The Swedish St Michael's Lutheran Church is at Rüütli 9,
just a few steps down the street from St Nicholas Church. Swedes settled near the port area of Tallinn in the fifteenth
century, but Estonian Swedes could be found on the
islands and along the western coastal strip as early as 1271,
according to written sources. A Swedish parish certainly existed by
1531, when the death of the priest was recorded. However, the parish
probably existed for at least a century before that.
The Reformation came to Estonia despite the
efforts of the Order of the Brothers of the Sword, although the
Swedes apparently welcomed it, and the situation stabilised when the
Swedish kingdom took control of the country in 1645. The Swedish
population in Tallinn suddenly rocketed. In 1631, Gustav Adolf II
had already decided that the Swedes should be granted the use of the
old St Michael's monastery for schools, and that the monastery
church should be granted to the Swedish parish.
In 1716, Russian ownership of Estonia meant the
Swedes had to leave their church, which became the Russian
Orthodox Garrison Church. The homeless Swedish parish
had to celebrate mass in different German churches until the
authorities gave them the Hospital of St John on Rüütli street. The
church was inaugurated in 1733. After independence, the 1944 Soviet
re-occupation saw the church converted into a sports club, but in
1992 it was handed back to the Swedish community.
Tallinn Christian Pentecostal Church is at
Toompea 3, on the leafy hill which leads up from Charles XI Church
to Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. Unlike the Swedish church in Tallinn,
the Pentecostal movement in Estonia has no more than a century of
history behind it, being established in 1906, when the first prayer
houses were founded. The building which houses this church was
constructed in 1908 to house the Harjuoru gym for the former
Toomkool, or Dome School, which existed on the hill of Toompea.
Toomkool (or the Estonian Knighthood Dome School,
to give it its full title) was an establishment which was designed
for the elite of pre-Independence Tallinn, as it was a cathedral
school for the Estonian German nobility. When the school's former
gym was gained by the Christian Pentecostal movement in Estonia, the
stylish and attractive Art Nouveau building was thoroughly
renovated. The building was originally designed by Arthur
Hoyningen-Huene.
The Soviet invasion saw the Pentecostal movement
prohibited by the authorities and thrown out of its churches. For
the fifty years of occupation, there was no official Pentecostal
organisation in the country, and many of the church's pastors were
deported to Siberia. Luckily, enough escaped to the west to set up
Estonian Pentecostal churches in Europe and North America until such
time as the church could return home, which it did in 1991.
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