NAMES IN ESTONIAN FOLK ASTRONOMY – FROM ‘BIRD’S WAY ’ TO ‘MILKY WAY’

This article offers an overview of the different names for the Milky Way and the accompanying beliefs and myths, based on the mate-rial in the Estonian Folklore Archives. Astronomically speaking, the Milky Way is a big stellar system – a galaxy. All stellar systems of similar type are called galaxies. Our sun is a fairly common star, lying at the outskirts of the Galaxy. The core of the Galaxy is located in the Sagittarius Constellation where the Milky Way is widest and brightest, but is unfortunately not visible at our latitude. The Galaxy is about 1 kpc (kiloparsec) thick, 30–40 kpc wide, and the Sun is ~8.5 kpc from the core. THE MILKY WAY IN ESTONIAN The word ‘galaxy ’ comes from the Greek work gala ‘milk’. Accord-ing to Greek mythology, the Milky Way had formed from the milk of the goddess Hera. Researcher of Finnish folk belief Uno Harva maintains that such heavenly milk rivers exist also among Sibe-rian peoples (Harva 1948). The Buryats used to have an interesting custom relating to the paths of birds and milk rivers – when an eagle flew over the yurta, a cup of milk or a drink of fermented milk was thrown into the air. In Estonia the common name for the Milky Way is the ‘Bird Way ’ (Linnutee), but the name ‘Milkpath’ (Piimatee) has also been recorded in both western Estonia (H III 18, 415 (3) < Vigala parish) and eastern Estonia (H IV 8, 646 (27)< Palamuse parish), although the latter is most probably an influence from literature and the German background. The German heritage has probably also provided us with the name ‘Great Wagon ’ for Ursa Major. Today the only generally accepted name for the Milky Way is Linnutee, though this used to vary by dialect and region. ‘Bird Path