THE STORY OF THE FORMATION OF EVERY VILLAGE
The permanent settlement of Igaküla certainly dates back to ancient times, although there are no written sources about it. By the end of the Order period, a separate wacke area had developed here, which was recorded in the land registers of 1569/71 as the last (13th) wacke area under the name Yckkenkulla wacke (the penultimate was Rootsivere or Rotzeuer wacke, at the end of which the land-free Koguva Asmus is also noted in 1571). In addition to 12 farms, there is a single-foothold in Igaküla at that time, which Leo Tiik has read from the document once as Nemi Mart and the other as Reni Mart, but this should probably be considered the first written mention of Igaküla Runni!
It is worth noting that in the middle of the Danish period, in 1592, the “Island of Saint James” – Igaküla, Koguva, Rootsivere and also the “opposite bank of the Laevasoon” Nautse formed the only Rootsivere (Randeuer) vaku region, where a total of only 16 registered farms with 17 ploughlands were bearing the burden! This shows the great devastation that first Ivan the Terrible’s Tatars and then the Swedish, Danish and Polish military servants had carried out in Muhu over the course of half a century. Peace came for Muhu only with the Peace of Kalmar in 1613, and with that began a century-long “time of breathing”, only to then again survive famine, the Northern War and the plague.
In the first Swedish land register of 1645, Igaküla was included in the Paenas vaku district and, with its 14 ploughlands and 15 registered farms, was the largest village in this vaku district and also in the whole of Muhu. It should be added here that dense hamlets (as on the Igaküla map of 1698) probably only developed in the first half of the Danish period and earlier (during the times of small-scale farming) the whole of Muhu was probably rather sparsely populated.
During the Danish period, the first state manor was established in Muhu and, according to the general opinion, serfdom (tenancy) relations had developed by then, but this probably does not mean that there was any activity with oxen in Laheküla across Muhu! The land tax and tax system from the Order period must have continued to function. During the Swedish period, three more official manors (Tamse, Võlla and Nurme) were established in addition to Suuremõis, but they all remained so far from Igaküla that the Igaküla vaku district is still mentioned in censuses of the late 18th century.
In 1674, when the parish of Muhu was transferred to Otto Wilhelm von Königsmarck with the so-called De la Gardie missive, Igaküla (Dorff Iggone) with 12 ploughlands and 21 householders was the second village of the Rootsivere vacuse. At that time, in the village of Rootsivere, there were 15 householders and 8 ¾ ploughlands, and the villages of Koguva and Nautse also belonged to the same vacuse. The magical 21 remains the largest number of farms in Igaküla. Although the specification volume of the so-called regulation map compiled around 1800 lists 22 of them, at that time or a little later five farms remained freehold and Igaküla reached the 19th century with 17 registered farms. In the third quarter of the 19th century, another farm, Runni (Runni Pendi in the censuses), disappeared and by the 20th century, only 16 traditional farms remained.
At the end of the Swedish period, when Nurme Manor was founded, four Igaküla farms (Ansu-Jaani, Ansu-Matsi, Ennu-Laasu and Ennu) were included in Nurme Manor (the latter also belonged to Rinsi Manor for a while in the 18th century), but with the so-called manor boundary adjustments at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, Igaküla remained purely a village of Suuremõisa.
In the post-plague inquisition protocol of 1713, 13 male and 10 female souls (one of them old) and six children (3 boys and 3 girls) were recorded in the seven farms of Igaküla that were considered capable of active labor. Considering the size of the village, it can be stated that the losses are more or less at the average level of Muhu – i.e. approximately one out of every four people had survived the hard times. It took at least two generations for the village to recover.
In the 1778 Suuremõisa land register, there were already 20 farms in Igaküla and the only remaining farmstead was the ½-plough Runni Michel Swedish farm, which according to the map of the time must have been located somewhere north of Veski and Uietoa. The 21st farm at that time was the Ennu Juri farm, which was resettled in Igaküla by the Rinsi manor. Over the next 30 years, however, important changes were still ahead in Igaküla, although not as drastic as with the villages of Kuivastu, Hellamaa and Võlla manor, where people were resettled from one village to another by family. Here, four farms (Ennu-Laasu, Ennu-Matsi, Laasu and Peetri Jaani) simply remained freehold. The fifth farm remained as a freehold, Runni-Mardi, which branched off from Runni during these “regulations”, and in the second half of the 19th century, Runni-Aadu farm, which survived the plague, also disappeared.
Lähemalt saab Igaküla talude käekäiguga läbi kolme sajandi ja samas ka Igaküla inimestega tutvuda veebilehel http://ylo.rehepapp.com/Muhu/K%fclad/Igak%fcla/Igak%fcla.html
MUHU GREAT DRAIN
no images were found
Igaküla has been one of the largest villages in Muhu since the time of the Order (to the extent that it makes sense to talk about villages at that time) and the settlement here certainly dates back to ancient times. The map of 1799 (EAA.2072.3.366) shows a well with a water pump in the middle of Igaküla village.
The wells carved from dolomite (called "sachets" in the local language) still survive today, a copy of which is in the National Open Air Museum. Sometime after the last war, the well (like many old sachet wells) was filled to the ground with stones - the reason is said to be the boys' "naughty attitude while testing explosives".
The age of the well is difficult to determine. There is a tradition in the village that it was once built by Swedish soldiers, but since the village was already a large hamlet in its current location before the Northern War, the question arises as to why the Swedes would have needed to build a well here at that time? Rather, they may have had a need for such a structure much earlier, when the Danes and Swedes “divided” the former Livonian Order lands (Muhu was already in Swedish possession in 1568–1575 and only became a de facto part of the Swedish state with the Treaty of Brömsebro in 1645).
Judging by the size of the last known parts of the wooden well (Kao kook, Kaoroog, Kao airk in Muhu) in the 1913 photo (J. Pääsuke), the well must have been deeper than most of the Muhu wells (5-6 meters) and would be worth cleaning and perhaps even restoring just to determine its depth and the "aliveness" of the former karst veins. Because it was the deepest "loss" in Muhu County, which was already visible from afar across the village.
However, in Igaküla, several families still have 9m deep wells in their entire depth, which are mostly carved into limestone but have now become empty of water. Vassili Auväärt mentions in his notes that this is the deepest well in Muhumaa and its depth is 52 feet, which means ~16 meters.