Evald Rooma, alias Onu Eskimo, the godfather of Estonian-produced ice cream, celebrated his 104th birthday today.

Rooma was born in Tartu in 1911 and became the first ice cream industrialist in Estonia. He produced his first batch of ice cream in 1932 for the Tartu Song Festival and two years later opened a production line in his home town.

Rooma has been known to and loved by generations of Estonians as Uncle Eskimo, nicknamed so after his ice cream company Eskimo, which closed down with the Soviet occupation but was reopened in Elva in 1987, when Rooma was 76 years of age.

He still sold ice cream in a local fair in Melliste in 2011, when 100 years old.

The years in between, Rooma worked in bread, candy and ice cream industries, as well as in transport. He developed several recipies, including vanilla, banana and rasberry dairy ice cream which are in production to this day.

Most of the original production line of Eskimo, Rooma donated to Balbiino's Ice Cream Museum in Tallinn. In 2012, Balbiino also opened Onu Eskimo's Ice Cream Café in Tartu to celebrate Uncle Eskimo and his legacy.

ERR News