Noarootsi education tree

In front of the Noarootsi schoolhouse sits a metal installation bearing four years along with the name of the school. This is the Noarootsi Education Tree, which was unveiled in 2020 as a celebration of the 370th anniversary of education in Noarootsi – the tree’s branches mark four different schools.

The year 1650 marks the beginning of the peasant school founded by Noarootsi priest Isaac Hasselblatt. This school was the first of its kind in Northern Estonia. Hasselblatt started teaching reading, writing and calculus to local peasant children at the church. The school year started on St. Martin’s Day and ran until St. George’s Day. Instruction was split over three years. A sacristan helped the priest run the school. A visitation to Noarootsi at the end of the 17th century observed that most of the peasants could read “because they are Swedes”.

The Great Northern War and the subsequent plague epidemic and famine were a setback, but by the end of the 18th century, schooling for children was back on the agenda.

The next year on the tree, 1920, marks the founding of the Pürksi agricultural and folk university. The school operated for 13 years, teaching more than 570 young people from different Estonian Swedish settlements modern agricultural and household skills. The course ran for one year, from mid-October to early May, and each year about 25 students were accepted. The folk university was especially important because it was the first educational institution that brought together Estonian Swedes who otherwise lived in different places and were quite isolated. Through the school, young people learned standard Swedish, Swedish literature, music and culture, and they took this knowledge back home with them when they left school. They were also introduced to the latest agricultural and household practices.

In 1930, Pürksi School was founded as a predecessor of what is now Noarootsi School. The school grew out of smaller village schools that operated in different settlements. A new schoolhouse was built for the purpose, but it was not quite ready by the time the school first opened. Pürksi School initially had 6 grades with lessons in Estonian and Swedish. After the departure of the Swedes during World War II, instruction continued in Estonian. The number of grades in the school changed over time, in line with the current education system. At first, the more remote villages maintained their own schools, but by the second half of the 1970s there was only one school – Pürksi School – in the area covering Noarootsi, Riguldi and Sutlepa.

In 1977, the schoolhouse was destroyed in a fire. The younger year groups continued to work in the premises of the kindergarten, while the older children moved in with Sutlepa School. It stayed that way for ten years. A new school building, designed by architect Maarja Nummert, was opened in Pürksi in 1987.

Noarootsi used to have a 9-class basic school, but the changes that started in the late 1980s, the contacts with Sweden and Finland, and the restoration of ties with the Estonian Swedes led to the idea of opening an upper secondary school in Noarootsi to offer education that would focus more on Swedish and the history and culture of the Nordic countries. The Noarootsi Upper Secondary School was opened in 1990. There are still two schools in Pürksi – Noarootsi School, which is a basic school operated under the local government, and next to it Noarootsi Upper Secondary School, which is a state school.

Maris Korrol, an alumnus of both the Noarootsi School and Noarootsi Upper Secondary School has marked all these dates on her education tree sculpture. “Much like nature provides a fertile environment for young trees to grow, education does the same for our children,” said Korrol on the concept behind her sculpture.