The importance of myth

The Estonians I spoke to on our cycling trip in 2023 were strangely uninterested in their own mythology. Kalevipoeg is boring and tedious, was one comment, and another, that the likes of Vanapagan are old stories that are today irrelevant.

A friend of our mother’s, a former schoolteacher, says British culture can be summarised by a knowledge of the Bible, the works of the playwright and poet William Shakespeare, and ancient Greek mythology.

The Greek gods and goddesses are often irrational, and their moral compass off the charts – a good description, occasionally, of our politicians, perhaps, also of activists. But without them, change for better or worse would not happen.

So, there is something in the world of myth to make the human condition easier to bear and to understand, even to profit from. A form of psychotherapy that most if not all humans seem to need.

In a post-Christian or religious world, for example, there seems to be a need to save the planet to save ourselves, and it’s not hard to find a convenient Satan – coal miners will do, or rich people. Like most pseudo-religions, this is muddle headed, but it doesn’t stop the fanatics.

Karen Armstrong reminds us of the purpose of myth, the telling of an ever-present truth in a ritual setting, to allow humans to deal with inevitable mortality, and to find meaning in life, while we are alive to live it. Alternatively, how to make sense of a world around us that is going crazy.

Myth is not literally true in a scientific sense, as Armstrong explains in A Short History of Myth (2005). It says something about humanity and how to find meaning in a world that appears to be increasingly devoid of meaning. What the hero or heroine did to redeem themself, we can also try to do.

It’s a hard ask, considering human life evolved over billions of years, ultimately from single-celled organisms on a watery planet circling a small star located in a spiral galaxy somewhere in the universe.

If we accept there is a point to myth, and a purpose to Estonians (for example) clinging on to their language, culture and to a sense of place, then, perhaps, it is worth exploring Estonian myths and legends.

The spirits residing in ancient oak trees are a reminder to look after the trees, and the trees will look after us. The trees on earth symbolise the “world tree” or maailmapuu that connects humanity to nature, and to the forces of nature. By treating nature with dignity, we treat ourselves with dignity, a source of wellbeing.

Now we are getting somewhere. Well, what of the national epic, the Kalevipoeg, which on wading through - I have to admit – can try one’s patience. The son of Kalev is the tragic hero, coming to terms with his mother’s death, and with many setbacks in all he tries to achieve, finally succumbing to fate and leaving a legacy – an Estonian people that through centuries of colonisation and oppression, war and famine, have survived against the odds.

Our forebears strived, sometimes succeeding, sometimes sacrificed in wars not of their making. To be celebrated, remembered and cherished, and not taken for granted.

The summer house is a way of remembering; so too, looking after the trees, planting a garden, going into the sauna, rowing a dugout boat, putting on a pair of skis - traditions that have kept Estonians and our Finnic ancestors alive for thousands of years.

Love, serenity and humour are emotions that are good for one’s health, according to a wellbeing expert who presented at a conference I attended recently. The thresher of grain or rehepapp who kept the heating going in the farmhouse throughout the winter had to laugh to survive, and so made others laugh, and find meaning in life through another winter, into another spring.

Awe is another such emotion. In sensing thunder and lightning, or tracing a scythe in a rainbow arc, or listening to crickets of an autumn evening, we are present in the universe, and if we look, listen and feel our way in the paths of the ancestors, perhaps, we may even feel the presence of the universe in us. It's a thought.