Taevasest üliolendist usundilooliselt ja muinaseesti aineses

• Main Author: Tarmo Kulmar
• Format: Article
• Language: Estonian
• Published: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum 2005-01-01
• Series: Mäetagused
• Online Access: http://www.folklore.ee/tagused/nr30/kulmar.pdf

According to basic religious-phenomenological principles a supreme being resides in heaven or is the heaven, an omnipotent creator, who is often assigned the function of thunder, is called either Father or Grandfather, is sacrificed the primal offering, and has turned into deus otiosus. Comparative linguistics has revealed that the earliest conception of a Balto-Finnic and Estonian supreme god dates back to the Finno-Volgaic etymological stratum, to the Neolithic period (3rd millennium BC), in archaeological terms. This is evidenced by the Estonian word juma(l) [face?/god], which had formerly signified heaven, but also the Indo-European loan taevas [heaven] in the Estonian language. The divergence of the conception of thunder god Uku or Ukko apparently took place in the 1st millennium BC; this is also indicated by archaeological data. According to the 13th-century Henrici Chronicon Livoniae and other chronicles the thunder god of the coastal Estonians has also been called Taara or Tooru, which may be a derivation of the Old Scandinavian Thor.