A local joke #2
We knew we would not reach the capital of Estonia this summer, but we knew we could reach the south-western part, in other words, the islands. We decided to try to enter the small island of Ruhnu, in the middle of Riga Bay, an island especially interesting to the crew from Sweden, because Ruhnu was inhabited by people of Swedish origin until 1944 when they all fled for the Soviets. Today Ruhnu has 65 inhabitants. The island is only possible to reach from the sea in good weather because it is surrounded by rocks and shallows and the harbour is partly unsheltered. Here we found a few odd things. A harbourmaster who had just made a photobook about the island. A restaurant in a very old house, hard to find and with us as the only guests. A lot of strange things that really looked like good contemporary art but that we found out were local jokes. And in the woods a stinking garbage dump. On the beaches surrounding the island there was a stinking smell from layers of brown material, that, according to Albert, was of human origin, and not natural. One road, no police, no regular ferry, just an aircraft taking local people for a low cost. The lack of tourism since the ferry stopped going on scedule made the inhabitants suffer from low income. We found some strange objects that we considered maybe being art, but found out they were in fact local jokes. We were curious about to find out the driving force behind these ”local jokes” in Ruhnu. They were very inspiring.
We met some of the local people: a swedish speaking schoolteacher, the harbourmaster, a man building a stonefence, a woman in one of the two shops, a family who gave us lift to the harbour, some people giving us dinner at the restaurant. During our two days here we probably saw most of the inhabitants in this very small society.