Soomaa
National Park

In olden times, people living in Soomaa, whose feet got wet when they got out of their beds in the morning used to say: “Look! There’s a visitor in the room!” During the floods and high water, most of Soomaa is accessible by canoe, kayak, or dugout, and visitors are able to view areas that can otherwise only be reached in winter when everything is covered in snow and ice. The rivers as well as riverside floodplain meadows and bog forests have retained their natural appearance and pristine form. This means that during the high water, you can glide along a river and see animals and birds that otherwise hide from humans in the depths of the forests or in the shade of trees that line the banks of the rivers.

In springtime, the water level sometimes reaches so high that it carries off large stacks of firewood as well as lighter buildings. Rivers and floods have influenced the development and persistence of several Soomaa traditions. One of the most characteristic of these is the tradition of making dugout canoes and the skills necessary for making dugouts are being passed on to this day. In the past, people began preparing early for the floods that occurred at the beginning of spring. Their preparations included baking several batches of bread, tying stacks of wood to fences, lifting grain containers on top of trestles, and nailing crosswise boards on the floor in order to prevent the rising water from carrying the floors away. The high water sometimes persisted for as long as a couple of weeks. In Soomaa, even the dwellings were built differently than elsewhere in Estonia – with their front doors towards the river, since that was where all visitors came from and that was the way they went.