I looked out through the big windows at the trams stolidly passing by the dimly lit Liberty Square; now with its original name back. But my mind was on the tense situation up the hill at Toompea and elsewhere in the Baltics. It was only a week after the bloody events at the TV tower in Vilnius and as I sat there a similarly worrying confrontation in Riga culminated with the loss of seven more lives at the hand of armed units of the Soviet government.
There was a real and general fear that new reactionary forces in the Kremlin were in the process of rolling back the democratic achievements I had witnessed on close hold in Moscow and in the Baltic republics in the previous years.
Our task had actually been triggered by the violence in Vilnius. The decision to open information offices had been made at an NCM Ministerial already in October but after the events in Vilnius the President of the Council, the Danish Minister for Nordic Cooperation Thor Pedersen, urged that this, as a sign of Nordic solidarity in a tense situation, should happen already during his visit to the three Baltic capitals the following week.
During our stay in Tallinn, we went to talk to Foreign Minister Lennart Meri in his Foreign Ministry on the barricaded Toompea. As we talked his hand sometimes brushed the enforced radio phone on his desk that he had been given to be able to talk with the West directly via the Finnish mobile phone network even if his city line should be cut off. As all Estonian leaders of the day he was grateful for the Western support and certain that, if the pressure on Moscow was kept up, Estonia would pull through to peacefully achieve the ultimate goal of de facto independence.
My original anxiety proved to be completely unfounded. Due to the untiring and fervent support from the new Government and City authorities our mission of finding both office space and an apartment for the new office director was successful. At a reception in Tallinn the following week Minister Pedersen accompanied by the Secretary General of the NCM, Fridtjof Clemet could mark the opening of the new NCM Information Office in a wonderful medieval domicile in Tolli Street in Old Town. A local Swedish-speaking Estonian, Ms. Mare Luts, was hired to manage the office until the new director, the Finn Leo Salonen, arrived in April.
The opening of the office was an important political event. Not only because of the Nordic solidarity with Estonia's liberation struggle it signified but perhaps even more because it heralded the convergence of the five Nordic governments' policies vis-'avis the Baltic independence struggle.
Until then all five governments had been supportive of and enthusiastic about the historic developments in the Soviet Union and the Baltic States but from different vantage points. The three NATO members Iceland, Denmark and Norway leaned on our official policy of non-recognition of the Soviet annexation in 1940 which to begin with limited our practical ties with Baltic authorities and populations. Sweden and Finland had found another balance between the requisites of non-alignment and the sensitive relationship with the Soviet Union on the one hand and on the other hand the close historic, emotional and cultural ties. The sizeable Baltic Diaspora in Sweden played an important role as well.
With the free elections in the Baltic States in early 1990 and particularly after the events of January 1991, most of these differences started to vanish. A 5+3 Nordic-Baltic Foreign Ministers' meeting had been held in Copenhagen on 20 December 1990 at the occasion of the opening of the Baltic information offices there, as Minister Thor Pedersen the Foreign Minister of Iceland J´on Baldvin Hannibalsson and many Nordic parliamentarians paid a visit of solidarity to the Baltic States in January and February 1991, and already in February Baltic parliamentarians were invited to join their Nordic colleagues as observers at the session of the Nordic Council.
Indeed the joint Nordic support for the developments in the Baltic States has also helped strengthen the cooperation between the five Nordic countries.
A few months later, after the failed August coup in Moscow and the achievement of de facto independence recognized also by Russia, all this was history. Iceland first, then Denmark re-established diplomatic relations with Estonia on 24 August 1991 and others soon followed suit. The ever closer cooperation and integration across the Baltic Sea had already become as much a joint Nordic-Baltic endeavour as a set of bilateral relationships.
The Nordic Information Office, that later moved to Pikk Street and then Lai Street, has since concentrated on the perhaps less spectacular but no less important work of running the many day-to-day projects aimed at integration, people-to-people exchange as well as cultural, environmental and educational cooperation between the Nordics and Estonia. From the very start the cooperation contained a substantive programme of grants that has allowed many young Estonians to study in the Nordic Countries. Later came the important twinning and exchange of civil servants and experts.
As the relationship has become more equal and Estonia has become a member of the EU, cooperation has changed character to a two-way street with joint and equally funded programmes. The Nordic countries receive as much inspiration, creative impulse and new thinking from Estonia, as Estonia hopefully receives from us.
In 2010 Denmark again held the rotating Presidency of the Nordic Council Ministers. This year Denmark focused on the environment, climate change, energy and sustainable development; all areas where the Nordic-Baltic region is strong but needs to do more. The same goes for other focus areas like science, culture and innovation where we also have sought inspiration from Estonia's impressive developments in these spheres. Another Estonian mark on Nordic culture has been through the novel Purge by Sofi Oksanen that was awarded The Nordic Council's annual literary prize in 2010.
In Estonia we have run a campaign particularly close to my heart, namely the presentation of the New Nordic Food wave which immediately reverberated with similar attempts at leading Estonian restaurants to renew the Estonian cuisine based on new simplicity, old traditions and fresh, local ingredients. And we have sought to bring attention to the necessity of reducing trade barriers and enhance the free movement of goods and persons, not least in the context of the EU's new Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region. Finally, the report from the two wise men - former Prime Minister of Latvia Valdis Birkavs and former Danish Minister of Defence Søren Gade - has undertaken to boost Nordic-Baltic cooperation in the field of Foreign and Defence Policy.
Over the past twenty years the Baltic-Nordic region has indeed grown together at a stunning pace. But our re-found kinship should not mean exclusion from the world around us. We face the same challenges of globalisation, climate change and economic interdependence as the rest of the world.
Hence, a core element of the Danish Presidency's action programme has been that our cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region should be seen in a global context and contribute to maintaining the Nordic-Baltic region as a leading innovative region on the cutting edge of globalization. Promotion of sustainable growth, development and cohesion regionally will also strengthen our competitiveness on the world market.
We have now passed the torch of the Presidency to Finland which I am convinced will pursue the same goals with no less dedication.
Back in January 1991, Mr. Tranberg and I only stayed in Tallinn for less than two days. Our journey continued to Riga and Vilnius with the same task and with the same success. I remember staying at hotel Ridzene in Riga stepping over the piles of glass from mirrors and windows splintered when a black beret had fired his automatic weapon into the lobby. In Vilnius we met President Landsbergis in parliament but also the brave young men with hunting rifles behind makeshift sandbag defence positions ready to defend the building floor-by-floor.
Back then the Nordic countries urged solidarity and cooperation between the three Baltic countries. From an early stage the Nordics supported the Baltic Council and Assembly and saw them as natural counterparts and partners. Baltic cooperation is complementary to and an intrinsic component of the Nordic-Baltic commonness, cooperation and integration. It is certainly not in competition to it. Strong Baltic cooperation makes strong Nordic-Baltic cooperation just as back in 1990-1991 the common support for the Baltic liberation struggles helped strengthen cooperation also among the five old Nordic countries.
The shorter version of the article was published in Estonian newspaper Postimees on 20 January 2011.