Names
Jakobsoni C.R.
(Carl Robert Jakobson, 1841-1882)
Writer, teacher and member of a group of successful Estonians known as ‘the Petersburg patriots’ who used their influence to better their countrymen’s lot. One of the important persons in Estonian national awakening. Depicted on the 500-krooni banknote where, interestingly, his beard improved with each printing (for information on Estonian currency, see Krooni). As a journalist, he contributed to Postimees but Jannsen disliked his anti-German, anti-clerical stance (the censor called him ‘the Robespierre of the Baltic’) and when Jakobson published his own newspaper in 1878, Sakala, a ‘War of Pens’ ensued. Jakobson’s funeral triggered a great demonstration of national feeling, despite dreadful weather and poor roads, more than 3500 people came to mourn their lost leader. Rumors spread that ‘Robespierre’ had been poisoned: a German doctor was accused but no guilt established. Prior to 1923, street known as Владимірская / Vladimiri in honor of an 1886 visit to Tallinn by Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia, uncle of Tsar Nicholas II, replacing the previous, 19th-C names of Слободская, (Uus-)Slobodi or (Neue Sloboden) after the settlement created by Peter I and recorded as Uus slobodaa (see Tobiase R.).
Jalaka (Jalakas)
Elm. Harilik jalakas, wych elm or scots elm, Ulmus glabra. Estonian etymology obscure, said to have Baltic-Finnish roots. While it’s uncertain that its Lith. and Latv. counterparts kalninė guoba (mountain elm) and parastā goba (common elm) share an unexplained guoba/goba root with Finn. vuorijalava (mountain elm) or even Polish wiąz górski (wych elm), the wych/wiąz duo, along with Est./Finn. jalakas/jalava converge on a different interpretation: wiąz means to tie or bind, to connect objects with rope, etc. (Polish peasantry seems to have used strips of elm bark for bundling), and wych derives from PIE *weig, ‘to bend or wind’, which also gives us ‘withy’ which, as all preppers and survivalists know, is another useful makeshift ‘cord’. Jalg:Jala, I hope, is clear by now. Est. pastlad are primitive shoes made from scraps of leather wrapped up around the feet and held in place by cord or laces, and other footwear such as viisud may be made from woven willow, linden, birch or even juniper bark but not, apparently, elm.
