Animation: The Legend of Suur Tõll

JA January 18

A while ago, I did a post on Will Schofield and the jaw-droppingly good blog, A Journey Round My Skull, a site which devotes itself to all things weird and wonderful in terms of illustration and book design. One of his more recent posts (found via Rumpus) include some stunning pictures from old Estonian children’s books from the 1970s and 80s, as well as an accompanying animated short.

Image via Rumpus, A Journey Round My Skull

As far as I can tell the video is a version of the book Suur Tõll by Jüri Arrak, which in turn is based on the legend of Toell the Great. According to the ever-trusty Wikipedia entry:

[Toell] lived in Tõlluste village with his wife Piret. He tossed huge rocks everywhere, mostly aiming for his archenemy Vanatühi or other enemies of Saaremaa people. Tõll was king of Saaremaa but he lived as common farmer. He often visited his brother Leiger on the neighboring Hiiumaa (Dagö) island. He was so tall that he could almost walk there (The distance is something about 5 to 6 km long). His walking stick was a 5 sazhen (10 meters or 35 foot) spruce tree trunk. Tõll was always kind and ready to help, but very hot-tempered. He loved to eat cabbages, drink beer and go to the sauna (his wife was always busy gathering him sauna stove rocks).

When an enemy decapitated him, he put his head on his sword and walked to his grave, which is supposed to be somewhere in Tõlluste. When Tõll died, he promised to rise from grave and help people in case of war. But naughty children made fun of him by yelling “Tõll, Tõll, wake up, there is a war in the yard”. Tõll rose, grew angry and went back to his grave, swearing never to come back.

This is great stuff – beautiful drawn figures, part fable, part fantasy and kind of trippy/scary to boot. Also some rather gruesome head-rolling details towards the end.

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