We Have Nothing to Do with Them; They Live with Their Own Kind: Siberian Estonians’ Representations of the Neighbouring Turkic Peoples
We Have Nothing to Do with Them; They Live with Their Own Kind: Siberian Estonians’ Representations of the Neighbouring Turkic Peoples

Summary/Abstract: This article explores the representations of Estonians, an ethnic group inhabiting West Siberian villages today, of their neighbouring Turkic peoples. I discuss the way that Siberian Estonians describe the representatives of these peoples and their contacts with the latter. The analysis is based on the interviews conducted within folklore collection fieldwork, in which a common question posed by the researcher was: What do you think/know about or what contacts have you had with the representatives of Turkic peoples? Siberian Estonians’ representations of the neighbouring Turkic peoples are analysed as a creative process based on tradition and expressed by means of various folklore genres, whereas the meanings and interpretations are connected with the social and sociocultural environment. As the article is concerned with the lore of West Siberian Estonians only, it discusses the ethnic groups inhabiting this particular area – the Kazakhs and the Tatars.

• Details
• Contents