this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2025
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I was talking about modern usage of the word in Estonian, where it has less to do with the original magical forces and more about determination, fortitude and drive.
Interestingly, Estonian resources don’t mention the little folk. There is of course mentions of the word going back to Uralic roots and the concept of vägi potentially going back to the Neanderthals, but nothing on little people.
I do love how the English Wikipedia article on the Finnish Väki mentions vitun väki. That one has caused me a lot of grief in life lol
So... do you imagine that Finns still use the connotation from thousands of years ago?
It means the same thing here, more or less. I'm just talking about where the word comes from, originally. If you just go on the street and start asking / explaining about some magical connotations to regular words, people would be afraid of you, lol.
Finnish wiktionary doesn't know it either. It's only when you look at proto-Finnic that you'll get these as connotations. The language from which both of our languages are from.