Eating in the late Middle Ages in a beautiful place

Last updated on: September 24, 2019 at 9:30 am by Dan Peterson

Eating in the late Middle Ages in a beautiful place 2019-09-24T09:30:04-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Aleksander Nevski Cathedral in Tallinn, Estonia
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

I first visited Talinn, Estonia, during a cruise ship stop about ten years ago, and I thought the place absolutely delightful. The Old Town area of the city is, one person told me, “the best preserved medieval German city in the world.”

But, you say, it’s in Estonia.

Trust me, there’s a history behind that.

Inside one of the rooms of Tallinn’s Olde Hansa restaurant (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

And there’s a history behind the name of the Olde Hansa, a restaurant that we discovered (or, in the case of Pini and Jussi Kemppainen, rediscovered) in the Old Town.

The Hanse or, later, the Hansa — it’s an old German word referring to a “convoy” — was a commercial and defensive league that dominated merchant commerce on and around the Baltic Sea and the North Sea for at least three centuries, linking market towns from Bergen, Norway, to, well, Tallinn, Estonia.

The Olde Hansa in Tallinn attempts to recreate a tavern or inn or restaurant from perhaps the fifteenth century. All inside is candles, candlelight and wood. There are no potatos or tomatos on the menu, because they haven’t yet reached Europe from the New World. There is no Coca Cola, because it hasn’t been invented yet. The servers are dressed in period costume. And the food is excellent. (I had a lamb dish that was one of the best I’ve ever eaten.)

Jussi Kemppainen knows the owner of the restaurant, a Finn who happened to be in Kenya while we were at the Olde Hansa. So he called him from the restaurant and, afterwards, we thanked him via email for the superb food and the fun dining experience.

I liked Talinn very much the first time that I visited it, and I like it even more now, having seen still more of it. It’s a beautiful place. A very charming place.

Thus, it pleases me very much that, if the trip carries, I’ll be able to come back next summer.

I’m scheduled to accompany a cruise from 4 July 2020 through 13 July 2020 (“Best of Russia & Scandinavia”) that will go from Copenhagen, Denmark, through Tallinn, Estonia, to St. Petersburg, Russia, to Helsinki, Finland, to Stockholm, Sweden, returning to Copenhagen, with a side trip early in the cruise to Berlin, Germany.

I’ve kicked around several of these places a bit since the first Baltic cruise that I accompanied, and I feel better equipped for this next one than I did for that first.

***

We returned from Tallinn — or, anyway, most of us did; Brothers Crosby and Miller stayed on to do oral histories there before continuing to Kiev, Ukraine — late last night via ferry. It was a long day, but a very good one.

Posted from Helsinki, Finland

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