One man turned up in Tallinn in early 1992 and told the Estonians not to reintroduce the kroon because it would be better to have a common currency "from Tallinn to Tashkent".
It wasn't until last fall that she joined the effort to reinvent the Kroon courtyard; by the spring semester the project had evolved into an independent study course.
Its capital, Helsinki, is just two hours away by fast ferry, but smaller Scandinavian companies might have feared exchange rate risk if Estonia was ever unable to defend the kroon.
Coupled with the pegging of the newly reintroduced national currency, the kroon, to the Deutschmark (now the euro), Estonia willingly locked itself in an economic straitjacket: the only way ahead was ever-higher productivity and fast export growth.That worked pretty well at the time.
If this led to a serious run on the domestic currency, it would lead to either de facto euroisation at the current exchange rate if Estonia received sufficient external support to finance the replacement of the kroon by the euro; around €3.2bn (US$4.4bn) would be needed to cover all kroon deposits—or a decision to suspend the currency board, leading to a sharp devaluation in the kroon.
The introduction of the kroon contributed to the stabilization of foreign trade, which was initially focused overwhelmingly on Russia and the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States but later expanded to include nations of the EU.
The F&ES community last week awarded the Kroon Cup to two members of the Class of 2014, one who has organized a variety of activities linking people with the natural world, and one who made an indelible mark on the school during his too-brief time here.
The kroon has been pegged to the euro ever since the single currency's creation, so economically the move will make little difference.
It was quite a gamble introducing the kroon, which was pegged to what was then the D-Mark in a currency board, at eight to one.
