One day around 3500 years ago a piece of space rock burst into flame on hitting the Earth’s atmosphere, disintegrated, and plummeted into Saaremaa. The largest rock landed with an almighty smack, puncturing limestone strata into the water table. People in the area would have been amazed at the circular depression suddenly formed, setting fire to square kilometres of surrounding forest, and which over time became a 110 metre wide pond.
Kaali crater, Visit Estonia website
Today the Kaali meteorite crater is a popular visitor attraction; a gravel path rises through a stand of maples to the rim, and on the day we visited, the kaalijärv presented itself as a green-brown puddle several metres below us, edged with bare ground. July had been exceptionally dry.
The fiery crash could have inspired the Scandinavian term for the mythical northern land, Thule, a view put forward by Lennart Meri, Estonian ethnographer and the first prime minister of the restored republic. Tule in Finnish and Estonian means “of fire”. This is not implausible. In earlier times speakers of Uralic languages may have been more widespread in areal extent than today. And if the name Thule is often attached to speakers of Nordic languages, that’s presumably because they could write, and Estonians didn’t.
An alternative view on Thule may be read into the Kalevipoeg, the national epic based on the collection of Estonian folk tales out of which Friedrich Kreuzwald formed a coherent poetic narrative in the mid-1800s.
Canto XVI tells the story of Kalevipoeg seeking to travel to the end of the world, and meeting Varrak, a Sami man or Lapplander who told him this was not possible. Undeterred, Kalevipoeg has his crew sail his ship, the Lennuk, further north until arriving at an “island of sparks” – sädemete saar - where billow clouds of smoke.
Edging closer, the adventurers view an island of mountains, one making fire, another giving birth to smoke, and a third where water boils. Kalevipoeg’s brother Sulevi explores too closely; fiery stones rain down on him, all but baking him to death. Following a white bird, the Lennuk men barely escape.
This description reads like Iceland, and according to commentary on the Kalevipoeg epic, derives from a folkloric imagination of the “mouth of hell”.
The term, Thule, was first mentioned by the Greek explorer Pytheas, writing of his northern travels in 330-320 BCE. None of his words have survived directly; historians rely on later citations, placing Thule variously in Norway, the Scottish Orkney or Shetland islands, or Ireland, and also Iceland.
Returning to Saaremaa, some 2000 years ago Iron Age people built a stone wall to encircle the Kaali site; that and concentrations of animal bones suggest this was a sacred site, and one where sacrificial offerings were made.
To close: Swiss archaeologists studying a late Bronz Age arrowhead found near Lake Biel in Switzerland concluded in a 2023 research paper that the iron of which it was made came most likely from the Kaali meteorite.
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