Rääsa is a village in Lüganuse Parish, Ida-Viru County in northeastern Estonia. The village is situated in a prodominantly rual landscape, charectorized by forest, agricultural land, and dispersed settlements.
History Rääsa has a fairly extensive history. The estonian place name in the dictionary (Eesti kohanimeraamat) records the earliest written form of the village name as Resa in 1665 and changed into Räsa in 1796.
A school at Rääsa was documented by 1769. making it one of the older documented schools in maidla area. Records of the Rääsa school survive from 1848 onward, providing information about the schools history and activities.
Rääsa also contains an important archeological site. There is a burial ground locally known as (Hiiaugunõmme) in the village broadly dating between the 13th and 17th centuries. The site was first brought to scholarly attention by Estonian archeologist Jaan Jung in 1910, who reported human bones near the schoolhouse in the south of the village. The documentation of the site identifies the cemetery as an underground burial ground (maa-alune kalmistu). approximately 150 meters south of the former site of the Rääsa schoolhouse. Historical descriptions give this burial site a size of roughly 100x100 meters, although its difficult to accurately determine.
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