The Väike-Linnape memorial had been located close to the castle at Kuressaare, the island's capital, but was removed when civilian war graves there were re-interred.

Now, it is not clear if it will be preserved or re-erected, with the cost and the weight of the dolomite rock the monument is made of being key factors. Some fear it will end up being used as landfill aggregate.

When the dismantling of the monument, erected in 1965 to victims of fascism, and the reburial of remains began XXX LINK 1 XXX last October at Väike-Linnape, adjacent to Kuressaare Castle, the Saaremaa local government told the public that the plan was to move it to a military museum in the south of the island, where it would be restored where possible.

Almost a year later, the Saaremaa municipal government, whose composition has changed in the meantime, still does not know what to do with the monument, created by architect Allan Murdmaa and sculptors Riho Kuld and Matti Varik.

"This question comes as a surprise to me. We haven't discussed it and no decision has been made," municipal mayor Rainer Antsaar (Isamaa) said. Following ERR's call, Antsaar said it was possible a decision would be made next week.

"In about a month's time, in October, the one-year storage agreement signed with the municipality will expire," noted Peeter Sai, head of dolomite processing firm Dolokivi, the company which dismantled the memorial. Pieces of the monument have been stored, dismantled, in his storage yard and warehouse since it was removed last fall.

"I'll have to write to the municipality and ask whether they're going to extend the agreement or what will happen to the monument. Then we'll have to decide what to do next. If nobody wants it, the stones will be used as fill. If the municipality decides to extend the storage agreement, then of course I'll want to be paid for it," Sai explained.

According to Sai, the monument's components — dolomite slabs stacked on standard-sized EUR-pallets and a separate obelisk — have some cosmetic damage, but overall the former monumental sculpture is in good condition.

Sai said the issue is that although there was an agreement with the municipality that a permanent location would be found for the monument within a year, none has been found so far.

"The heritage authorities would like the monument to be preserved, but putting it back up, or even simply storing it, is expensive. To put it back up, it would have to be filled with silicate again — we broke out the old silicate and preserved only the dolomite part. The monument can only be moved with a crane or some other lifting equipment. It's all a lot of work and gets expensive," Sai went on.

Sai said there had been talk of a local military museum taking the monument, but it does not have room to store it either, as it already has a number of other monuments. The 22–23 EUR-pallets' worth of dolomite from the Väike-Linnape monument and its obelisk, made of a seven-ton block of stone, would not fit there.

Sai said there would be no point in transporting the monument's components to Sõrve simply for storage; the ground there is such that it may subside if erected.

"If nobody is going to put it up, there's no point moving it from one place to another. In Sõrve, it would eventually sink into the ground," Sai said, referring to the monument's considerable weight. The Museum of the Fight for Estonia's Freedom in Lagedi, near Tallinn, had also reportedly considered taking on the monument, but abandoned the idea due to the high cost.

Sai said destroying the monument would, nonetheless, naturally be sad. "It is, after all, a work by our great masters Murdmaa and Varik. The heritage authorities will have to come up with something, but right now the situation is that nobody wants it," Sai said.

Saaremaa municipality's crisis preparedness adviser Gunnar Havi is slightly more optimistic about the fate of the dismantled monument, though he, too, acknowledged that no decision has been made and dealing with it would be a major expense for the municipality.

"There have been different opinions here. We certainly won't be turning it into gravel, but all of this costs money. Restoring the monument to its original form would cost tens of thousands of euros," Havi said, adding that one option considered has been to display only the valuable slabs and the obelisk. Havi did not specify where this might be carried out.

If the Väike-Linnape monument were to be destroyed, it would be the second artistically valuable memorial to disappear from Estonian art history in the wake of the reburial of a mass grave, and by the same artists. A modernist monument created in Jõgeveste in 1973, also by Murdmaa and Varik, has been broken up.

From a heritage protection perspective, the monuments have different statuses, although this does not help the Kuressaare memorial in a direct way.

Jüri-Martin Lepp, an art heritage adviser at the National Heritage Board (Muinsuskaitseamet), said that although protection of the Väike-Linnape mass grave was also terminated via a 2024 regulation, as was the case with Jõgeveste, it remained protected due to its location close to the ramparts of Kuressaare Castle, including its distinctive ravelin-type outworks, which are themselves protected as a heritage site. Heritage protection requirements consequently continued to apply to it.

"The marker at the Väike-Linnape mass grave was dismantled and relocated by a conservator with a professional certificate. All parts of the marker were numbered and stored in Saaremaa, meaning it will be possible to display it in the future. In the case of the Jõgeveste mass grave marker, the local government was not required to notify the National Heritage Board because the mass grave's status as a protected monument was terminated in 2024," Lepp said, explaining the distinction.

Lepp noted that the monuments working group which operated under the Government Office and was tasked with determining which markers were worth preserving had assessed the Jõgeveste marker as being of high artistic value, noting it was skillfully integrated into the surrounding landscape, and had said its granite slabs and core should be preserved if the remains were re-interred.

"It is as a result sad that the marker was largely destroyed during the reburial. The National Heritage Board is always ready to provide professional advice to help preserve works by Estonian artists. In the case of more complex objects, the course of the work needs to be carefully thought through in advance to avoid damaging cultural heritage, because careful consideration demonstrates the strength of a society," Lepp said.

Last November, the remains of 199 people executed during the German occupation were re-interred from the Väike-Linnape mass grave. Unlike most other Second World War-era mass graves reburied in Estonia, the remains there belonged to Estonian civilians rather than military personnel. The civilians had been executed in the Loode oak grove and at Mändjala.

The first memorial erected by the Soviet authorities in the victims' memory was also located in the Loode oak grove. In the 1960s, the mass grave was moved to the Väike-Linnape ravelin at Kuressaare Castle, where a modernist monument was commissioned. In addition to the names of those killed, it bore the inscription: "Elavad, pidage meeles!" — an exhortation for the living to keep those who perished in their memory.

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