January 15, 1858 Earthquake: Hiiumaa Island, Estonia

Name: January 15, 1858 Earthquake: Hiiumaa Island, Estonia
Start: 1858-01-15
Location: Hiiumaa Island, Estonia

January 15, 1858 · M3

A magnitude 3 earthquake struck Hiiumaa Island, Estonia on January 15, 1858 at 11:10 UTC, 8 km below the surface. It caused a tsunami.

Map

Where it struck, with the other significant earthquakes within 200 km. Circles are sized and colored by magnitude; select one for its page.

The earthquake

Date: January 15, 1858
Time: 11:10 UTC
Place: Hiiumaa Island, Estonia
Magnitude: 3
Focal depth: 8 km (5 mi)
Intensity: V, moderate shaking, on the Modified Mercalli scale
Tsunami: Yes: the tsunami it caused
Epicenter: 59.300° N, 22.600° E
Country: Estonia
Region: Northern and Western Europe

The toll

The record gives no deaths, injuries or damage for this earthquake.

What the record says

NCEI’s account, from the sources it cites.

Reference #14513 lists two earthquakes 16 minutes apart north of Hilumaa Island. Notes “two waves (tsunami) on northern coast of Hiiumaa Island”. Cites Doss (1898) and Musketov and Orlov (1893)

Reference #14514: Doss (1898 ) described the observations of a sudden rise of water level (twice, and up to 1 m) of brooks at two shoreline locations in NE and NW Hiiumaa. A contemporary explanation of a waterspout from the sea did not appear plausible for him. In-stead, he was confident that these have been tsunami wave ob-servations from an offshore earthquake. A recent study on the Finnish coastal waters (Pellikka et al. 2014 ) suggests that a meteorological front can cause rapid and strong sea level variations if atmospheric disturbances and the dimensions of bays form a fav ourab le combination. Consequently, the 1858 event has been reclassified as a possible meteotsunami and removed from the [earthquake] catalogue.

Sources NCEI cites

The publications NCEI lists for this record. The numbers match the “reference #” notes in its account above.

#14513 Nikonov, A.A. and Sildvee, H. (1991). Historical earthquakes in Estonia and their seismotectonic position. Geophysica, 27(1-2), 79-93.
#14514 Uski, M., Oinonen, K., Lund, B., Soosalu, H., Ottemöller, L., Sorensen, M.B., Voss, P.H. and Korja, A. (2025). FENCAT, an update of the Fennoscandian earthquake catalogue. Geophysical Journal International, 242(3), ggaf242. DOI: 10.1093/gji/ggaf242

Significant earthquakes of 1858 The 1800s Recent earthquakes near here This day in weather history

Sources

Significant earthquakes from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, Global Historical Hazard Database, cited as NCEI/WDS, doi:10.7289/V5PN93H7. Public domain. Read 2026-10-01. NCEI earthquake 11021.