Eesti keele kaja Helmich Ficke kaubaraamatus 1536–1542
The Echo of Vernacular Estonian in Helmich Ficke’s Account Book, 1536–1542

Summary/Abstract: This essay endeavours to call attention to the collection of sixteenth century merchants’ account books held in the Tallinn City Archives, which can be used as a valuable resource in the study of the Estonian language in the late medieval and early modern period. The more specific focus is the so-called debt book (Schuldbuch) of Revalian German merchant Helmich Ficke (d. 1542), which is written in Middle Low German, and which contains c. 160 entries of business transactions with Estonian peasants in the years 1540–1542. The merchant gave the peasants small quantities of goods (e.g. grain, salt, malt) on credit, in return for a guarantee, usually in the form of peasant jewelry and items of clothing, etc. The peasants repaid the loan with interest from the new harvest, upon which the pledge was returned. The entries in Ficke’s debt book often contain very detailed identifying descriptions (given name, last name, whose son, the names of peasant women, fathers or brothers; the names of the village, manor, and the manorial lord), in which one can find numerous Estonian proper names, place names, and other Estonian language words. Of particular importance are the names of Estonian villages left in the locative case in places where the Low German text does not call for the use of the locative. These circumstances allow us to suppose that the village names marking the peasants’ place of origin were transcribed into Low German from oral Estonian speech. Such material enriches our knowledge of the social history of the Estonian language, provides interesting additions to the catalogue of late medieval Estonian proper names and place names, and enables us to hear, in the account books of German merchants, an echo of the Estonian language across the distance of almost five hundred years.

• Details
• Contents