Marcus Heinrich Windekilde ning keeleolud Schleswigis ja Liivimaal 1838. aastal

In 1838, Marcus Heinrich Windekilde, who ran the Moravian congregation at Tartu, Livonia, set out on a long journey with his family by horse-drawn coach in order to visit his father in the Danish-speaking part of the Duchy of Sleswick. The father was about to celebrate his fiftieth anniversary as a Lutheran minister. After his return, Windekilde wrote a report about this journey for the Moravian Brethren under his care. His account is therefore composed in Tartu-Estonian. Windekilde took great care to use words his readers and listeners would understand, choosing paraphrases over precise terms when the objects in question were unfamiliar to his audience. This article follows Windekilde on his journey, explains his background and stylistic choices, and discusses Windekilde’s knowledge of Standard Danish and the Danish dialect spoken at his father’s place. The linguistic situation in the northern part of Sleswick merits closer examination, since also there – comparable to Livonia – German was the language of administration and higher education, while the majority of the population spoke a Danish dialect, with church services conducted in Standard Danish. In those days, hierarchies of languages were rather common across Europe’s multilingual regions. The article argues that the development of early written Estonian should be studied as an expression of socially stratified European multilingualism, rather than in the context of overseas colonialism, as has recently become fashionable in some scholarly circles.