Photos

This photo is taken on Tallinn's Day 2005 (15.May). Tallinn's day is a one day festival celebrating the moment in history in 1248, when Tallinn was granted city rights - similar to those in Lubeck.

Kiiking on the other hand is a new Estonian sports. In Estonian language swing is “kiik” and from it comes that swinging over the spindle is “kiiking”. Swinging has very strong traditions in our national culture. There were, and if you go to countryside - there still are big wooden swings almost in every village. It is possible to swing over the spindle with those timber swings just as well, but it’s quite dangerous as people are not fastened to the swing :)
Swinging as sports is individual and the person is fastened to the swing with both hands and legs, so it is not possible to fall off the swing.

The idea of competition is quite simple - the one to make full spindle with highest swing is the winner. The higher the swing (longer bars) the bigger the circle has to be and the harder it is to accomplish.
:)

I made it on a 5m swing. But the world record is over 7m.

If anybody wants to find out more about kiiking, here is Estonian Kiiking Federation's website