I liked the puppet-animated scenes (very well-done), but thought that the live-action scenes dragged and the story skipped over a number of key points, or just used intertitles to tell them (seemingly because it would've been hard to animate them), which made the film way more confusing than it should have been. It kind of feels like it wasn't finished.

Some things probably make more sense for Estonians who are already familiar with the story, but I cannot find a translation of it anywhere.

And what's with the Estonian-only dialogue but English-only text? It seems like only 50% of Estonians currently speak English, and probably less back when this was made...

In the terrifying story of the Estonian pagans, the dragon is a force hindering evolution, which is manifested through love. However, as far as I know, the dragon or exactly the toad is also the ancients' surreal representation of volcanic craters, which served as an insurmountable threat (you know, volcanoes can erupt at any time, so every time one awakens, all human efforts are destroyed). But in any case, the ending of the Eastern European story was not as tragic as that of the Vietnamese. I'll tell you now!

In the past, people in Southeast Asia used to chew a mixture similar to chewing gum to protect their teeth, although a side effect was that it stained their teeth black (hence, black teeth were once a beauty standard). The mixture consisted of betel leaves, areca nuts (related to coconuts, but their fruit is only as small as a lemon), and quicklime. These three ingredients, when combined, created a blood-red dye, but prolonged use would leave teeth a glossy black color. After Western colonial rule, most Southeast Asians abandoned this practice, so it is now only found among the elderly. It's worth adding that this mixture can be addictive. That's why there's a very good short story from a Vietnamese person living in Eastern Europe, who recounts meeting an old woman whom had moved to Eastern Europe with her son, and because she missed that mixture so much, she had to chew gum to ease her craving. The story ends with the author bidding farewell to the old woman before returning to Vietnam; she sheds tears of homesickness. Back to the story:

A young man came to a family to ask for their daughter's hand in marriage. He sat for a while, then suddenly dropped dead. The girl was the only person near him when the accident occurred, so she was detained by local officials for questioning. The maiden testified that she only had time to pick betel leaves from the garden and offer them to the victim before he died. The official was unable to determine the cause, so the girl was declared innocent. Some time later, that official was replaced by someone else, and the incident continued to repeat itself without any evidence. Many young men in the village had died, causing the girl to be feared and shunned by everyone. A few years later, an official known for his erudition was appointed. He carefully examined the limestone beneath the betel plant, as he suspected it might contain some kind of poison. However, when he accidentally broke the rock, he discovered a small cave underneath, and inside the cave was a giant toad. That toad would often crawl out of its burrow at night to lick the dew drops on betel leaves, and that's why the young men died after chewing these leaves. Therefore, the official ordered that from then on, all villagers must cut off the top part of the betel leaf before using it. This custom has spread throughout the country and become a tradition passed down through generations.