Piirissaar is a tiny Estonian island in Lake Peipus, on the very border of Russia.

The Russian Old Believers who inhabited the island arrived here 300 years ago, during the Great Northern War, fleeing from the religious reforms in the Orthodox Church and to avoid being mobilised into the Russian army.

As the waves have washed the island smaller and smaller, the community has also dwindled over time, inevitably reaching the brink of extinction. However, the local culture and way of life that developed in isolation from the rest of the "Russian world" has not yet completely disappeared from Piirissaar.