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Uku (Uku)
Character of mythology or folklore: harvest / house fairy to some, or weather and lightning sprite, upgraded(?) by Kreutzwaldi F.R. to sky or thunder god, or alternative perception of the supreme god Taara, possibly related to Thor. Tallinn’s only ‘true’ (i.e. both nominative and genitive) palindromic street name (cf. Aia, WW doesn’t really count). Part of a small Estonian mythology street-name group. See Vanemuise.
Ülemiste (Ülemiste)
Lake, now reservoir, in Tallinn, and mythological character: the little old man of Ülemiste, Ülemiste Vanake. Legend has it that he checks the city out every year and, if told it’s now complete, will flood it. Why? If you know of any god that ever made a rational decision, you tell me. For reasons of ecology, airplanes are reportedly not allowed to fly over the lake. For other reasons, they do.
Üliõpilaste (Üliõpilased [pl.])
University students (Sing.: Üliõpilane). The street borders one of the Tallinna Tehnikaülikool (Tallinn School of Technology) departments, now more commonly/affectionately called ‘TalTech’. Street half a kilometer south of Akadeemia.
Ümera (Ümera)
Another Tallinn street (the last!) that looks like a badly-knotted bootlace. This one is the Estonian name for the river Jumara in present-day Latvia. Here, near Cēsis, aka Wenden, or Võnnu in Estonian (see Vene), the Estonians fought and beat Teutonic Knight invaders during the Livonian Crusade in 1210, described in Metsanurk’s historical novel Ümera jõel (On Ümera River). The name Ümera itself may perhaps be derived from MLG Ümer ah. In the 16th C, final long vowels were indicated by adding an ‘h’ at the end, and my final wild stab in the dark underbelly of Tallinn odonyms is to conclude that it’s fair to assume that the ah meant ‘river’ (cf. Swedish ‘å’, river)... but then again it might not. Caveat lector!
