Ranging from the size of a fist to that of a house, the millions of blocky crystalline stones strewn along the Baltic coast cannot fail to strike the eye. At a closer look, they are entirely different to the flat layers of flaggy limestone and sandstone marking Estonia’s northern coastline.
Somewhere near Tallinn
Visitors can see ripples on the sea bed of 500 million years ago, preserved snapshots in geological time. An information panel near the old fishers’ huts at Altja in Lahemaa National Park tells us the “erratics” date from the Precambrian era, 1.9 billion years old, and travelled southwards from Finland, borne in the ice sheet that much more recently blanketed the region.
To the first peoples arrived at these shores after the ice melt of 12,000 years ago, the stones would have seemed an amazing sight, or at least one requiring explanation. What they conjectured, no one knows today; however, to later peoples speaking Finno-Ugric languages, we may have more insight.
On Hiiumaa island west of the mainland a myth persists of a giant, Leiger, and Tiiu, his wife. A farmer and generally helpful to those in need, Leiger also had a fearsome temper, throwing stones at anything he did not like. Given the amount of erratic boulders in Hiiumaa, he must have been a moody fellow.
Travel south to the larger island of Saaremaa (literally, island land), and more rocks, and the stories of Leiger’s older brother, Suur Tõll and of his wife, Piret. For his part, Suur Tõll was a warrior, and large stones figured among his weaponry.
When we were kids dad would at times take out a large, old book with beautiful charcoal illustrations, the national epic, the Kalevipoeg, the story of the youngest son of the godlike heroes of Estonia and Finland, Linda and Kalev. Giants, and the protagonists of a large folk literature. Studies indicate Kalevipoeg roamed mostly in eastern and southern Estonia. The book is a relatively recent creation in Estonian terms, the genius of Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald who shaped the stories into an epic told in 20 cantos or poems, first published in the 1850s, in Estonian.
During his earthly existence Kalevipoeg was a warrior, a builder of villages and forts, a farmer, and a thrower of stones. The Odaskivi or spear stone located near Tsitre at the western edge of Lahemaa stands in tradition as a projectile of Kalevipoeg’s, aimed at the legendary wandering figure, Vanapagan, the old pagan.
We camped at a site associated with Kalevipoeg some distance north of Tartu where his slingstone is said to remain. Unable to find it, we visited instead a circular pond set into the landscape known in tradition as Kalevipoeg’s handwash basin.
An Estonian physicist took the size of stones and the distance thrown to calculate a height for Kalevipoeg of some 130 metres tall. This also explains- how the giant heaped up earth and rock in the south of Estonia to form a pillow for himself, and the highest peak in the Baltic, Suurmunamägi, the big egg hill, summiting at a lofty 318 metres above sealevel.
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