Lutsu village

The village of luts-people

When visitors to Lutsu village see the village green and the nearby Prantso farm building, they often claim that it’s just like a small version of the open-air museum in Rocca al Mare, Tallinn. The heirs of Prantso farm have kindly allowed the villagers to use the farmstead as their village centre. Lutsu Theatre was established in 2013 and brings around 4,000 theatregoers to the village each summer. The theatre is known for including not only professional actors and the best amateur players of the county but also the local villagers known as luts-people.

The Great Northern War showed no mercy to Lutsu village as most of the villagers were killed during the plunders of Russian troops. Only a few families survived after hiding themselves in the nearby swamp and returning to their village once the war ended. The lineage of the survivors leads back to 1695. According to local legend, a Russian soldier wounded in the Great Northern War thanked his saviour by repeating “Dobrõi Luts” (“Good Luts” in Russian). The locals did not understand Russian, but there are numerous people carrying the family name Tobreluts today. In case you know or meet someone with the family name of Tobreluts, Luts or Lutsar, you can be pretty sure that their roots lead back to Lutsu village. In the summer of 2019, 400 members of the Tobreluts family came together to Lutsu village from all over the world to celebrate the surname’s bicentenary.

The grand oak tree that you see through the yellow window has grown here for three hundred years. Also the curious place names date back to the Great Northern War – Kuningakopli (King’s Paddock) where the Swedish troops grazed their horses, Sandimäe (Cripple’s Hill) where the local infirmary was located, and Ristikondi (Cross Mound) where they buried their soldiers.