressive panorama unfolded of terracotta roofs punctuated by soaring spires and brooding bastions. There tourists and gulls flock, the former for vistas and the latter victuals, generously strewn in crumbs along the stone ramparts.

Above: sharing the panorama from Kohtu viewpoint on Toompea with curious feathered companions; (bottom-most) not the only Alexander Nevsky Cathedral we'll be seeing on this trip. The cathedral, completed in 1900 under the Russians, was named after the Novgorodian prince who famously defeated the northern crusaders on Lake Peipsi in 1242.

Below: Elsewhere in the Old Town, there was hardly a view that didn't contain a church spire. While this, and Tallinn's crusader roots, may point towards the city's deep religiosity (or its unflattering flatness), a 2011 survey found that Estonians (of whom only 20% agreed that religion played an important part of their lives) were possibly the least religious people in the world. A history of being under the thumb of foreigners who were either fanatics (crusaders) or godless (Soviets) probably didn't help also.

But medieval heritage, aptly represented by dim, elk sausage-serving taverns advertised unenthusiastically by hooded hangman-promoters, has helped the city embrace modern tourism. It used to be largely Finnish and Russian tourists who visited Tallinn. We found Chinese and Korean groups, two Chinese restaurants nestled in arched alleys and an Irish pub fronted by a Scotsman trawling the Town Square for customers. Amidst all this, wifi was ubiquitous. Nearly all restaurants offered it. Malls, too. It is not without reason that another of the country's sobriquet is e-Stonia.

Above: Much of the walls which used to surround the Old Town still stand. Some parts have been incorporated into parkland, others house shops selling souvenirs, flowers and knitted wear.

Below (top to bottom): the Christmas market on the Town Square; one of the many medieval get-ups in the shadow of the Town Hall; the dim, elk sausage-serving tavern in question - "no we don't have a menu", says the waitress at the doorway; a 30-piece matryoshka doll set going for 1,300 euros.

Estonia, and Tallinn, has always functioned as a window to modernity for the region. 300 years ago, Peter the Great ordered the construction of St Petersburg on the delta of the river Neva, over 300 kilometres to Tallinn's east, for this very reason. The site of the Neva was Peter's second choice. His first was, at that time, occupied by the Swedes.

This other site was none other than Tallinn. The eastern Baltic shores would certainly look very different today if Peter had had his way.