Pürksi Manor and Swedish-Estonian School

Restored manor at the heart of Estonia's Swedish-heritage revival

Pürksi Manor is the cultural anchor of Noarootsi. The manor house dates to the 18th century and was the administrative centre of the surrounding Swedish-speaking community for generations. After standing neglected through the Soviet era, it was carefully restored following Estonian independence and now houses the Lääneranna secondary school — one of the few places in Estonia where Swedish is taught as a required subject rather than an optional one.

The restored manor building is pleasant to walk around, and the surrounding grounds give a good sense of what a Baltic German estate looked like before the upheavals of the 20th century. The village of Pürksi itself — known in Swedish as Birkas — retains a handful of old farmhouses and a small community of people maintaining the Swedish-Estonian heritage. If you are interested in this unique cultural thread, visiting Pürksi is essential.

things to do sight historic house
A story
When the Soviet occupation began in 1944, almost all of Noarootsi's Swedish-speaking population — some 7,000 people — fled across the Baltic to Sweden in a matter of days, leaving behind farms, churches, and the manor house at Pürksi. After Estonian independence in 1991, the manor became a symbol of reconnection: Swedish donors helped fund its restoration, and it now hosts a secondary school where Swedish is compulsory — so that the language that survived here for centuries does not disappear again.