Novel
At the Umera River
Ümera jõel
Mait Metsanurk · 1934
Synopsis
On the Ümera river: in the early thirteenth century, in a poor canton in the south, a man whom nothing had marked out, Vello, becomes the elder of Mägiste. To the south, among the Livs and the Letts, those who come with the cross are already settled and pushing north; to the north, the Estonian cantons agree on nothing and each counts on its neighbours. Vello sees before the others what is coming. He raises men, crosses the border, lays siege to a stronghold, and it will have to be decided where to wait for the column that will return by the river.
Context
The novel appeared in Tartu in 1934 from Noor-Eesti and was reprinted the very next year, then in exile and in Soviet Estonia. Starting from the few lines that the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia devotes to those years, its author invented a small canton of seven villages, Mägiste, and its elder, Vello, in order to show Estonian society realistically at the time of the struggle against the crusaders; Lembitu, the elder of Lehola, plays only a secondary role in it.
Who it is for
Four hundred pages in Estonian, never published in French; two chapters exist in English. It helps to know that the battle of the Ümera, fought in 1210, occupies only the last pages.
Prizes and reception
Its author's most popular work, and the novel through which generations of Estonian schoolchildren have learned about this war.