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Estonian mythology

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Background

According to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia in 1225 the Estonians disinterred the enemy's dead and burned them. It is thought that cremation was believed to speed up the dead person's journey to the afterlife and by cremation the dead would not become earthbound spirits which were thought to be dangerous to the living. He also described in his chronicle an Estonian legend originating in Virumaa about a mountain and a forest where a god named Tharapita, worshipped by Oeselians, was said to have been born.

The solstice festival of Midsummer (Estonian: Jaanipäev) celebrating the sun through solar symbols of bonfires is has been celebrated up until the present day and the mythology around the holiday features Estonian nature spirits such as the sacred oak and linden. The spirits were described by Balthasar Russow in 1578.

Some traces of the oldest authentic myths may have survived in runic songs. There is a song about the birth of the world in which a bird lays three eggs and starts to lay out the nestlings. One becomes Sun, one becomes Moon and one becomes the Earth. Other Baltic Finnic peoples also have myths according to which the world has emerged from an egg.

The world of the Estonians' ancestors is believed to have turned around a pillar or a tree, to which the skies were nailed with the North Star. The Milky Way (Linnutee or Birds' Way in Estonian) was a branch of the World tree (Ilmapuu) or the way by which birds moved (and took the souls of the deceased to the other world). These myths were based on animistic beliefs.

Changes occurred in proto-Estonian mythology as a result of the contacts with Baltic and Germanic tribes, as well as the transition from hunting and gathering to farming. Personifications of celestial bodies, sky and weather deities and fertility gods gained importance in the world of the farmers. There may have been a sky and thunder god called Uku or Ukko, also called Vanaisa (Grandfather) or Taevataat (Sky Father). Proto Estonian pre-Christian deities also may have included a sky-god by name Jumal, known also by other Finnic peoples as Jumala in Finnish and Jumo in Mari.

Estonian legends about giants (Kalevipoeg, Suur Tõll, Leiger) may be a reflection of Germanic (especially Scandinavian) influences. Giants themselves in some stories stood as protectors against such Germanic influences, such as invasion. There are numerous legends interpreting various natural objects and features as traces of Kalevipoeg's deeds. The giant has merged with Christian Devil, giving birth to a new character, Vanapagan (a cunning demon living on his farm or manor) and his farm hand Kaval-Ants ("Crafty Hans").

It has been suggested by ethnologist and former president Lennart Meri (among others), that a Kaali meteorite which passed dramatically over populated regions and landed on the island of Saaremaa around 3,000–4,000 years ago was a cataclysmic event that may have influenced the mythology of Estonia and neighboring countries, especially those from whose vantage point a "sun" seemed to set in the east.

In the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, cantos 47, 48 and 49 can be interpreted as descriptions of the impact, the resulting tsunami and devastating forest fires. It has also been suggested that the Virumaa-born Oeselian god Tharapita is a reflection of the meteorite that entered the atmosphere somewhere near the suggested "birthplace" of the god and landed in Oesel.

Motifs from Estonian runic songs include a mighty oak that grows into the sky before being felled and transformed into various objects, the Sun, Moon, and Star acting as suitors to a young maiden who ultimately accepts the Star, and a crafty blacksmith forging a woman of gold while remaining unable to grant her a soul or a mind. Other motifs involve a holy grove withering following desecration by a couple, a little brother successfully slaying a giant ox where mighty heroes failed, a woman being forced to kill her daughter who then ascends to heaven as an air maiden, a girl discovering a fish containing a woman, young girls being seduced at night by beings from the holy grove or the land of the dead, and a lake migrating to a new location after being desecrated.

Some constructed elements are loans from Finnish mythology. Friedrich Robert Faehlmann and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald compiled the Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg out of numerous prosaic folk legends and runic verse imitations that they themselves had written. Faehlmann also wrote eight fictional myths combining motives of Estonian folklore (from the legends and folk songs), Finnish mythology (from Ganander's "Mythologia Fennica") and classical Greek mythology. Matthias Johann Eisen was another folklorist and writer who studied folk legends and reworked them into literary form. Many of their contemporary scholars accepted this mythopoeia as authentic Estonian mythology.

During the era of Estonian national awakening the elements in the literary mythology were quickly and readily incorporated into contemporary popular culture through media and school textbooks. It can be difficult to tell how much of Estonian mythology as we know it today was actually constructed in the 19th and early 20th century. Faehlmann even noted in the beginning of his Esthnische Sagen (Estonian Legends) that:

"However, since Pietism has started to penetrate deep into the life of the people...[s]inging folk songs and telling legends have become forbidden for the people; moreover, the last survivals of pagan deities are being destroyed and there is no chance for historical research."

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