All Praise the Hedgehog! : A Walking Tour of Karlova, Tartu

I go to see Hoggy every time I visit Tartu and he always brings me enormous joy. He’s a sculpture of a hedgehog made of scrap metal who stands just over 6ft tall and has spines made of huge rusty nails. He holds a lantern as if to ward off the fog that might come and enclose the city. He stands in a peaceful spot at the edge of central Tartu, overlooking the river. He’s not often visited and I’m usually the only person around when I go to see him. He was made by a trio of artists; Seaküla Simson, Edvins Krumins, & Kalev Prits. Recently, I took a few people to see him, inducting them in a wholesome hedgehog cult as we went.

“Oh Glorious Hoggy, Light our way, Lead us through the fog, All praise the hedgehog!”

After my tattoo-based shenanigans last year, I was invited back to take part in the Prima Vista Literature Festival once again, asked this time to create a walking tour of the city. This was part of the ‘Tartu Revisited’ section of the festival where former international residents gave creative tours of their versions of this most brilliant place. My good friends Penny Boxall and Quigley Cryan-Brockbank also gave tours.

Penny's Ode to Nightingale Tour

Penny led us on an evening stroll to the riverside to listen to the song of the nightingales. Along the way she dissected John Keat’s famous Ode while reflecting on her own personal connection to the elusive bird. It was a deeply moving encounter. Birds of all kinds accompanied us along the route while the nightingale itself happily obliged from the trees across the water (answered, eventually, by an owl attempting to get in on the action).

Quigley Cyran-Brockbank's saintly tour

Quigley’s stunning ‘Alternative History of the Saints of Tartu’ took us on a wickedly spiritual traversal of the old part of the city where she proceeded to canonise a gang of Estonian saints that do not actually exist, all while wearing a golden halo made of spray-painted zip-ties. It was hilarious, occasionally disturbing, and ultimately, as we listened to the ghostly choir inside the cathedral ruins (who sounded a lot like a passing flock of geese – birds again), incredibly uplifting.

As I finalised the preparations of my own walk, I was struck by the unintended coordination of our work. Penny & Quigley both offered tours focused on encounter and transcendence where cherished texts and rituals were re-interpretated for the contemporary emotional moment. My own (admittedly much sillier) walk positioned Hoggy himself as a sort of messianic cult figure who was summoned from the dreams of desperate humans in need of salvation. He walks the world disillusioned by the pain and suffering, saved only by an encounter with art and creativity, which he then himself becomes.

The Parlour that Planted the Fern

I hadn’t intended to cut so deep. The tour began as a chance to revisit some of the quirky little edgeland places that I was taken to by surrealist poet Jaan Luulur Malin when I first visited the city. But Tartu has this effect on us. It’s an unassuming place that quietly seeps into you while encouraging a meditative, contemplative state of mind. It does not intrude or overwhelm the senses like other cities; it allows space for you to breathe and meander, to find moments of stillness. You find yourself filled through with the ‘good thoughts’ that the city is famous for, reaching for deeper connections and profound contemplations. For Penny, it’s always been the allure of the Emajogi mother river and all the life it encourages and supports. Quigley seems to have been snagged by Estonia’s glorious paganism as an alternative spiritual existence. I seem to be pulled in by the slowly decaying scars of the relatively recent Soviet past. For all of us, nature is ever-present as a unifying force; the swathe of Estonia’s trees and bogs, and the darting presence of birds and quiet mammals.

My hedgehog tour took in a wall that stopped a fire, a temple for witchcraft, a door that leads to nowhere, a mysterious gap in a random fence, the tattoo parlour where I got my fern tattoo, an edgeland bridge used for meditation, a missing chimney, and a massive rubber duck. The strange detritus of the city; the bits too often passed by and dismissed. At the centre of it all was Hoggy himself, the perpetual sentinel at the edge of the city who offered gifts of chocolates to my most committed acolytes.

All in all, it was a ridiculously wonderful way of revisiting this marvellous place, and I continue to be amazed at Tartu, the gift that keeps on giving. All praise the hedgehog!

All Praise the Hedgehog!