In search of a water god

When we were kids, dad had a thing about the water god of ancient Estonian tradition. In his mind, this was Taara – more of a weather god, actually, a version of Thor – and I carved the word as a name plate for a 10-foot wooden dinghy dad built in the 1970s. The boat still exists and so does its name.

In Estonian myth, as elsewhere in northern Europe, the spirits reside in the trees, the water, stones, everywhere. For ancient Estonians, nature is alive, and they saw no distinction between animals or plants and the land in which they lived - all embody the forces of nature. Of this world view, a lingering association remains.

A search for a mention of the water god in Estonian Mythology for the Beginner (2023) draws largely a blank. The veevaim or water spirit has to do at least partly with mermaids of Scandinavian myth. Once again, I find myself relying upon Valdur Mikita. Rivers and streams are favourite places in nature for him, and we have already met him at the Kääpa jõgi.

In The Linguistic Forest (2013), Mikita names the water god as Ahti, a name also found in Finnish tradition. Whereas the Finns continued to regard Ahti with awe until relatively recent times, in Estonia all such mention vanished long ago, surviving only in a few place names, the Ahja and Õhne rivers, and the Aheru and Ähi lakes, all in the south and east of Estonia.

 Ahja river

A Wikipedia search for Ahti goes to Finnish myth, and discusses various theories around the sea or water god, and the origin of the name. One conjecture is that Ahti is a derivation of haltija, the Finnish word for a nature spirit, in Estonian, haldjas.

In Finnish tradition, Ahti appears mostly as a divine giver of fish, especially when catching them in a net. There are songs and verse in which Ahti is a provider of ahven, or perch. We ate smoked perch when we stayed with friends in Noarootsi, and also lestakala, flounder. Both delicious.

“A Karelian runic song describes a hero catching a fish he tries to cut and eat. The fish jumps away, revealing herself to be a ‘watery maiden of Vellamo’ and ‘Ahti's only child’, mocking the hero for not noticing this. A similar song exists from Estonia, but in the Estonian version the fish is caught by seining and only begs to be spared when already taken indoors.”

According to Marju Kõivupuu’s Estonian mythology book, haldjasi can also specialise in care for forests, the home, the garden and cultivated fields, watercraft, or fire. The purpose of these spirits, it is said, is either to muddle or confuse people, or to show people goodwill and help them with good deeds.