Most likely just some sensationalist bullshit. Even googling that in Estonian only results in the claim being made up by some German newspaper in early 2000s and it being unfounded and ridiculous.
It’s also generally very unlikely that you could find such bizarre laws in modern Estonia because the legal order changed repeatedly during the 20th century and, as far as I know, Hanseatic town laws or such are all only historical.
This whole map looks madeup bullshit.
Bullshit on all counts, not just Estonia. 🙂
You are welcome to have sex and play chess here, but according to our customs, you must do it waist deep in mud, and beard length is manadatory for such play: 30 cm for women, 60 cm for men. ;P Don’t use the chess pieces as sex toys, though, or Estonia will harshly [deport](http://www.pozorblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/elbonia1.png). ;P
/s
Perhaps you are not allowed to “[kabistama](https://www.eki.ee/dict/qs2018/index.cgi?C03=1&Q=kabistama)” during sex.
That verb has a somewhat dual meaning, one of which refers to sexual activity and the other is related to the game of checkers (kabe = checkers). Or, perhaps, you are only allowed to “play checkers” during sex, thus not play chess.
But I doubt that any of that is written into our legislation.
As others said, probably BS. I looked for laws governing game of chess and on national level there were just two notable chess regulations: 1999 – chess classes should be taught in primary school and 2006 – arrested people have right to have one set of chess in their cell.
Honestly, this is first time i saw claims for this regulation applying only in Tallinn. And sadly i can’t 100% rule out if the claim is false, because i couldn’t find authorative source for Tallinn’s legal documents archive. I did find registration of chess club, changing property tax on building on Chess street and other boring documents.
If the myth is originating from 90s as someone suggested, then there are no tracks on Tallinn’s digital document archive, i only had time to look through years 1994-2001 and 2019-2021. Last remaining place to look is National library’s archives, but those are slow and difficult to use from mobile device, so I’m not searching there tonight.
PS. I did find fun law prohibiting playing chess, but that was only very weakly linked to Tallinn via 1980 Moscow Olympics. Soviet cosmonauts were not allowed to play chess with each other while in space, because there had been incidents, where fistfight broke out in space. Chess between cosmonaut and ground support was still allowed.
5 comments
Most likely just some sensationalist bullshit. Even googling that in Estonian only results in the claim being made up by some German newspaper in early 2000s and it being unfounded and ridiculous.
It’s also generally very unlikely that you could find such bizarre laws in modern Estonia because the legal order changed repeatedly during the 20th century and, as far as I know, Hanseatic town laws or such are all only historical.
This whole map looks madeup bullshit.
Bullshit on all counts, not just Estonia. 🙂
You are welcome to have sex and play chess here, but according to our customs, you must do it waist deep in mud, and beard length is manadatory for such play: 30 cm for women, 60 cm for men. ;P Don’t use the chess pieces as sex toys, though, or Estonia will harshly [deport](http://www.pozorblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/elbonia1.png). ;P
/s
Perhaps you are not allowed to “[kabistama](https://www.eki.ee/dict/qs2018/index.cgi?C03=1&Q=kabistama)” during sex.
That verb has a somewhat dual meaning, one of which refers to sexual activity and the other is related to the game of checkers (kabe = checkers). Or, perhaps, you are only allowed to “play checkers” during sex, thus not play chess.
But I doubt that any of that is written into our legislation.
As others said, probably BS. I looked for laws governing game of chess and on national level there were just two notable chess regulations: 1999 – chess classes should be taught in primary school and 2006 – arrested people have right to have one set of chess in their cell.
Honestly, this is first time i saw claims for this regulation applying only in Tallinn. And sadly i can’t 100% rule out if the claim is false, because i couldn’t find authorative source for Tallinn’s legal documents archive. I did find registration of chess club, changing property tax on building on Chess street and other boring documents.
If the myth is originating from 90s as someone suggested, then there are no tracks on Tallinn’s digital document archive, i only had time to look through years 1994-2001 and 2019-2021. Last remaining place to look is National library’s archives, but those are slow and difficult to use from mobile device, so I’m not searching there tonight.
PS. I did find fun law prohibiting playing chess, but that was only very weakly linked to Tallinn via 1980 Moscow Olympics. Soviet cosmonauts were not allowed to play chess with each other while in space, because there had been incidents, where fistfight broke out in space. Chess between cosmonaut and ground support was still allowed.