Vanemuine

This article describes the singer god of Estonian art mythology. For the theater named after him in Tartu, see Vanemuine (Theater) .

Vanemuine is an important figure in Estonian mythology . It is the main mythological symbol of music and song.

origin

The god Vanemuine is a product of the national romantic art mythology of the 19th century. It was popularized from older texts by the Estonian folklorists and linguists Friedrich Robert Faehlmann and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald . He was best known for the Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg , which they both created . The opening verse of the epic, "Lend me the harp, Vanemuine", is familiar to every Estonian.

Vanemuine is similar to Väinämöinen in Finnish mythology . Väinämöinen was probably known to Estonian scholars through Garlieb Merkel's work Die Vorzeit Liefland (1798). The poet Kristjan Jaak Peterson mentioned that there are references to a singer god in Estonian folk poetry, whose name was not mentioned, but could correspond to Väinämöinen. In 1822 Johann Heinrich Rosenplänter took up this idea in the journal Contributions to the Exact Knowledge of the Estonian Language , which is also represented by Kristfrid Ganander in his Mythologia Fennica .