Saturday, November 19, 2011

Microstates : 17 Hiiumaa (bogus)

Before you think that my collection only consist out of 'fake' stamps, I want to assure you, that's not the case.
I'm bringing a lot of 'fakes' or 'cinderellas' under your attention, but believe me, it's just a fraction of my collection and altough it's in the picture here, it's not the main topic I collect.

In this post, I bring you to one of the Baltic states, Estonia.
Estonias postal history started in 1919 and was interrupted from 1920 to 1991, when the Soviet regime took over the country during the occupation.
It's the smallest of the 3 Baltic states, but the language isn't baltic, but part of the Finno-Ugric language familiy (so more related to Finnish and even Hungarian). 

Estonia - Hiiuma in yellow
Hiiumaa island

Next to the mainland, Estonia has 2 large islands, Saaremaa and the smaller Hiiumaa.
Hiiumaa (also the name of the province, formed by Hiiumaa island and Kassari island), has about 10.000 inhabitats. The name is derived from the two estonian words 'Hiid' (holy wood) and 'maa' (land), and it's clear that this island is known for it's forrest. The capital city of the island is Kärdla, on the northern side of the island.

Flag of Hiiumaa
Being a real island, with sufficient inhabitants, it could have been possible that a local postal service was erected, like the UK did in Guernsey, Alderney or Jersey. Unfortunatly, there's no real separate, local post on the island, so the 'stamps' from Hiiumaa are nothing more then nice cinderellas.

Again, we'll find a lot of thematic images on the labels.


sheet of Hiiumaa




detail

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