Kärdla Cemetery

The history of Kärdla Cemetery is closely connected with the establishment of a Hiiu-Kärdla Broadcloth Factory in 1829. Over the years, a former village of Swedes became a factory town. A village graveyard where the Swedes had been burying their deceased was in an inconvenient location and was closed. The graveyard is reminded by a cross in the present Kärdla Beach Park; the cross was erected in memory of Karel Tanning, the last Swedish person laid to rest there. A new cemetery was begun in Röösna forest, the name of which is derived from the dialect of Estonian Swedes “rödstensskogen” means the forest of red rock.

Kärdla Cemetery is the final resting place of many workers, masters and clerks of the Broadcloth Factory. The first director of the factory baron Robert Eginhard von Ungern-Sternberg, nicknamed by people “the Old Baron”, and his blue-blooded wife are also buried in Kärdla Cemetery.

A choir conductor Liisa Kuusik, known by Kärdla people as Laulu-Liisa (Song Liisa), and several other persons, who have recorded their names in the cultural history of Hiiumaa and Estonia, rest in Kärdla Cemetery.

The graves of the crew and the captain of a brig Ellen which shipwrecked in a storm near Kärdla on 6th of May 1884 are also in Kärdla Cemetery.