The Baltics

Welcome to my latest adventure - September 2026.

As always, travel and writing heals my soul. This covers both. And I crave this expression of creativity, calm and peace .....

My Baltic Adventure - Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Sometimes a journey begins with a grand plan. Mine usually begins with something much smaller — a sentence in a book, a scene in a film, a name that catches my attention. And that is, rather appropriately, how this trip began.

I have always been fascinated by places that feel just slightly beyond the familiar. Places with a history that you know is there, but perhaps don't quite understand yet. This time, it was Vilnius that caught me. In The Hunt for Red October, Sean Connery plays Captain Marko Ramius, the legendary Soviet submarine commander who decides to defect to the West. Ramius is Lithuanian-born and carries the nickname "The Vilnius Schoolmaster."

There was something about that. A Lithuanian-born submarine captain commanding a Soviet nuclear submarine, portrayed by a Scottish actor, and with Vilnius as part of his backstory, well that made me curious about the city. What was this place? And why did it feel so exotic, even though it was sitting in Europe?

The more I looked, the more I realised that Vilnius couldn't really be understood without understanding Lithuania, and Lithuania couldn't really be understood without Latvia and Estonia. And then there was Finland, sitting just across the Baltic Sea, sharing a very different but equally complicated relationship with Russia and the Soviet Union.

So the itinerary grew. And luckily my tour company offered a job lot 😀

The Baltic region is a fascinating little corner of Europe, sitting between Scandinavia, Russia and Central Europe. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are often grouped together as the "Baltic States", but they are distinctly different countries, with different languages, cultures and histories. Estonia is linguistically close to Finland; Latvian and Lithuanian are related Baltic languages; and Lithuania developed into a major medieval power in its own right. For centuries the region was fought over, ruled by and influenced by Germans, Poles, Swedes and Russians.

Then came the twentieth century, when the history became particularly brutal.

All three Baltic states became independent after the First World War, only to be caught between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the catastrophe of the Second World War. In 1940, following the secret German-Soviet agreement that divided much of Eastern Europe into spheres of influence, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Nazi Germany invaded the region in 1941, only for the Soviet Union to return in 1944 and impose almost another five decades of Soviet rule.

Very similar to my Central Asia trip, this history is still remarkably recent. For many people living there today, Soviet occupation isn't some distant chapter in a history book. It is something experienced by their parents and grandparents.

And yet the story doesn't end there.

In the late 1980s, the Baltic peoples began one of the most extraordinary peaceful independence movements of the twentieth century. The Singing Revolution saw enormous demonstrations, national songs and growing demands for independence. In August 1989, around two million people joined hands across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the Baltic Way, creating a human chain stretching roughly 600 kilometres from Tallinn through Riga to Vilnius. Two years later, the three countries had restored their independence.

That makes this trip much more than a tour of three attractive European capitals.

I want to see Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn because each city represents a different piece of a much larger story — medieval kingdoms and trading empires, German and Swedish influence, Russian expansion, two world wars, Nazi occupation, Soviet rule, resistance and finally independence.

And then there is Finland.

Across the Baltic Sea, Finland provides another fascinating perspective on the same enormous neighbour. Finland fought the Soviet Union during the Winter War, survived the Second World War with its independence intact and spent much of the Cold War carefully balancing its relationship with Moscow while remaining a Western democracy. Today, Finland and the Baltic states are all members of NATO, making this once-peripheral corner of Europe a strategically important part of the modern European security landscape.

So this is the next adventure: Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Four countries around the Baltic Sea, each with its own identity, but connected by geography, history and an extraordinary determination to remain themselves.

And, as usual, it all started with a film.

A fictional Lithuanian submarine captain, a Scottish actor, and a passing thought: I wonder what Vilnius is actually like?

From Sydney to Helsinki via Edinburgh

About Finland

Finland is the northernmost and largest of the four countries, stretching from the Baltic Sea deep into the Arctic north.

For centuries Finland was part of the Kingdom of Sweden before becoming a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire in 1809. It declared independence from Russia on 6 December 1917, followed by a bitter civil war in 1918.

Finland's defining twentieth-century experience was its struggle to remain independent of the Soviet Union: during the Winter War of 1939–40, a much smaller Finnish army famously resisted the Soviet invasion in extraordinarily difficult conditions, although Finland ultimately surrendered territory. It later fought the Soviet Union again during WWII and, after the war, carefully navigated its relationship with Moscow during the Cold War while retaining its democracy and Western outlook. That history still shapes Finland today.

One thing I didn't know until researching this was Russia's invasion of Ukraine prompted Finland to abandon decades of military non-alignment and join NATO in April 2023, putting this quiet, forest-and-lake-filled Nordic country firmly on NATO's eastern flank.

Helsinki, Finland

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About Estonia

Estonia is the smallest and northernmost of the three Baltic states and, culturally and linguistically, has more in common with Finland than with Latvia or Lithuania. Estonia spent centuries under the influence of Danish, German, Swedish and Russian powers before declaring independence in 1918.

Its first independent republic lasted only 22 years before the Soviet Union occupied Estonia in 1940. Nazi Germany subsequently occupied the country during WWII before the Soviets returned in 1944, beginning almost five decades of Soviet rule. The Soviet period brought repression, deportations, Russian immigration and restrictions on Estonian culture and movement. Estonia's independence movement became particularly powerful during the "Singing Revolution", when enormous crowds used patriotic songs and peaceful demonstrations to challenge Soviet authority.

In 1989 Estonians joined their Baltic neighbours in the extraordinary Baltic Way, and on 20 August 1991 Estonia restored its independence. It then pursued an unusually rapid transformation towards a Western, market-based economy, joining NATO and the EU in 2004 and becoming one of Europe's great digital success stories.

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About Latvia

Latvia sits in the middle of the three Baltic states, with a long Baltic coastline and Riga as its historic trading and cultural centre.

Latvia's history is a complicated mixture of German, Swedish, Polish-Lithuanian and Russian influence before it finally emerged as an independent republic in 1918. That independence was brutally interrupted by WWII.

Following the secret protocols of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Latvia fell into the Soviet sphere and was occupied and annexed by the USSR in 1940. Nazi Germany then occupied Latvia from 1941, before Soviet forces returned and Latvia was incorporated into the Soviet Union again. Deportations, repression and demographic changes left a deep mark on the country. In the late 1980s Latvia became part of the remarkable Baltic independence movement; in 1989, Latvians joined Estonians and Lithuanians in the Baltic Way, a human chain stretching roughly 600 km across the three countries. Latvia restored its independence in 1991 and joined both the EU and NATO in 2004.

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About Lithuania

Lithuania has arguably the most extraordinary medieval story of the four countries.

In the Middle Ages, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became one of Europe's great powers, at one point stretching across enormous areas of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and parts of Russia and Poland. It eventually entered into a political union with Poland, creating the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of Europe's major states until its partitions in the late eighteenth century. Lithuania was subsequently absorbed into the Russian Empire, regained independence in 1918, and then suffered the same devastating sequence as its Baltic neighbours: Soviet occupation in 1940, Nazi occupation during WWII and renewed Soviet occupation afterwards. Soviet repression included mass deportations and a prolonged armed resistance by Lithuanian partisans.

Lithuania became a driving force in the late-1980s independence movement, and on 11 March 1990 it became the first Soviet republic to declare the restoration of its independence. The Soviet Union ultimately recognised Lithuanian independence in 1991. Today Lithuania is a member of both NATO and the EU and, given its geography beside Belarus and Russia's Kaliningrad exclave, occupies an important strategic position on NATO's eastern flank.

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