Aruküla - birthplace of Miina Härma - Väägvere - Vara Brigitta Church - Sookalduse yellow daffodils - Liivi museum - Alatskivi - Kallaste - Nina - Kolkja - Varnja

60 km

The first place of interest is located in Aruküla. The caves of Aruküla on the territory of 10 ha were formed as a result of quarrying sand. According to legends the underground passages led to the monastery of Kärkna and the manor of Raadi. The caves offered refuge from ancient raids. In some places the caves have sunk and it is dangerous to go into passages which are accessible. They form a labyrinth, supported by numerous columns, with the total length of 30 m and the height of 1.5-1.8 m. In the 19th century the caves became world famous thanks to H. Asmuss and C. Grewingk, the professors of Tartu University, who dug out Placoderm, from the Devonian era 400 million years ago. The collection of the excavated fossil fishes is displayed at the university geology museum being one of the most valuable exhibits there. The caves constitute a hybernation site for bats.

Driving along the road, we pass Kõrveküla which is well known for its school founded in 1716. In 1864 Miina Härma, the famous Estonian composer, conductor and organist was born into the family of the local schoolteacher. Later she studied composition and organ playing at the Conservatoire of St. Petersburg becoming the most distinguished lady-composer and organ player in Estonia. More than one hundred songs for choral singing and soloists constitute the best part of her work. The "Men's song", "When you come, come with flowers", the musical arrangement of the folklore melody "Tuljak" are now widely performed popular songs. The ancient schoolhouse, a private property, has survived and it has a memorial plaque on it.

In front of us there is a hillock - 86.1 m above sea level - Ingliste or Inglimägi from the top of which we can enjoy a view of Vooremaa. According to legends the glacial formations reminding us of loaves of bread are considered to be Kalevipoeg's furrows.

We reach the village of Väägvere which was first mentioned in the chronicles in 1582. In Estonia Väägvere has attained fame as an early centre of music thanks to its school, teachers and local music lovers. Since 1839 the Väägvere brass band has been playing until today. In 1846 David Wirkhaus (1800-1876) began to teach at the village school and he conducted the orchestra. His son David Otto Wirkhaus (1837-1912) conducted the orchestra at the contest during the first Estonian singing festival and won the honourable first prize. D. O. Wirkhaus was well known all over Estonia. He was the initiator of new brass orchestras and the conductor of the concerts at the following six all-Estonia singing festivals. In the former schoolhouse there is an exhibition (an affiliation of the Tartu County Museum) featuring the history of the village, the school and the Wirkhaus family.

Crossing the small Preedi river, we enter the municipality of Vara. Here the most interesting architectural monument is St. Bridget's church surrounded by ancient oaks and lime trees. In the churchyard we can find an ancient sacrificial oak (height - 24 m, circumference - 4.2 m). The first written data about the church date back to 1627. The present church was built in 1854-1855 to replace a former wooden church, which had burnt down. Until the second half of the 18th century people were buried in the churchyard, later to a graveyard not far from the church. Near the church there is a monument to those perished in the War of Liberation (1925, restored in 1988), in the graveyard - World War 2 soldiers. At the distance of about 3 km from the Vara road junction vast forests and moors cover the land. We drive through the village of Matjama with houses on both sides of the road - the so-called "street village" which is a typical type of a village in the area near Lake Peipus. Not far from the village at Sookalduse we find the largest boulder in the county of Tartu - Pollikivi, circumference - 29 m, height - 4.3 m, length - 13.7 m. As elsewhere in Estonia, legends tell that huge rocks are Kalevipoeg's sling stones. Round St. George's day a field of wild yellow daffodils (Narcissus pseudonarcissus) surprises the passers-by. At the end of the 19th century the farmer of Sookalduse Peep Sibul brought a single bulb from the Saare manor to his garden from where the flowers lavishly spread.

At the distance of 4 km from Koosa is the village of Rupsi. On the left side of the road there is a tenant farm Oja which was the home of the writers Juhan Liiv and Jakob Liiv. The Liivs family began to live here in 1866. Juhan Liiv spent his youth here, escaped to see the world and came back.

The Liivs museum occupies the farm-house, which we reach walking along the avenue of maples and lime-trees planted by Jakob in his childhood. The visitor can acquaint himself with the life and literary heritage of Juhan and Jakob Liiv. The barn-house on the Oja farm with its exhibits gives us a picture of the 19th century peasant life-style in the area near Lake Peipus. When the Liivs lived here, it was possible to see the lake. Now the ancient trees hide the view.

At Naelavere we cross a small river and reach Alatskivi, the most interesting place on our route. The two-fork primeval Alatskivi Valley starting from Pala and reaching Lake Peipus characterises the landscape. A five-kilometre-long route for ramblers has been marked out. In the valley there is the Alatskivi river (11 km) which is dammed to form a 20 ha lake the parts of which are called Veskijärv (Mill Lake) and Lossijärv (Castle Lake). To the north of the lake there is an ancient mound - the seat of the Estonian settlement dating back to the beginning of the second millennium. At the foot of the mound there is the Oak of Faithfulness (height- 25 m, circumference- 4.2 m) and the Red Spring. As the legend goes, the stronghold was built by Kalevipoeg and Sulevipoeg. When people came to the oak on St. John's night and gave an oath of loyalty to each other, nothing could break it. Even in 1960-1980 the bride and the bridegroom having their wedding ceremony in the Alatskivi castle came to oak. The Red Spring flowing from a sandstone rock his also given rise to legends and popular beliefs - the water had curative power, people used it for improving eyesight. It was used during baptization and even the local landlord asked his servants to bring drinking water from the spring. According to the legend there is an underground passage leading to Kallaste. We recommend that you should follow the route accompanied by an expert guide.

At the southern part of the valley there is a magnificent manor or the Alatskivi castle which was built in the second half of the 16th century and the first mention in the chronicles dates back to 1601 as Hof Alleskine. The earliest landlord was Johann Wrangler, later there were many the owners of the castle and the families Stackelberg and Nolcken were the last. In 1880-1885 Baron Arved von Nolcken from Luunja added the main building in the neogothic style with high vaulting, turrets and garrets. His example was the Balmoral castle, Queen Victoria's residence in Scotland. In interior design Tudor and Rococo styles prevail. The floor space in the castle is 1,215 m2 and originally there were 99 rooms. In 1921 the manor was expropriated. In 1920-1929 it was a schoolhouse, then the headquarters of the border guard service, the office of a cooperative of tractors and agricultural machinery, a horticultural state farm. At present the castle is being renovated. Some halls can be used as venues for concerts and exhibitions. The Nolckens laid out several parks, alley-ways, ponds. The total park area of 60 ha is also one of the main attractions. Further on there is a part of the park which is called "The Deer Garden". On top of Kirikumägi (Church hill) the Stackelbergs erected their family church in 1777-1782. The present church was reconstructed and extended two times in 1812 and 1866. In the 1970s burglary was repeatedly committed but in 1993 the church was fully restored. It is also known that pastor Joachim Rossihnius working here published protestant materials in the language of Southern Estonia before the Estonian literary language (based on Northern Estonian dialects) was finally established.

In the local graveyard we find Juhan Liiv's and Tõnis Laks's tombstones - the high obelisk with a basrelief portrait of J. Liiv (sculptor V. Mellik, 1924) and a monument to Tõnis Laks (sculptor Kristjan Raud, 1908, restored by E. Taniloo in 1991). Tõnis Laks was an educated tenant farmer at Alatskivi and his monument with chained hands symbolises the farmers' injustice in the 19th century.

Having seen Alatskivi, we find the road junction going back in the direction of Tartu and turn to the Kokora - Pala road. At the distance of 1.5 km near the mill of Paetskivi there is Kalevipoeg's bed which is a moreen hill where the ancient Estonians had built their relatively large fortress (2,200 m2). The builders made the slopes steeper and added "cushions" to the top which gave the people and idea of a bed.

As the legend goes, Kalevipoeg had returned from Russia and he was looking for a place to rest. He took a big log, scraped the ground to make a bed for himself.

According to archaeological evidence, the fortress was used in two periods - the first: 2200±500 B.C, the end of the early Iron Age, the second: the end of the first millennium AD. Among the archaeological finds we can see pieces of pottery, fragments of melting pots, iron knives, awls, spearheads, fishing loos. Most probably people left their settlement in the 12th century.

We continue our route along the border of the county in the direction of Kallaste.

At Kallaste we reach Lake Peipus. The border lake with its territory of 3,555 km2 is one of the largest lakes in Europe. 5000-7000 years ago it obtained its present size. The water body lying in the north-south direction consists of two big lakes the Great Lake and Lake Pihkva with a connecting strait-like small lake – Lake Lämmijärv – in between. We face the Great Lake. "Peipsi" is an ancient name of the people living here. The lake was called Peipus for the first time in 1400 (Peybas; Peupes, 1433; Peibas, 1449 and 1475; Peybasz, 1502; Beybasse, 1503; Rehesse, 1509; Beips, 1585; Peipus, 1684). In the first millennium AD the Slavs who reached the shores of the lake gave it a new name – the lake of Tshudes (13th century Tshudskoye ozero) after the name of Estonians in the Russian languages – tshudes.

Some figures characterising the lake may be of interest: length- 143 km, the longest width- 48 km, cathment area- 47,800 km2 (in Estonia 16,323 km2), 237 rivers flow into it (in Estonia 41), only the Narva river flows out of the lake. There are 29 islands with the total territory of 25.8 km2 in the lake, most of them in Lake Lämmijärv and Lake Pihkva. Five islands are populated. The wildlife in the lake is rich in species – 66 plant species, 900 taxa of algae, 160 taxa of zooplankton, 100 species of birds. Thanks to sufficient plankton and bottom fauna the lake is rich in fish (37 species) – smelt, whitefish, perch, pike and bream. In Europe Lake Peipus is one of the richest lakes with the catch of 30 kg/ha.

Already in 1638 when auditing of the land registrars was carried out, the same fact was stressed. Also, Hupel in his description of Estonia and Livonia in the 18th century mentioned the lake's extraordinary richness in fish. Beside professional fishermen, the lake is an especially popular place for amateur ice-hole fishing in winter.

It is quite surprising that there are relatively few legends connected with the lake. According to one of them a sorcerer lived on the bottom of the lake. His name was Peipus (Peepus, Peipa). Another story tells that a girl who drowned in the attacking waters of the lake gave her name to it:

"It was the eve of St. John's day. Village people were in the fields, some of them in the farmyards. A farmhand, a girl, was raking in the field with a horse. Her master was near the farmhouse. Suddenly he noticed a man approaching him, a big black ox after him, a huge whirlpool from the lake after the ox. The man shouted: "Escape, escape, the lake is coming!" All the villagers began to run, the lake trying to catch them. The girl raking in the field with a white horse did not hear anything and she drowned in the flood. The girl's name was Peipus. From that time onwards people call the lake – Peipus.

In the 16th and 17th century the landlord of Kokora was the owner of the two-kilometre-long strip of land on the shores of the lake where the town of Kallaste is situated at present. It was called Purmurand (Pormeranda). In the 18th century it was settled mainly by Russian orthodox old-believers who had escaped from religious persecution in their homeland - in the Novgorod region. They began to build tenant farms which were architecturally different from the Estonian farm style. "Odna ulitsa i vsja derevnja" in Russian means "one street makes the whole village".

At Kallaste the red Devonian sandstone rock has given the name to the place - Red Hill or Krasnaja Gora in Russian. The poet Aira Kaal writes:

How striking the beauty of Kallaste
Under the red rocks Peipsi heaves its waves
On its silvery waters men row their boats
Twilight.

The coastal rock with the height of 8 m and an abrasion step (700 m - long) are covered by the 1.5 m layer of moraine sand, thus the total height being 11 m. The sandstone was formed about 350 million years ago when the sea in Estonia was warm and relatively shallow. The cliff is a bird sanctuary for sand-martins (Riparia riparia). In some places the steep bank rises immediately from the edge of the water, in some others there is a strip of moraine sand covered by boulders of various size which are making the landscape extremely picturesque. To the north of Kallaste at Pärsikivi we can find a huge boulder bearing the name of Peerskivi (Pärsikese, Pekarski). According to legends it is also a sling stone with which Kalevipoeg had tried to kill wolves attacking his sheep.

From Kallaste we turn back in the direction of Alatskivi. The road follows the steep bank and from time to time we get a glimpse of Lake Peipus. From Alatskivi the gravel road is parallel to the valley where the Alatskivi river flows leading us to the villages of Rootsiküla and Nina. Rootsiküla where the Alatskivi river flows into Lake Peipus was known already in 1592 when it was called Roczyrand. As in other villages at the lake people have been basically engaged in fishing. The village of Nina is situated on a promontory where we can see a lighthouse. Nina was inhabited already in the second half of the 16th century (1582, Noss Derevnja in Russian meaning the nose village). In the second half of 17th century permanent Russian settlers began to live here. Their farms are architecturally of specific character. The outhouses surround the farmyard making a closed circle. People enter it through a roofed gate. The farmhouse and the gate are richly decorated with wooden ornaments. Behind the farmstead there are big orchards. The people living here have tried to preserve their culture, customs and religious rites. The church of St. Mary was built in 1827-1828, in 1908 it was enlarged to make it cross-shaped. The 18th century iconostasis is a remarkable piece of art.

At the distance of about a kilometre from Lake Lahepera we enter a small borough of Kolkja. In the summer of 1998 a museum of old believers was opened at Kolkja. The exposition features the life-style at the lake. Old believers became famous as chicory and onion growers. Even today there are large fields of onions in the villages near Lake Peipus. Every household had an icon and a spade for each member of the family. Tea-drinking his a traditional ceremony here. Sugar is never put into the cup, instead people eat sugary home-made cream candies to sweeten their tea brewed in the Russian samovar the noise of which cheers the company round the table.

We have already entered a new street-village Kasepää moving on along a gravel road. At the distance of 4 km we reach the southernmost Russian fishing hamlet Varnja. The picturesque street-village with the population of 250 people can boast of two ecclesiastical building - the Russian orthodox church (built in 1855) and the chapel of old believers (built in 1903). The first settlement of the village of Varnja is connected with Varesekivi (the Crow's stone - in Russian: Voronya stone). The Varnja church chronicles mention a huge Voron stone in Lake Peipus where the Ice Battle between Russians and Germans took place in the 13th century.

Varnja is the last village at the lake north of the Emajõgi river. In the south, at Mehikoorma on Lake Lämmijärv you can see the Russian shores - (weather permitting). The distance from the Russian shores is only 2 km.

Uninhabited shores of Lake Peipus offer the interested visitor an experience of virgin nature, summer and winter fishing.