P IS FOR POST MILL
You don't have to travel far through the Estonian landscape to find these chivalric characters, tilting into the wind. Nowhere more so than on
Saaremaa where the windmill is considered to be something of an island
icon.
A post mill, the most common type of windmill here, is constructed around a single vertical post, allowing the whole body of the mill to swivel 360° according to wind direction. The mill usually sits on a base of stone or brick, to protect the post itself from weathering.
Post mills are the earliest type of windmill, dating back to the 12th century, though the use of wind power to drive machinery has been around much longer.
The mill we visit is situated in a seemingly unlikely position, high on the defensive walls of Kuressaare Castle. The western wall became known as "the mill bastion", grinding the grain to feed castle occupants. The mill suffered through the wars, was destroyed, rebuilt, relocated, until it finally burned down in 1795.
The existing Kuressaare post mill was rebuilt in 2018 to coincide with the reconstruction of the castle bastions. It was created by specialist windmill builders following traditional methods and using an existing 17th mill at a nearby farm as reference.
The enormous wind turbines that march across the Scottish landscape in ever increasing numbers haven't quite reached the iconic status of their pastoral forebears - perhaps they never will. But the sight of the impossibly long blades of our implacable modern machines, slicing and pivoting into the wind, is surely every bit as ubiquitous now as the post mills of Estonia
ever were .