Tartu teacher aims to swim in as many Estonian lakes as possible
A schoolteacher from Tartu, Estonia, known online as Undine, has been documenting her quest to swim in as many of the country's lakes as possible, recently reaching lake number 149. She now aims to visit all 500 registered lake bathing spots while urging others to protect fragile natural sites.
Eliza Kender, a teacher from Tartu, Estonia, has spent recent years documenting her swims in the country's lakes under the online pseudonym Undine. She recently visited Lake Purgatsi near Aegviidu with a film crew — the 149th lake on her path toward an unusual personal record.
Kender says her connection to lakes began in childhood, when her family's country home in southern Estonia's Põlva County meant lakes were a frequent gathering place. Before last summer, she publicly announced on social media her goal of swimming in 101 lakes over the summer, explaining that making the goal public made it harder to quit halfway. A former data analyst now working as a teacher, she has meticulously logged each swim on her blog.
Kender reached her goal of 101 lakes in the first summer and added roughly fifty more this year. Her social media following grew tenfold this summer, even as her teenage children remain unimpressed by her newfound online popularity.
How many lakes does Estonia actually have?
Counting Estonia's lakes turns out to be surprisingly difficult. The state register lists several thousand water bodies, many unnamed bog ponds, alongside artificial features such as quarries, ponds and reservoirs that don't fit the classic definition of a lake. About a decade ago, a researcher manually counted water bodies visible on aerial photographs and tallied roughly 90,000 ponds, lakes, bog lakes and other standing waters across the country.
Kender has no plans to visit all of them, since many sit on private land or are otherwise hard to reach. Her new goal instead is to visit all 500 lake bathing spots listed in an environmental portal's register, rating each one along the way.
Some critics online accuse Undine of exposing private bathing spots to wider public attention, while scientists urge swimmers to stick to designated sites to protect fragile natural ecosystems, noting that human activity already strains many of Estonia's water bodies.
