An overview of the Estonian folklorists’ 10th winter conference, held on February 26 and 27, 2015, is provided by Mare Kalda.
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Between 2010 and 2012, an extended team of scholars studied contemporary Protestant groups in Russia. The project was labelled Center for the Study of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements in Russia1 (CSPCMR) and was led by Aleksandr Panchenko from the European University in Saint Petersburg and Patrick Plattet from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Besides Russia and the USA, scholars from Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, and Estonia were involved in this collaborative research effort. The host institution of the project was the European University in St. Petersburg. The aim of the project was to analyse the Protestant-charismatic (P/c) Christianity in various regions of post-Soviet Russia. The project proceeded from the notions concerned with global effects of the rapid extension of P/c Christianity in the contemporary world. In the anthropology of Pentecostalism, problems of continuity and change, globalisation and indigenisation, preservation of pre-Pentecostal ontologies, creating the new morality and approaches to economy and politics have been discussed. The Estonian team’s specific task was to analyse contemporary Protestant missions and churches in the north-eastern corner of European Russia, in the Republic of Komi and the European Nenets tundra.
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Keywords: alcohol; drinking; image; narrative; northern peoples
In this paper I aim to analyse descriptions of Arctic peoples’ drinking as one of the oldest stereotypes concerning inhabitants of the North. I intend to explore philosophical frameworks and ways of observation that influenced the appearance and maintenance of the image of a drinking northerner in literature through the millennia. I have examined different sources that provide descriptions of northern drinking as well as scientific and philosophical texts that reveal how the image of indigenous people and drinking is introduced and supported in the writings of intellectuals in different time periods. I have discovered that since classical antiquity, scholars and travellers have believed that people drink more in the north than they do in the south. Later on, medieval and Enlightenment authors developed this understanding about northern drinking according to religious and philosophical paradigms of their eras. My evidence also shows that drinking was included in the mainstream intellectual discourse concerning the Arctic since the 19th century. From the evidence, I conclude that the appearance and long-term survival of the ethnographic image of a drinking native of the North has been possible because of adaptation of this idea to specific temporary narrative strategies. In different periods this idea of Arctic drinking has been applied to specific theoretical and philosophical settings. This adaptability has made the idea about drinking in the North a rather powerful cognitive model of the northern indigenous peoples.
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Keywords: agency; bilingual and monolingual practices; convivial settings; language ecology and power; Vepsian heritage language
This paper aims to demonstrate how people can shift prevailing power relations when engaging in distinct bilingual practices, especially in convivial settings in a remote, yet familiar to the speakers, rural environment. My paper is based on extensive fieldwork conducted among Veps, a Finno-Ugric population, traditionally living in rural settlements in north-western Russia. Most elderly Vepsian villagers are bilingual and can speak Vepsian, their heritage language, as well as Russian. In their daily bilingual practices, they tend to conform to the overarching language ecology and to employ Vepsian and/or Russian, depending on the dominant forces (including language ideologies) present at the time of speech. This often means speaking Russian in the presence of Russian-only speakers and in more institutional settings. Such practices tend to match ideol-ogies and language behaviours which already emerged during the Tsarist era and Soviet times. However, by introducing a vignette situated in Pondala, a Vepsian village in Vologda Oblast, I show how Veps can reverse uneven relations of power once the ordinary social dynamics are shaken. This paper founds its argumentation on three key concepts: language ecology, and power and agency in the heritage language.
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Andrew Wiget, Olga Balalaeva. Khanty, People of the Taiga: Surviving the 20th Century. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2011. 398 pp.
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Keywords: alcoholism; drinking strategies; Nenets; nomadism; reindeer herding; small peoples of the North
Many reindeer herders of the Taz tundra have problems with excessive alcohol consumption and most of them are fully aware of these problems and the risks associated with them. In order to mitigate these risks, the reindeer herders have built up a range of strategies for alcohol consumption, which aim to limit this consumption to periods and circumstances when the damage (in economic and social terms) it produces is likely to be less significant, to shorten the periods of drinking (zapoi), and to limit the amount of alcohol available. For example, reindeer herders choose their camping places in such a way that the distance between them and the village is big enough to deter the herders from starting for the village in the middle of the night to bring vodka. Nowadays, this strategy seems to affect the migration patterns in important ways. Other strategies include limiting artificially the space available in a reindeer sledge (or on a snowmobile) when going to the village (which would limit the number of vodka bottles the herder can bring back), trying to consume (preferably in a big company of other herders) all the alcohol one has as soon as possible, and some others. The paper analyses these strategies using the theory of alcohol craving developed in the field of addiction psychology. It shows that the strategies can indeed be effective in the circumstances of the nomadic way of life, but they become maladaptive once nomads settle in villages.
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Keywords: alcohol hangover; complicity; guilt; veisalgia; vulnerability
Even though hangover is a widespread phenomenon in many societies, it has received very scant systematic attention in social sciences. This article is based on publications from different disciplines (medicine, cultural history, social anthropology, sociology, etc.), my own observations, and interviews with fellow social anthropologists. After a general outline of the phenomenon, I will focus on some psychological aspects of hangover: guilt and vulnerability, but also the idea of complicity. These seem to combine in different ways not only in the self-perception of hung-over individuals: they also inform social perceptions of the consequences of excessive alcohol intake. They may be related to specific practices and patterns of drinking (as exemplified by observations from Siberia and the Far North of Russia), though large-scale comparisons are methodologically and ethically problematic. Examining the interrelation of hangover, responsibility, and transgression, the article concludes that the social perception of hangover involves different modes of human non-perfection.
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An overview is given by Astrid Tuisk.
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Keywords: Ants Viires; Estonian ethnology
Ants Viires (December 23, 1918 – March 18, 2015), the grand old man of Estonian ethnology, acquired this title already years ago. He devoted his life to researching Estonian folk culture and folk life, and showed extensive interests in the field, being, undoubtedly, one of the best-known representatives of Estonian ethnology.
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Keywords: France; Serbie; Grande Guerre; nationalités; Yougoslavie; Italie
Paris a suivi pendant la Première guerre mondiale à l’égard de la Serbie une politique beaucoup plus complexe qu’on ne le croit en général. Bien sûr, on soutenait par principe la Serbie, victime de l’agression austro-allemande. En même temps, à plusieurs reprises pendant le conflit des considérations d’opportunité stratégiques ou diplomatiques déterminèrent la position française bien plus que le soutien à la Serbie. A la fin de la guerre, tout en acceptant le principe de la Yougoslavie, Paris essaya de tenir compte également des équilibres régionaux des Balkans, en particulier en évitant de heurter frontalement l’Italie. Dans ces conditions, on comprend mieux les hésitations de la politique officielle française à l’égard de la Serbie, malgré la sympathie générale que suscitèrent les Serbes par leur résistance héroïque
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Keywords: Icon-painting; woodcarving; frescoes; Dimitrijević-Rafailović family; Maksim Tujković; Bay of Cattaro (Kotor); Risan; Morača monastery
Relying on post-Byzantine tradition, eleven painters from five generations of the Dimitrijević-Rafailović family, accompanied by Maksim Tujković, painted several thousand icons and several hundred iconostases between the late seventeenth and the second half of the nineteenth century. They worked in major Orthodox Christian monasteries in Montenegro, Kosovo and Metohija, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Dalmatia, but their works can mostly be found in modest village churches in the Bay of Kotor (Cattaro) and on the South Adriatic coast. The decoration of these churches was financially supported by the local population headed by elders. Along with a reconstruction of their biographies and a chronological overview of their major works, this paper seeks to trace stylistic changes in the Bay of Kotor school of icon-painting. While simply varying a thematic repertory established in earlier periods, the painters from the Bay of Kotor were gradually introducing new details and themes adopted from Western European Baroque art under indirect influences coming from the monastery of Hilandar, Corfu, Venice and Russia. This process makes this indigenous school of icon-painting, which spanned almost two centuries, comparable to the work of Serbian traditional religious painters (zografs) and illuminators active north of the Sava and Danube rivers after the Great Migration of the Serbs (1690). Despite differences between the two, which resulted from different cultural and historical circumstances in which Serbs lived under Ottoman, Venetian and Habsburg rules, similarities in iconography and style, which were inspired by an urge to counteract proselytic pressures, are considerably more important.
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Keywords: Vladimir Ćorović; historiography; polyhistor
This essay portrays Vladimir Ćorović (1885–1941), the distinguished Serbian historian of Herzegovinian origin, who made a distinct mark in the field with his prolific and wide-ranging writing. Given his vast array of interests, both in terms of topics and historical eras, Ćorović has been dubbed the last polyhistor, following in the footsteps of Stojan Novaković and other historians of similar calibre.
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Keywords: Serbie; Zeta; Venise; Turquie; despote; « sieur »;;réconciliation; contrat; négociations; frontières
Cet article se propose d’éclairer les relations entre le despote Stefan Lazarević et « sieur » Djuradj Branković dans les premières trois décennies du XVe siècle. Jusqu’à la fin de 1411 ces relations étaient hostiles, cependant qu’après leur réconciliation elles sont devenues et sont restées cordiales et étroites jusqu’à la mort du despote. L’auteur se sert surtout de documents vénitiens relatifs à l’établissement des frontières serbo-vénitiennes dans la Zeta entre 1422 et 1427. « Sieur » Djuradj, qui représentait la Serbie pendant ces négociations, parle d’abord au nom du despote, puis de plus en plus souvent en son nom propre.
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Keywords: King Nikola; Montenegro; territorial expansion; First World War
This article discusses the abortive efforts of King Nikola of Montenegro to achieve territorial expansion for his country during the First World War. Although he was a believer in the unification of Serbdom, he wanted to achieve it under his leadership rather than that of the Serbian Karadjordjević dynasty, and therefore had no intention of letting Montenegro be simply merged with Serbia and his family pushed into the background. Therefore, King Nikola campaigned not just for the preservation of Montenegro as an independent state, but also for its considerable territorial expansion, mostly at the expense of Austria-Hungary, and also at that of Serbia and Albania. He did not desist from his endeavours even at the time of his exile following the capitulation and occupation of Montenegro in 1916; on the contrary, it was then that his demands were most comprehensive. However, he could not resist the reality on the ground during and in the wake of the war, and all his efforts remained useless.
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Keywords: palaeo-Balkan peoples; pre-Roman period; migrations;a cultures
In the history of the central Balkans prior to the Roman conquest migrations of people had manifold importance. The recognition of these migrations has been the basis for distinguishing between different periods of prehistory. Various analyses of the material culture offer information on the social contact between the invaders and the autochtonous populations. They reveal details of the transfer of elements of culture and technological knowledge from one region to another. Of particular significance in this respect are migrations over vast territories, sometimes from as far as the Ural mountains in the east, the Alps in the west and the Pindus in Greece to the south. Investigations into the models of the migrations open up possibilities for determining the variation in, and different forms of, human movement from one geographic area to another.
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Keywords: Jovan Ristić; historiographie serbe; histoire diplomatique; mémoires
L’un des plus grands hommes d’État serbes du XIXe siècle, Jovan Ristić (1831–1899) fut également historien distingué qui contribua largement au développement de l’histoire diplomatique en tant que discipline en Serbie, précédant de tels historiens remarqués comme Mihailo Gavrilović et Grgur Jakšić . Ayant étudié à Berlin et à Heidelberg, Ristić se développa sous l’influence décisive du grand maître allemand de l’époque qui fut Leopold von Ranke. L’auteur examine les écrits majeurs de Ristić questionnant son approche méthodologique et la notion de l’objectivité à la lumière des débats du XIXe siècle. En analysant l’expérience de Ristić en tant qu’homme politique, Jovanović met l’accent sur la distinction entre mémoires et histoire dans l’oeuvre de cette figure illustrée de la vie politique et culturelle serbe.
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Keywords: Bosnia; Serbia; Tvrtko I; Hungary; double wreath; ideology of kingship; coronation
The fact that ban Tvrtko of Bosnia had maternal ties with Nemanjić dynasty and seized certain areas of the former Serbian Empire was used as a basis for him to be crowned king of the Serbs and Bosnia in 1377 in the monastery of Mileševa over the grave of Saint Sava. His charter issued to the Ragusans in 1378 contains the term “double wreath” which figuratively symbolized the rule of Tvrtko I over two Serb-inhabited states, Bosnia and Serbia. Tvrtko’s choice not to annex the conquered territory to his own state, Bosnia, but to be crowned king of Serbia as well required the development of a new ideology of kingship and a new form of legitimation of power. Although his royal title was recognized by his neighbours, including probably the rest of the Serbian lands, that the project was unrealistic became obvious in the aftermath of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. What remained after his death was only the royal title, while the state ruled by his successors became exclusively related to Bosnia. Yet, echoes of his coronation in medieval Bosnia can be followed in the further development of the title and of the concept of crown and state. Interestingly, an attempt to revive the double crown concept was made in the early fifteenth century by the king Sigismund of Hungary, who requested that the Bosnians crown him the way Tvrtko had been crowned.
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Keywords: Celts; central Balkans; Scordisci; necropoles; warrior graves
During the fourth century BC the Celts expanded into the Balkan Peninsula and the Carpathian Basin. After the major defeat at Delphi, in Greece, the surviving Celtic tribes formed an alliance under the name Scordisci. They settled in the wider territory around the confluence of the Sava and the Danube, which became a base for their subsequent invasions into Thrace and beyond. The Celtic presence in the region has been best documented by the necropoles in Karaburma (Singidunum) and Pećine (Viminacium). These graveyards had a complex arrangement of burials into groups and sections. The warrior graves contained pieces of weaponry showing decorative elements of both Western and Eastern Celtic art tradition. Some of the female graves contained rich personal adornment such as the coral bracelet and the Münsingen-type fibula in a grave in Pećine. Until the Roman conquest, the Scordisci remained the most powerful military force in the region.
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Keywords: Serbian mines; medieval Serbia; silver; auriferous silver; gold; copper; Accounting books of the Caboga (Kabužić) brothers; Ragusa (Dubrovnik); Kotor (Cattaro); Venice
Accounting books of the Caboga (Kabužić) brothers 1426–1433 (Squarço/Reminder, Journal and Main Ledger) kept at the Historical Archives of Dubrovnik provide new evidence for the composition and advanced levels of processing of precious metals from Serbian medieval mines. Notably, that the residue left after the process of obtaining fine silver was copper. Even the price of the refining process is specified. Two items of a transaction entered in the Squarço in 1430 contain some previously unknown data about auriferous silver (argento di glama). Besides gold, it also contained copper and, moreover, the ratio of the two per pound is specified. Apart from the Caboga brothers’ accounting books, neither the other written sources nor geological research have provided any indication about the presence of copper in the auriferous silver mines.
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