Vooru (locally, Vuuru) is a village in

Viljandi Parish Viljandi Parish ( et, Viljandi vald) is a rural municipality of Viljandi County, Estonia. It is located around the town of Viljandi, but does not include it. Viljandi Parish was established by merging four municipalities: Paistu, Pärsti, Saa ...

Viljandi County Viljandi County ( et, Viljandi maakond or ''Viljandimaa''; german: Kreis Fellin) is one of 15 counties of Estonia. It is located in southern Estonia bordering Pärnu, Järva, Jõgeva, Tartu and Valga counties. History Viljandimaa, under the ...

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...

. It is 34 km (21 miles) southeast of the town of

Viljandi Viljandi (, german: Fellin, sv, Fellin) is a town and municipality in southern Estonia with a population of 17,407 in 2019. It is the capital of Viljandi County and is geographically located between two major Estonian cities, Pärnu and Tartu. ...

, 2 km (1 mile) south of the village of Suislepa, near the southern border of

Valga County Valga County ( et, Valga maakond or ''Valgamaa'') is a first-level administrative unit and one of 15 counties of Estonia. It comprises the former area of Valga District. The present-day county was created on 1 January 1990. The capital and lar ...

and the Õhne river. As of 2011, the population of Vooru was 65, a decrease from 101 in the 2000 census. The ruins of the pre-Christian Vooru Castle

hill fort A hillfort is a type of earthwork used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze Age or Iron Age. Some were used in the post-Roma ...

are located in Vooru. The castle was built in the middle 6th-7th centuries AD and was in use until the 11th century. It was the largest stronghold of the native Livonian population in Viljandi County from that era. Archaeological excavations of the ruins in 1969-1970 reveal the stronghold was burned on at least three occasions before being abandoned. The site is now on the National Register of Cultural Monuments. The first recorded mention of Vooru (German: ''Worroküll'') as a settlement was in 1583, where a manor house built by

Baltic German Baltic Germans (german: Deutsch-Balten or , later ) were ethnic German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today are Estonia and Latvia. Since their coerced resettlement in 1939, Baltic Germans have markedly declined ...

nobility stood. A later

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals w ...

and outbuildings were built sometime in the 18th century. Baltic German writer

August von Kotzebue August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue (; – ) was a German dramatist and writer who also worked as a consul in Russia and Germany. In 1817, one of Kotzebue's books was burned during the Wartburg festival. He was murdered in 1819 by Karl L ...

lived at the manor briefly in 1800 following his arrest en route to Saint Petersburg from

Tallinn Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju '' ...

(then, Reval) after being accused of being a Jacobin. von Kotzebue was deported to Siberia. However, he had written a comedy which flattered the vanity of Paul I of Russia and he was quickly released and presented with the Vooru estate from the crown lands of

Livonia Livonia ( liv, Līvõmō, et, Liivimaa, fi, Liivinmaa, German and Scandinavian languages: ', archaic German: ''Liefland'', nl, Lijfland, Latvian and lt, Livonija, pl, Inflanty, archaic English: ''Livland'', ''Liwlandia''; russian: Ли ...

as compensation. von Kotzebue later wrote about this period in his life in the autobiographical ''Das merkwürdigste Jahr meines Lebens'' (''The Strangest Year of My Life''). Following the

Estonian War of Independence The Estonian War of Independence ( et, Vabadussõda, literally "Freedom War"), also known as the Estonian Liberation War, was a defensive campaign of the Estonian Army and its allies, most notably the United Kingdom, against the Bolshevik westw ...

, in 1920, Vooru was classified as a settlement and in 1945, the local church was incorporated into the settlement. In 1977, the settlements of Arakumäe, Kõksi and Suureküla were merged with Vooru to create the village of Vooru. Vooru is the birthplace of Estonian poet

Martin Lipp Martin Lipp ( in Vooru, Viljandi Parish – 8 March 1923 in Tallinn) was an Estonian poet. He is best known as the author of the poem "The Estonian Flag", which was set to the music of the then young composer Enn Võrk. That song became as po ...

(1854–1923), who is best known as the author of the poem "The Estonian Flag", which was set to the music of composer Enn Võrk.Eesti Kirik. ''Martin Lipp jättis jälje eesti kultuurilukku.''
Linda Raudvassar. 9 April 2014. Retrieved 3 January 2016. (In Estonian).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vooru Villages in Viljandi County Kreis Fellin