Estonian mythology

Estonian mythology is a complex of myths belonging to the Estonian folk heritage and literary mythology.

Information about the pre-Christian and medieval Estonian mythology is scattered in historical chronicles, travellers' accounts and in ecclesiastical registers. Systematic recordings of Estonian folklore started in the 19th century.

Pre-Christian Estonian deities included a sky-god known as Jumal or Taevataat ("Old man of the sky") in Estonian, corresponding to Jumala in Finnish, and Jumo in Mari.

A traveler called Wulfstan reported to the king Alfred the Great (871-899) about Estonians' burial customs that included keeping the dead unburied in the house of their relatives and friends, who would hold a wake of drinking until the day of the cremation.

According to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia in 1222 the Estonians even 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.

Henry of Livonia also describes in his chronicle an Estonian legend originating from Virumaa in North Estonia - about a mountain and a forest where a god named Tharapita, worshipped by Oeselians, had been born.

The solstice festival of Midsummer (Estonian: Jaanipäev) celebrating the sun through solar symbols of bonfires, the tradition alive until the present day and numerous Estonian nature spirits: the sacred oak and linden have been 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 – a bird lays three eggs and starts to lay out the nestlings – one becomes Sun, one becomes Moon and one becomes the Earth. Other Finno-Ugric peoples have also myths according to which the world has emerged from an egg.

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