R IS FOR REVAL
"You can count on anywhere in the northern Baltic having two names, at least. " Says critic and broadcaster Jonathan Meades in his 2008 film, "Magnetic North".
Two languages. Two cultures. Two former colonisers, at least."
He may have been thinking specifically about Estonia's ravishing capital, Tallinn, known throughout most of its history by its Hanseatic trading name, Reval.
The Hanseatic League was a north European mercantile alliance that lasted over 300 years - in Meades' phrase, "God's first attempt at the EU".
Based in Lübeck, it
stretched north and east along the Baltic coast
as far as the inland port city of Peterhof (Novgorod), and west from Hamburg to Brugge (Bruges), with trading posts established in Stalhof (London) and Bryggen
(Bergen).
The merchant ships of the Hansa didn't just trade commodities - grain, salt, fish, amber, various types of booze etc - inevitably they traded ideas, materials, fashions for building.
Insofar as there is an identifiable Hansa style, Tallinn's vaulting skyscape - with its grand halls,
steep pitched roofs,
exaggerated gables and gothic pinnacles that echo similar sights in other Baltic
ports - surely argues in favour of one.
Growing up in Glasgow, we were always exhorted to "look up!" by older relatives keen to impress on us the beauty of our home city that was not always obvious at eye level. You would get a better view, sitting on the top deck of a corporation bus as it ambled through Glasgow's grand sandstone
grid of Victorian merchants' chambers and trading houses. If you craned your neck and squint you'd see sculpted gods and angels, winged beasts, globe-straddling ships carved into the grey skies above you.
I'd urge something similar on any visitor to Tallinn, to look up, to see what stories, what wonders, the skyline of old Reval will reveal.