As a young boy on his first voyage, Johannes Eduard Kukk (1921-2013) left Tallinn in the fall of 1939, and after 13 years he landed in Norway. Now Kai Samuel Vigardt and Tarjei Strøm will try to find his heirs.
Seventy years later, Johannes dies in a nursing home in Bergen. Alone, without family, only two people attended the funeral.
The war sailor had traveled the world, but he could never return home. Only two people attend the funeral, and the authorities can't find an heir to the crowns Johannes has managed to save.
What was the story he was carrying? What happened to the family behind the Iron Curtain?
Johannes' inheritance amounts to NOK 67,000, which is small by Norwegian standards, but in Johannes' home country of Estonia the sum amounts to half a year's salary.
At the nursing home where Johannes died, none of the residents remember him. He never went out and stayed in his room.
At the State Archives in Bergen, Tarjei finds his first trace of Johannes. It turns out that he had been a sailor, but ended up stateless after the Second World War.
His statelessness is due to the fact that the country he left ceased to exist a few years after his departure, when Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union during World War II.
Luckily, he lived long enough to see Estonia reborn after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Foster son
The closest Tarjei comes to a Norwegian family is perhaps the woman who took him in and referred to him as a foster son. Through the woman's grandson, the program gives us a small description of Johannes' physique and personality.
Why does a 45-year-old sailor need a foster mother? And did he really have no family of his own in Estonia?
Tarjei Strøm and Kai Samuel Vigardt will answer these questions and more in the final episode of the program series Unknown Heir.
The episode will air on linear TV on Thursday, December 10, 2020 at 20:00, but as usual you can already watch it on NRK online TV
