I suspect that every generation thinks that they do things better than their parents and that their children should rely on their wisdom. This suspicion is certainly the case in Andrus Kivirähk’s The Man Who Spoke Snakish (translated by Christopher Moseley). Leemet, our protagonist, is caught in between two radically different “generations.” On the one hand, the forest elders exhort him to follow the old ways of placating the sprites and learning Snakish to control animals. On the other, villagers encourage Leemet to give up the old ways, get baptized, and learn to like bread. The Man Who Spoke Snakish is a story of generational struggle, Estonian myth, and conflicting world views through the life story of the last man to be able to speak to animals.
Time is fluid in The Man Who Spoke Snakish. It’s hard to tell when we are and how long Leemet’s life is. For one, there are still proto-humans running around (only two, but still). For another, the kinds of changes happening to the forest people and the villagers are not sudden. But it’s not really important to pin down when the events of this book occur. All we really need to know is that Leemet and his people are transitioning out of a time of pre-Christian myths into what we might think of as recorded history. Remarkable things still happen—Leemet’s grandfather makes wings out of human bones, Leemet’s people use Snakish to milk wolves, villagers swapping methods for avoiding werewolves—but it’s no longer possible to summon the Great Frog of the North to kill the invading iron men (German knights).
I could easily see Leemet’s story becoming a legend that people tell each other on winter nights, though maybe not as exciting as the lives of Beowulf or Roland or Siegfried. Leemet’s adventures seem like a (sometimes gristly) romp through the end of the primeval forest way of life. But Leemet’s story also gives plenty of opportunities to see the warring between the old and new ways of life. There’s a lot to unpack, as we say in academia. This might be a great book for a book group to discuss, so long as they’re okay with a lot of blood and guts. Or, this could be an entertaining, often funny, journey through a strange land at a very strange time.
Sounds like an utterly fascinating book!