Lasnamäe (Lasnamägi)

Tallinn District, consisting of acres of workers’ accommodation, often post-70s-built neo-‘Khrushchyovkas’ (хрущёвка: khrushchyovka, punning on the Russian for slums, трущобы, trushcheby), reputedly tatty, cheaply-built, paper-thin-walled, 6m²-per-person apartment blocks, although some people say actually very well built (as an aside, those built for dock workers in Klaipeda, Lithuania, in the 1960s and scheduled for demolition 20 years later, are still going strong today). Region inhabited since ±3000 BCE, site of corded-ware settlement (aka Battle Axe culture or Single Grave culture). Area used for windmills dating back to middle ages (lasn:lasna is a baker’s ‘peel’ or wooden shovel, but this is a red herring). Earliest records give Lakederberge (1370), Lakederberg (1371), or Lakeden berghe (1372), Laegberg (1697), Der Lacks Berg (1768) continuing to Laaksberg (1893) and Laksberg (1907) before being Estonianized into Lageda mägi. Another variant of the name seems to be Laagna mäe. Various interpretations of the name come to mind:

1. ‘Brine hill’: brine in German is Lake, from middle German lāke, and brine is an important preservative of fish. Brine is made by evaporation, and a windswept hill would be an ideal place to do so, but a number of details argue against this:
2. a) In a heavily-wooded country, why not use log-fires close to the source of fishing (the sea) for evaporation? b) How do you get the salt water up the hill in the first place? c) Does it never rain in Estonia? And d) Didn’t they import some 90% of their salt from Portugal anyway?
3. ‘Salmon hill’, salmon in German is Lacks, from MHG lahs and MLG las, but a) the ‘k’ sound is missing; b) anadromous fish stocks had been depleting since the 6‑10^th C; and c) as late as 1695 salmon represented less than 1% of catches anyway.
4. ‘Puddle hill’, from a W Estonian dialect laks for loik, puddle or sump. Nope.
5. ‘Marsh/Swamp hill’, bit of an oxymoron, but one of MLG lāke’s acceptions is indeed marsh or marshy meadow.
6. A fifth possibility is a name derived from an ancestor of German Lager, not in its sense of ‘storage’ but rather that of ‘grave’, one of the acceptions of MHG and MLG leger and lēger. Lagedi Mõis was first mentioned as Lakethe in 1397, just 54 years after the Jüriöö battle of 1343. Time enough for what could have resulted in a mass burial for the location (perhaps some 5 km away) becoming known as ‘Graves’, which would sound vaguely right in a mix of early German and Estonian, and may well have given Lakeder. The notion of violence within the name could be supported by the variety of dialect uses of the word laks: blow, hit, jab, kick or strike (all dialects), whip or lash (W or island dialects), or even mound, pile of, lots of (scattered, more southern dialects). Question decidedly See Mäe for comments on the ‘hill’ designation.

One of Tallinn’s 8 Districts (Linnaosad). It includes the following Asumid (Sub-districts): Katleri, Kurepõllu, Kuristiku, Laagna, Loopealse, Mustakivi, Pae, Paevälja, Priisle, Seli, Sikupilli, Sõjamäe, Tondiraba, Uuslinn, Väo and Ülemiste. See Mustamäe.