The little gray man then shakes his head angrily, mutters some words that the gatekeeper does not understand, turns on his heel, and goes back to Ulemiste Lake, where his permanent abode is.

Should someone reply to his question by mistake that the town is ready and that there is no more building to be done, the waters of Ulemiste Lake would rush down the Lasnamae Hill and flood the town.

Kalevipoeg, Estonia’s national epic

Kreutzwald (1803-1882), a medical doctor and poet, was the first Estonian author to attract international recognition.  Kreutzwald became a prominent figure in the cultural movement of the nineteenth century and the founder of the Estonian national literature.  He compiled the epic Kalevipoeg (The Son of Kalev), although preparation for its compilation was begun in the 1830s by Friedrich Robert Faehlmann (1798-1850), who was also a medical doctor.  Kreutzwald completed the work, which appeared in a scholarly publication with a German translation in 1857-1861, and as a popular edition in 1862.  The epic contains twenty songs with 19,023 verses in all.

Kalevipoeg is regarded as the national epic of the Estonian people, as the Kalevala, compiled by Elias Lonnrot (1802-1884) and published in 1849, is for the Finns.  The epic consists of a series of adventures experienced by Kalevipoeg, the posthumous son of Kalev, the king of Estonia.

In addition to appearing in numerous Estonian editions, including those by émigré Estonians in Sweden and Canada published after the Second World War, Kalevipoeg has been translated or adapted into English and German, along with prose adaptations into French, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, and Italian, to name only a few.

The epic is based on numerous local etiological legends and fairy tales that Kreutzwald versified.