69 % der Esten glauben, dass Bäume eine Seele haben. Nur 16 % bezeichnen Religion als wichtig in ihrem Leben, was Estland zu einem der am wenigsten religiösen Länder der Welt macht – und doch ist die Beziehung zur Natur tief verwurzelt
Mein ämm hat mir davon erzählt. Ich habe bis heute noch nie davon gehört. noch jemand?
https://woodwidewebstories.com/2020/12/12/many-ethnic-estonians-believe-in-souls-of-trees/
https://i.redd.it/dwltdmdo75gh1.jpeg
Von [deleted]
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speaking for myself, i do. my grandma taught me this, to respect nature and to turn to trees in tough times also.
this kind of belief is not limited to trees usually, but they are a great part
Depends what you mean with soul?
I highly doubt people here think too much about it. But yes a tree is alive so in a way you could say it has a soul.
Thats it.
Forest people stuff. I think it’s more about respecting trees (like we are taught to respect bread), not that 69% of people think that trees are alive like people or something.
42 % of people pull statistics out of their a**es. Subjectivley saying out of 1mil people in Estonia maybe like 100 people truly believe that trees have souls. This number is probably way closer to the truth than your BS number. This doesn’t mean we don’t care about trees tho. The respect for nature in Estonia runs deep.
In Estonian „soul“ and „breathing“ have the same root word, making accepting the concept or at least not seeing anything wrong with it much easier. Adding to it, there are some archaic phrasings to describe inanimate objects „radiating“ cold as an allegory to breathing („õhkab“, „hingus“).
I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true but I personally haven’t been taught in this concrete manner. Just generic respect for trees especially, but to other plantlife as well.
I doubt 69% of estonians believe souls to be real things in the first place, but those who do, I guess would likely also believe trees to have them.
For that you would have to define what soul means.
No. But respect nature and dont be a dick to it.
Depends on how the question is worded. I don’t even believe humans have „souls“. It’s such an arbitrary concept. But I do believe trees, and all plants really, are living and breathing things. They are „born“ in some sense of the word, they live and they die, not unlike people or animals.
It’s been proven to an extent that plants like classical music, for example, and grow faster when they „hear“ it. It doesn’t matte what it „sounds“ like to them, it’s just air vibrating after all, but just makes you think.
Can confirm, both of my parents wholelly believe this.
I do, to an extent, they’re nature, they breathe and communicate with plants around them.
It’s not the same as a living person but I’d call that a soul nonetheless, I was taught by my great grandma
Souls? No. Spirits? Yeah that is a fairly common belief or at least a nod to that belief. Like „don’t break the branch on a tree for no good reason, the tree gets hurt“.
I do
31% work for RMK.
If soul exists then I i feel it is far more likely that it is not exclusive to humans. Most of nature has some form of intelligent behaviours so at minimum it should exist in all nature. Trees definitely!
For context, paganism was going strong well into the 18th to 19th centuries Estonia. Ironically, the National Awakening seems coincide with the waning of paganism.
[Who were the last pagans of Europe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drA6PifnsFU)
Trees and souls? Nah, I don’t even believe people have souls. That doesn’t mean I don’t respect trees tho. They are living organisms with their own complex life we cannot comprehend. I like trees and hurting a tree with no reason is just rude
Not a soul in the sense how christians would think of a soul but i believe they are living things that deserve our respect because they give us things we need to live like oxygen They use energy like us they are alive they just dont look and behave similar to us so we see them as inanimate objects mostly
They are alive and most of the Estonians would not just damage a tree. They maybe dont think it is a soul.. but tree is kind of important.
I’m sure the number is higher than 69%
A tree can have a soul, a spirit, a fairy, energy, might, etc…
Well mostly anything can and usually does have.
It’s the animistic shamanic heritage in our blood…
I don’t know about souls but I do believe they give energy.
I’m not sure what a soul is, but trees are conscious, yes.
Man this should be a case study in how misinformation spreads, your post claims 69%, the blog you link to claims 63% and cites LFRL 2015, which is not directly googleable but another source the blog post cites is [Thurfjell et al. 2019](https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/nature-and-culture/14/2/nc140205.xml) which I could find and it contains the same number 63% but with a better citation this time.
LFRL. 2015. “Elust, usust ja usuelust” [On life, faith, and religious life]. Survey database. Survey conducted by Social and Market Research Company Saar Poll in Estonia in 2015 (unpublished).
After a bit of googling I found it in Estonian on the company website that performed the survey https://www.saarpoll.ee/UserFiles/File/Elus,%20usust%20ja%20usuelust_2015_ESITLUS_FINAL.pdf
And what do you know, souls of trees are not mentioned once in the survey everyone cites for the famously atheistic Estonians being into tree religion.
Moral of the story, don’t believe random blog posts as science.