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The Great Northern War, I refer of course not to the local difficulties between the Picts and Scots, or even to the social divide between Middlesborough and Newcastle, but to the early 18th Century difference of opinion between Russia and Sweden. Sweden then of course included the eastern province that we call Finland today, and also the Baltic states. Russia’s Peter the Great, formed a coalition with Denmark, Norway, Saxony, Poland and Lithuania to face down the Swedes. At the close of the war Sweden packed-up and went home refusing ever to fight again and have been ‘neutral’ ever since.
As a direct result of all that there is a strong Swedish influence in Estonia as well as the Russian influence from two periods, that of Peter the Great who built a palace here and the more recent history of annexation from the end of World War II until 1991.
The city itself is divided into two parts the old and the...