Old Sand Mountain. Trouble here: given the Reynold’s number (angle of repose) of sand, it should be called the ‘Old Sand Dune’ and, indeed, from 2003 to 2008, an attack of municipal modesty caused the thoroughfare’s qualifier to be changed from ‘old’ to the more realistic ‘little’ but an Estonian will relinquish a mountain only under the greatest duress and so, on 22/10/2008, they switched back to Vana. See Mäe for discussion.
Name of summer estate (suvemõis, see Mõisa) of the Girard de Soucanton family (originally French Provençal; Arthur Baron Girard de Soucanton [1813-1884] was Tallinn councillor from 1864-1876 and Kunda burgomeister from 1876-1883). Apparently named after the erratic boulder in the sea nearby, and said to allude to the Venetian fort named Rocca al Mare, lit. “Rock by the sea” although known in English as the Koules Fortress, built around 1523-1540 in Heraklion (Ηρακλειον, city of Hercules) on the Greek island of Crete, hence its names in Greek, Κούλες (Koules); Italian: Castello a Mare; and Turkish: Kule Kalesi, Tower Castle). It is also said to relate to a poem written by Adelbert von Chamisso (Louis Charles Adelaide de Chamisso), 1781-1838, German poet and botanist of French aristocratic extraction, in his collection Salas y Gomez (title said to be painted on the side of the boulder) named after Sala y Gómez, a tiny (770 m wide) volcanic island 360 km ENE of Easter Island visited on Otto von Kotzebue’s 1815-1818 voyage to the South Sea and Bering’s Straits aboard the Russian ship Rurik. Its shape too, with a little imagination, could also resemble the square Venetian fortress. Rocca al Mare is Tallinn’s only Sub-district with no inhabitants, being devoted entirely to the Eesti Vabaõhumuuseum, or Estonian Open Air Museum. What more can you say? Not much, except that a rock of that name does not seem to exist on any official Tallinn or Estonian map, list, database. If anyone sees it walk by, let me know. Thanks.