Ümera (Ümera)
Another Tallinn street (the last!) that looks like a badly-knotted bootlace. This one is the Estonian name for the river Jumara in present-day Latvia. Here, near Cēsis, aka Wenden, or Võnnu in Estonian (see Vene), the Estonians fought and beat Teutonic Knight invaders during the Livonian Crusade in 1210, described in Metsanurk’s historical novel Ümera jõel (On Ümera River). The name Ümera itself may perhaps be derived from MLG Ümer ah. In the 16th C, final long vowels were indicated by adding an ‘h’ at the end, and my final wild stab in the dark underbelly of Tallinn odonyms is to conclude that it’s fair to assume that the ah meant ‘river’ (cf. Swedish ‘å’, river)... but then again it might not. Caveat lector!
