The 10th Anniversary of the "Baltic Chain", Estonia

The days between Sunday Stamps seem to pass really quickly, so here we are at the second episode of the third season of the A-Z game.

I seem to have quite a lot of B-related stamps, so it was a tough choice, but the final decision fell on this joint issue among Estonia-Lithuanua-Latvia, from 1999, commemorating the 10th Anniversary of the Baltic Chain.  On the cover her is the Estonian mini-sheet.

The Baltic Chain (or the Baltic Way) was an uninterrupted 675.5 kilometre human chain uniting the Baltic capitals of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius, in which two million indigenous people of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, then still occupied by the Soviet Union, joined hands to demand freedom and independence.
It was organised by the joint efforts of the three Baltic countries’ Popular Fronts on the 50th anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet pact of 23 August 1939, which served as a basis for the Soviet Union to occupy the Baltic countries in 1940. The aim of the Baltic Chain was to draw the world’s attention to continuing Soviet occupation of the Baltic countries and emphasised the non-violent nature of the Baltic nations’ struggle for freedom.

675.5 kilmetres... that is so hard to grasp, leaves me in awe at the thought of it and how it had looked in reality.


For more B-related posts, simply click here.

EUROPA, Estonia

An EUROPA CEPT cover I received from Janek.

Well, actually, im not sure if this was intended to be sent as a cover, since the main purpose of sending this was on what was INSIDE...but still, it turned out to be a perfect item to post it here as well :)
Im not gonna speak of the Macedonian issue with the EUROPA stamps...every year, same story...even though i should be happy i managed to get my hands on this year's stamp,  i did miss the FDC.
But ill show that one another time....lets focus on Estonia today.

The Estonian post office issued two stamps this year (with normal value, unlike the Macedonian).
As you know (if you are a philatelist), this year's theme for the EUROPA's was Children's books.

The middle of the 19th century can be regarded as the beginning of the Estonian literature for children although secular stories for children had been published before, notably by Friedrich Gustav Arvelius in 1782 and by Otto Willem Masing in 1795. The author of the first Estonian book of fiction for children is Carl Körber and that of the first poetry book Johann Voldemar Jannsen. Like everywhere else, Estonian children`s books often have very beautiful and imag-inative illustratsions and some of the illustrators have won inernational acclaim, Vive Tolli and Jaan Tammsaar being perhaps known the best. The postage stamps feature illustratsions by Viive Noor and Jüri Mildeberg, while the FDC has a new edition of Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald`s Old Estonian Fair Tales (first published 1866) with illustratsions by Günter Reindorff.

Denomination: 9.00 - (0,58 euros)
Date: 06.05.2010
Print: offset
Designer: Jaan Saar
Perforation: 14 : 13¾
Sheets: 2 x 5
Quantity issued: 75 000