Hi all,

Hope you don't mind me posting a question in English here.

My 9yo son has been obsessed with the animation of Suur Toll he found on YouTube, and is asking me lots of questions about what it means that I'm unable to answer 🙂

Could some Eesti's shed some light on it for me? My son would be very grateful!

  • What are the underlying themes of Suur Toll?

  • Are the red guys the Russians? Or he seems to think they might be Danish?

  • Why is Toll sad after his battles? Is it because he had to kill so many of the invaders to protect his countrymen & women?

  • It's pretty violent! Is the violence meant to signify anything in particular, perhaps some events from Estonian history?

Link to the animation for reference:

https://youtu.be/Hity9T0vYAM?si=xsIvZbdHCGtqZ4Mf

by tecnoir

5 comments

  1. In that *particular* animation, the red guys are indeed the Russians — Suur Tõll is kinda like the mythical hero who fights invaders, so in the 1200s it would have been the German Teutonic Order etc (he is also described demolishing churches etc).

    He is the national/mythological hero of Saaremaa (our biggest island) and the mythical ancestor of the people carrying that surname. There are lots of stories of him fighting Vanapagan (Old Pagan). Note that Estonian mythology is not dualist, we don’t have evil and good. Evil is the invaders.

    Tõll and Piret (his wife) are the ferries to Saaremaa.

    When you ever visit, your son might also enjoy a trip to the maritime museum, where you can go aboard Suur Tõll (“The Great Tõll”), which is an icebreaker.

    You can also read an interview with the author of the animation here (use GTranslate):

    [https://epl.delfi.ee/artikkel/51186549/suur-toll-30-aastat-hiljem](https://epl.delfi.ee/artikkel/51186549/suur-toll-30-aastat-hiljem)

    You can see here also how he diplomatically insinuates that he chose a “different invader” instead of the Christian knights 🙂 A funny story though, which I think exemplifies Estonia during occupation very well: the enemies are not RED, they are purple, as the occupying Russian regime banned red for them (for obvious reasons). So the artist agreed to purple. Alas, during the development of the film, it turned out that something went a bit wrong with the colours and completely accidentally they turned out red 😉

    The violence is part of Estonia’s collective consciousness — we were first invaded in 1208 and, well, the threat sort of still persists 😀 So yeah our humour and entertainment tends to be a bit dark. But I guess you can talk to him about the meaning and folklore and themes and it will be fine.

    Hope I could help!

  2. Not gonna lie at 1st i thought toll is another tax post lol

  3. Also, if your son gets older, I would recommend Priit Pärn and his animations.

    But that’s a bit more adult, and a few contain mild nudity and other adult themes…

  4. You 9 year old is very brave, many adults are terrified by this animation style.

  5. It’s originally meant to be an animation for adults, which is understandable from the art style, violence and a bit of penis. On the other hand there was a companion book that basically retold the story with text and images from the film, which was school age for kids. If I remember correctly, there the red dudes were called “wood men” and the bluish spiky ones “iron men”. There’s room for interpretation what they could’ve really meant.

    He is crying because the Devil killed his wife Piret by collapsing his house on top of her, while he was away fighting the red dudes.

    I don’t think the violence has any deeper meaning, it’s just making the whole thing so much more serious and shocking compared to straight retelling of folk legends.

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