Sorry for necroposting, but this thread was incredibly fascinating so I wanted to contribute. I enjoyed reading about the myths of various places. I didn’t know that Hiisi had attained negative connotations from christianity, nor about hungarian mythology, nor the seashell room and this thread finally made me understand about dreaming and dreamtime. The island that can be seen and unseen and the meeting your double thing were also pleasantly spooky.
We had a rather similar situation to the finns regarding our native religion. The estonian people had no united country and no written language. The oldest written accord that goes into any detail regarding the place is Henry of Latvia’s „Chronicles of Livonia“ (Läti Hendriku Liivimaa kroonika) which narrated the christianisation crusades. So it might not have been the most unbiased accord on pagan worship, that’s what I’m getting at. So all-in-all there’s very little known about the pre-christian era religion, especially when it comes to the old gods (or their lack, thereof).
As for bunyips, näcken, necken and other such creatures – estonians have the „näkk“ or „näkineid“ (näkk-maiden). It was dangerous to swim in bodies of water with a näkk living in them and sometimes you could spy them combing their hair or washing themselves on the shore.
„Hiis“ is still the estonian word for „holy grove“ and has managed to survive until present time with no negative connotations to my knowledge. Which is not to say, that christianity did not change the way we saw the world. A lot of the magic that some stories tell about – such as becoming an animal or building a kratt, was changed around so that you would have to sell your soul to the Devil to do that. The Devil also took over the role of an antagonist in pretty much every cautionary tale that had originally featured malevolent spirits or other such supernatural creatures.
The finnish „haltija“ also make an appearance. In estonian the word for them is „haldjas“ (which has, in the modern time, become our word for elves and fairys). To a foreigner I would describe them as a mix between a „soul“, a „fae“ and a „guardian spirit“ that you had to respect and give offerings to. I would say that to our ancestors the line between the living and the unliving world was a lot blurrier, so in a sense everything had a soul or an entity living inside it. Oh, and somewhat similar to finnish the root-word for „haldjas“ has birthed the word „haldaja“ which means „owner“ or „caretaker“.
One possible myth-fragment that I remember is the creation of the world, which was said to have been hatched from an egg along with the sun, the moon and sometimes other celestial bodies. This has survived in various folk songs across the country, though I reckon it is unknown whether it was ever regarded as anything more than just a pretty story.
Heres an example (with someones translation in the comments), though it has some choir-song undertones.
edit Found another version of the creation-song. I've heard this one before, on a ren-fair. I find it interesting how the lyrics can concentrate on completely different aspects yet the point of the song still remain the same.
Hm. One of my favorite folkloric creatures is the one known as kratt or tulihänd. Well, the former is a bit different from the latter, but only marginally so.
A kratt is essentially a golem made out of household items – sheafs of wheat, broomsticks, maybe a bucket or a turnip for a head, that sort of thing. You give it life by reciting a particular spell or by making a deal with the devil in exchange for your soul. Once alive the kratt will do your bidding, never tiring or resting, demanding to have more work whenever it is done with it’s current load. However, once you run out of jobs to give the kratt grows angry and kills you.
A tulihänd (firetail) is very similar to a kratt, but their specialty lies in stealing treasures for it’s master. Falling stars were said to be tulihänds flying across the sky.
The only way to get rid of a kratt was to give it an impossible task to carry out, such as building a ladder using nothing but bread or emptying a pond with a sieve. An especially cunning individual would even find a way to cheat the Devil – by for example sneakily signing the contract with redcurrant juice instead of blood (though that might just be from a book called „Rehepapp“ as opposed to real folklore).
There are also creatures known as koerakoonlane, meaning „dog-snouted“, though I’ve seen the word „cynocephali“ used in foreign literature, which is what I shall call them. They are the sort of monsters that people might have heard of in passing, but who aren’t really talked about much nowadays, which is a shame because I find them fascinating.
It is generally agreed upon that their stories stem from folk memories of raiders or foreigners – cossacks, russians, semigallians.
The cynocephali are said to be large in stature, part-dog and part-human. Which parts are which is a subject of regional variation, with the most common being a dogs head on a human body. They are gentle to each-other but upon sighting a human are right at it’s throat. In fact, towards humans their only response seems to be to kill, pillage and rob, often kidnapping the people they caught to eat them in their homeland. You could not hide in the woods or your house from them, as they were said to track you down by your scent. Once the cynocephalies showed up only running for the reeds was said to help, as flowing water would carry a human’s scent away. Eisen’s „Estonian mythology“ offers the most detailed account on cynocephali-related beliefs I have ever encountered, including that apparently the smell of birdcherry trees would mask a human’s scent as well. It’s a great book, but has never been translated to english to my knowledge. I’m kinda wondering if it would infringe on any copyrights if I attempted to translate parts of it myself.
People, who read this: do you also have some more known (and possibly "alive") superstitions you deem as worthy of mentioning? (Although, I'd be glad for reading about "dead" customs as well.)
Killing a spider brings bad luck. There’s a species of orb-weaver spiders that have a cross-pattern on their back – those bring good luck.
When I was on a school trip as a kid an old lady on Manija island yelled at me not to sit on the edge of a closed-off well because otherwise I would die of drowning (not due to that particular well, but somewhere down the line).
In the olden times you were not supposed to say the word for „wolf“, otherwise the wolf would hear you calling and come. Sort of a speak-of-the-devil business. So the people made up these roundabout ways of talking about the animal, some of which became folksy or lyrical synonyms. We’d have „hunt“ as the default word, but also susi (except in Southern-Estonia, where susi was the default word), kriimsilm (streaky-eye?), hallivatimees (gray-coat-man?), metsakutsa (forest-doggie) and võsavillem (thicket...something).
