{"id":1551,"date":"2024-04-03T23:41:31","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T20:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/veedam\/"},"modified":"2024-04-04T00:06:56","modified_gmt":"2024-04-03T21:06:56","slug":"veedam","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/v\/veedam\/","title":{"rendered":"Voldemar Veedam"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNon-fiction<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\tVoldemar Veedam (6 November 1912 \u2013 2 March 1983) was an exile Estonian prose writer and journalist who was primarily known for his immensely popular book Sailing to Freedom (1952).<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tVeedam was born in Tallinn as the son of a worker. In 1931, he completed Hans Kubu Private Gymnasium in Tallinn and, in 1942, graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Tartu specialising in history. He was a member of the Raimla Students Society. During World War II, he worked for the Archive of Topical History in Tartu, which documented the crimes of Soviet occupation, and the newspaper Eesti S\u00f5na<\/em> in Tallinn.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1943, he fled through Finland to Sweden and, from there, in a former mailboat across the Atlantic to the US. There, he at first worked as a violin player and insurance agent and did odd jobs. From 1955\u20131974, Veedam was editor of the Estonian Service of the Voice of America and, from 1974\u20131976, head of the Estonian Service. From 1976, Veedam was a freelance history researcher and journalist in Washington.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tHis documentary book Sailing to Freedom which described his boat voyage across the Atlantic was published in cooperation with this American co-author Carl B. Wall in New York in 1952. The book was soon translated into 17 languages. By now, the book has appeared in 30 languages, which makes it one of the most translated books written by an Estonian author. In Estonian, the short version of his travelogue had been published under the title \u201cErma\u201d meres\u00f5it<\/em> (\u2018Erma\u2019s Sea Voyage\u2019) in Germany as early as in 1947. Full translation of \u201cSailing to Freedom\u201d into Estonian was published in Estonia in 1998. The book describes thrillingly the 117-day feat of 16 Estonian refugees, including four children, who set sail across the Atlantic from Sweden on 9 August 1945 in an 11.2-metre long one-sail boat. Four and a half months later, they landed in the city of Norfolk, Virginia. Their voyage received broad attention in the US and Western Europe. British publications have called Erma\u2019s voyage one of the most epic contemporary sea voyages.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tAs a result of long-time research, Veedam published in 1981 a book in Estonian about the life of the famous Estonian wrestler Georg Lurich in America in 1913\u20131917, Lurich Ameerikas: Hackenschmidti j\u00e4lgedes, Abergi varjus<\/em> (\u2018Lurich in America: In Hackenschmidt\u2019s Footsteps, Overshadowed by Aberg\u2019).<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tL. P. (Translated by I. A.)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/em>\n<\/p>\n

Books in Estonian<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tVoldemar Veedam, Carl B. Wall, The Cruise of the \u201cErma\u201c. One of the most stirring sagas of modern times = \u201eErma\u201c meres\u00f5it. \u00dcks meie aja p\u00f5nevamaid legende<\/strong>. Augsburg-Hochfeld, 1947. 30 lk.
Lurich Ameerikas: Hackenschmidti j\u00e4lgedes, Abergi varjus<\/strong>. Toronto: Oma Press Ltd., 1981. 141 lk.
Voldemar Veedam, Carl B. Wall, Purjetamine vabadusse<\/strong>. Tallinn: Ilo, 1998. 223 lk. [2. tr\u00fckk: 2017.]<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t
Books in English<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tVoldemar Veedam, Carl B. Wall, Sailing to freedom<\/strong>. New York: Crowell, 1952. 246 lk.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Non-fiction \u00a0 Voldemar Veedam (6 November 1912 \u2013 2 March 1983) was an exile Estonian prose writer and journalist who was primarily known for his immensely popular book Sailing to Freedom (1952). Veedam was born in Tallinn as the son …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"parent":733,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1551","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3530,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1551\/revisions\/3530"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}