Songs of the Kääpa river

Small in flow, the Kääpa northeast of Tartu runs thick in legend and inspiration. This gently flowing stream is where the epic hero Kalevipoeg met his death, at the blade of his own sword in fulfilment of a blacksmith’s curse.

As to the Kääpa’s inspiration, that has been drawn on by Estonian nature philosopher and writer Valdur Mikita in his 2013 book, The Linguistic Forest. This river flows northeastwards, skirting the furthest reach of continental ice from the last ice age, which left a sinuous strip of stony moraine. A layer of earth the river cuts into is some 10,000 years old, and he wonders aloud if words in the Estonian language date from that time.

Valdur is writing about onomatopoeia, words that sound like what they mean, as a clue to how language developed. Examples in English include whirr, buzz, click, crash, bang, swish, to scythe, to ring, to saw, to scrape, to sneeze, to groan. When studying the connections between the sounds of Estonian words and nature, he comes to the astonishing conclusion that where onomatopoeia is concerned - in the Estonian language - it is born from the human body, not the mouth.

In creating his argument, Valdur suggests that nature speaks its own language, one different to human languages. He is not referring to bird calls, or thunder, or the wind in the trees, as such; rather, a silent language of nature, that people used to be able to “hear”, just as today we can read a book silently, and still derive meaning from it.

Valdur is a biosemiotician, referring to a branch of ecology that is hard to explain. Wikipedia says it “studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, biological interpretation processes, production of signs and codes and communication processes in the biological realm”. (A subject for a later blogpost!)

He points to the numerous examples of auxiliary nouns in Estonian in expressions such as: in the sun’s hand (päikese käes), meaning “in the sun”; in the tree’s root (puu juures), “beside a tree”; at the hill’s ear (künka kõrval), “near a hill”; in the river’s mouth (jõe suus), “in the river”; or on a writing’s journey (kirja teel), which could translate metaphorically as, “in a flow of writing”.

Superficially at last, we have a similar idea in English: in the teeth of a gale, in the eye of a storm, in the bed of a river, on the horns of a dilemma, at the head of a queue.   

So, what is Valdur getting at? He wants to turn around the nouns and their post-positions: being in the sun signifies the hand; being next to a tree means the roots of the tree; nearness to a hill means the ear; being in the river means the mouth. Or, so it all once signified to an ancient people making sense of the world around them, as they developed the beginnings of a proto-Uralic language.

It seems far-fetched; however, let’s modify the expressions in English: in the gale’s teeth, in the storm’s eye, at the queue’s head. Suddenly, the emphasis swings to the second noun, and away from the first.

In an ancient time when humans received stimuli from nature, instead of imposing their will on it, nature helped people make sense of their own body – as I understand Valdur’s writing – helping them in turn to develop language. Today, in contrast, we use language to assign meaning to the world around us.   

Far-fetched or not, Valdur has taken his Estonianness along less-travelled paths, and ends his short essay with, “These thoughts may resemble the forgotten songs of the Kääpa river.”

A lot of inspiration from a quiet little, reed-lined creek: Valdur mentions the Kääpa river also in Forestonia (2020) where he steps off the beaten track into a wilderness area there, leaving the trappings of culture behind to enjoy a sense of nature. 

Of the area, the Hellomondo website says, “Known for its tranquil environment, Kääpa offers visitors a glimpse into traditional Estonian life, amidst lush forests and idyllic waterways.” Activities of interest include hiking, birdwatching and seasonal fishing.

A look on an online map reveals plenty of campsites in a landscape which is not unrelated to the captivating post-glacial landforms of the drumlin-and-lake country of Vooremaa to the west.

A must destination for the next visit to the old country, especially on translating kääpa jõgi – dwarf’s river. It sounds like something out of JRR Tolkien who took inspiration from Nordic myths and legends in his kirja teel.