Oral Poetry, Mythic Knowledge and Vernacular Imagination: Interfaces of Individual Expression and Collective Traditions in Pre-Modern Northeast Europe (collective project) (original) (raw)
Folklore and Old Norse Mythology (ed. Frog & Joonas Ahola)
FF Communications 323. Helsinki: Kalevala Society., 2021
The present volume responds to the rising boom of interest in folklore and folklore research in the study of Old Norse mythology. The twenty-two authors of this volume reveal the dynamism of this lively dialogue, which is characterized by a diversity of perspectives linking to different fields and national scholarships. The chapters open with a general overview of how the concepts of “folklore” and “mythology” have been understood and related across the history of Old Norse studies, which is followed by a group of chapters that discuss and present different approaches and types of source materials, with methodological and theoretical concerns. The interest in folklore is bound up with interests in practice and lived religion, which are brought into focus in a series of chapters relating to magic and ritual. Attention then turns to images that link to mythology and different mythic agents in studies that explore a variety of usage in meaning-making in different forms of cultural expression. The next group of studies spotlights motifs, with perspectives on synchronic usage across genres and different media, cross-cultural exchange, and long-term continuities. The volume culminates in discussions of complex stories, variously in oral traditions behind medieval sources and relationships between accounts found in medieval sources and those recorded from more recent traditions. Individually, the chapters variously offer reflexive and historical research criticism, new research frameworks, illustrative studies, and exploratory investigations. Collectively, they illustrate the rapidly evolving multidisciplinary discussion at the intersections of folklore and Old Norse mythology, where the transformative impacts were recently described as a paradigm shift. They open new paths for scholarly discussion with the potential to inspire future research.
Introduction: Earlier Experience of Collecting and Researching School Lore in Estonia and Slovenia
Folkore. Electonic Journal of Folklore., 2022
The current issue of the journal Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore was created as a collaboration between Estonian and Slovenian folklorists and ethnologists within the joint bilateral project, “Slovenian and Estonian Contemporary School Lore”. The main objective of the project was to analyse and compare the contemporary school lore, its collecting, use, and dynamics in two European countries with different geographical positions and characteristics, with a similar history, and no direct contact. The project focused on tradition and transformations of the folklore material, playfulness, and creativity in (new) formats, and on how they reflect the social reality that produces them. The project aimed to apply a new dynamic comparative approach from an intercultural as well as diachronic and synchronic point of view, which offers a unique and innovative perspective in folklore studies of Slovenia and Estonia.
This book addresses the narrative construction of places, the relationship between tradition communities and their environments, the supernatural dimensions of cultural landscapes and wilderness as they are manifested in European folklore and in early literary sources, such as the Old Norse sagas. The first section “Explorations in Place-Lore” discusses cursed and sacred places, churches, graveyards, haunted houses, cemeteries, grave mounds, hill forts, and other tradition dominants in the micro-geography of the Nordic and Baltic countries, both retrospectively and from synchronous perspectives. The supernaturalisation of places appears as a socially embedded set of practices that involves storytelling and ritual behaviour. Articles show, how places accumulate meanings as they are layered by stories and how this shared knowledge about environments can actualise in personal experiences. Articles in the second section “Regional Variation, Environment and Spatial Dimensions” address ecotypes, milieu-morphological adaptation in Nordic and Baltic-Finnic folklores, and the active role of tradition bearers in shaping beliefs about nature as well as attitudes towards the environment. The meaning of places and spatial distance as the marker of otherness and sacrality in Old Norse sagas is also discussed here. The third section of the book “Traditions and Histories Reconsidered” addresses major developments within the European social histories and mentalities. It scrutinizes the history of folkloristics, its geopolitical dimensions and its connection with nation building, as well as looking at constructions of the concepts Baltic, Nordic and Celtic. It also sheds light on the social base of folklore and examines vernacular views toward legendry and the supernatural.
UCL Eprints. London: University College London. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/19428/, 2010
The orientation of this study is to explore what the sources for each narrative tradition can (and cannot) tell us about their respective histories, in order to reach a point at which it becomes possible to discuss a relationship between them and the significance of that relationship. This is not intended as an exhaustive study of every element of each source or every aspect of each tradition. It will present a basic introduction to sources for each tradition ( §3-4) followed by a basic context for approaching the possibility of a cultural exchange ( §5-7). The APE and its "powers" are introduced with specific examples from both traditions ( §8-13). This will be followed by sections on the activation and manipulation of "identities" from the level of cultural figures to textual and extra-textual entities ( §14-16) followed by relationships of traditions to individuals and social groups who perform them, and the impact which this has on the evolution of tradition as a social process ( §17-18). The study will then address more specific issues in relationships between source and application in the medieval and iconographic representations of the Baldr-Cycle where so little comparative material is available to provide a context ( §19).
Folklore in the modern culture of Lithuania and Latvia
2013
The present article focuses on the issue of references to folklore and mythology present in contemporary art in Latvia and Lithuania. Any scholar analysing Baltic cultures or even a person visiting Lithuania or Latvia for the first time and wishing to learn something about the culture of these countries will quickly notice that it contains a kind of a ‘folklore paradigm’ present in all aspects of everyday life, as well as in modern literature, music and visual arts. Folklore and the old world-views connected with it infiltrate professional art through various channels: (1) Subconsciously, as a part of spiritual experience, ancient beliefs still present in everyday life; (2) Consciously or subconsciously through traditional culture, which includes mythology as a ‘cultural relic’; (3) Consciously, if the artist makes deliberate references to mythology, studies it to find the answer to the eternal question of the meaning of life and conveying this meaning through works of art. Each day...
When Ritual Texts Become Legendary. Practice and Fiction in Nordic Folklore
Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration, and the Power of Imagination, 2021
The article explores the relationship between the fictional reality of legends about magical books (Black Books) and the historical magical manuscripts in Norway during the long eighteenth century. Drawing on a rich collection of Norwegian legends and magical manuscripts from that period, the study suggests that the connection between magical practices and the narratives describing, interpreting, and reporting such practices was characterized by reciprocity in various ways. The physical Black Books incorporated fictional elements, while the fictional narratives incorporated historical elements, creating an ongoing cycle of mutual influences, adoptions, and responses. As a result, magical practices and narratives helped bridge the "gap" between the real and the unreal, the factual and the fictional, the diverse and the stereotypical. Additionally, the reciprocity between the written and the oral tradition appears to rely on a certain interdependence, with both genres relying on each other to maintain their stability.
Frog & Joonas Ahola (eds.): Folklore and Old Norse Mythology
FF Communications 323, 2021
The present volume responds to the rising boom of interest in folklore and folklore research in the study of Old Norse mythology. The twenty-two authors of this volume reveal the dynamism of this lively dialogue, which is characterized by a diversity of perspectives linking to different fields and national scholarships. The chapters open with a general overview of how the concepts of “folklore” and “mythology” have been understood and related across the history of Old Norse studies, which is followed by a group of chapters that discuss and present different approaches and types of source materials, with methodological and theoretical concerns. The interest in folklore is bound up with interests in practice and lived religion, which are brought into focus in a series of chapters relating to magic and ritual. Attention then turns to images that link to mythology and different mythic agents in studies that explore a variety of usage in meaning-making in different forms of cultural expression. The next group of studies spotlights motifs, with perspectives on synchronic usage across genres and different media, cross-cultural exchange, and long-term continuities. The volume culminates in discussions of complex stories, variously in oral traditions behind medieval sources and relationships between accounts found in medieval sources and those recorded from more recent traditions. Individually, the chapters variously offer reflexive and historical research criticism, new research frameworks, illustrative studies, and exploratory investigations. Collectively, they illustrate the rapidly evolving multidisciplinary discussion at the intersections of folklore and Old Norse mythology, where the transformative impacts were recently described as a paradigm shift. They open new paths for scholarly discussion with the potential to inspire future research.