Just outside Viljandi, alone in a meadow at Vana-Võidu, stands the oak that Eduard Viiralt drew into his 1943 drypoint of the Viljandi landscape, and it has carried the artist's name ever since. It is 4.88 metres round, squat and broad, and put at 300 to 400 years old. It was Estonia's Tree of the Year in 2024, and it can be seen from the Tartu-Viljandi road.
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Viiralti Oak (Tamme-Koori Oak)
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · 300 to 400 years · Vana-Võidu
This oak is famous because an artist drew it. In 1943 Eduard Viiralt, one of Estonia's great printmakers, put it at the centre of a drypoint called Viljandi maastik, the Viljandi landscape, and it has been the Viiralti oak ever since.
It had a name before that. Locals knew it as the Tamme-Koori oak, after Grigori, a 19th-century farmer at Tamme farm, whose land the meadow adjoins. So the tree has been named for a farmer and for an artist, and has outlived both.
It stands alone in the middle of the meadow at Vana-Võidu, just outside Viljandi, about 160 metres from the Tartu-Viljandi road. It is not tall, about 13 metres, but it is broad: 4.88 metres round at chest height, squat, with its branches reaching upward. The hollow inside the trunk has been filled with cement.
The age usually given, 300 to 400 years, is the contest's figure, not a measurement. The girth fits that range for an oak that has grown in the open all its life, with nothing to compete with for light.
In 2024 it was Estonia's Tree of the Year and came 12th in the European contest. A report that year described it in good condition. It is a protected natural monument, and the farm is next door, so walk over with the respect you would want shown to your own field.
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