Q IS FOR QUIET
Shhh. Can you hear that?
No?
It's because there is nobody here.
That sound there? It's your own breathing.
Maybe it's the forest breathing.
You feel strange. For the first time in years, you are nowhere near traffic. That vast forest out there, stretching all the way to the Urals and beyond, is soaking up all the noise and stress and air pollution and all the other things you never knew were part of the daily fabric of your life until right now.
Estonia has to be the quietest country I've ever visited. Not counting its splendid capital Tallinn which is a touristy crush of cruise ship hoards and budget airline arrivals wielding selfy sticks. Tallinn doesn't count.
We spend the majority of our week-long stay on the island of Saaremaa, which has a population of 13,000, approximately, and a fair bit of our time on Saaremaa is spent on the Sõrve peninsula, which has a resident population in the hundreds. Life here is not without its challenges, we're told, but things are slowly changing.
Since 2010, more Estonians are increasingly making a conscious choice to move to the islands, to the country. They're inheriting houses, starting families, finding a quality of life that's hard to come by in the city. Estonia has fully embraced the technologies of the digital revolution, and new ways of working remotely, digitally, are facilitating a more flexible way of living. The government are even offering tax incentives for doctors and teachers to relocate to the country, presumably to service the growing rural population.
Estonia is half the size of Scotland, with a fifth of our population (about the same number as greater Glasgow). It's not impossible to find this kind of calm in Scotland, but it feels more elusive, somehow. Quiet, it seems to me, is a value that is precious to Estonians, and one they take great care to cultivate.