Legend of the Milkyway

In The Beginning

This story from Estonia describes how the amazing milky white group of stars we call the Milky Way (or bird path in Estonian) came from the adventurous goddess Lindu's wedding veil, carried by birds

The goddess Lindu lives in the sky with her father Uru. She loves adventure and can't stay still for long. Uru sends her down to earth to look after the birds. The North Star, Moon and Sun propose to her but she thinks they’re all too boring as they stay in one place and she needs more. Northern Lights feels like a more exciting prospect. He also proposes but then stands her up and she is left with her shimmering bridal veil but no marriage. She goes back up to live in the sky with her father and her bridal veil becomes the Milky way.

Estonia is in Northern Europe and is bordered to the North with Finland and to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden to the South by Latvia and to the East is Russia. Many of these legends have been passed down through songs featuring tales of creation of course, but also tales of battles, journeys and magic. The most striking example of the culture of ancient Estonians is the rhythmic verse, as well as the aural tradition of folk song where each line is repeated several times with thematic variations. Estonians have one of the biggest collections of folk songs in the world, with written records of about 133,000 folk songs.

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