A foggy sunset over Viru Bog
One of my favourite places we visited during this extended summer holiday was the beautiful Viru Bog close to Estonia’s capital, Tallinn. If you’re not quite sure what a bog is (I certainly wasn’t), it’s basically a lot of organic material accumulated in depressions left behind by the retreating glaciers of the previous ice age. Because the water in the shallow lakes left behind by the glaciers was not very oxygen rich, the dead plants didn’t decompose and ended up creating peat which in turn got the water acidity levels high.
Although I have a few photographs I would like to share from this bog, I will start with this photograph which is probably my favourite of the lot. It was made in a rush as I was waiting for the sunset to get colourful. The reason for the rush was because from this point on, I still had to walk about 2km through the bog to get back to my car. By the time I got to the edge of the bog and finished walking in the last bit of forest, things were almost pitch black and I started to realise why bogs are considered places of mystery in Estonian culture.
