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This article examines ethnocultural and ethnogenetic relations between the Komi, Khanty, and Mansi peoples in the recent historical past on the basis of folklore, ethnographic, and historical sources; assumptions are made as to the formation of some of the Khanty groups on the basis of Komi, Khanty, and Mansi components.
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The article analyses some scenarios from legends about the creation of the world in the Komi tradition. The text recorded by Pavel Doronin in 1923 contains some storylines that have no parallels in similar texts. First and foremost, it is the story of the creation of the Earth, which is a contamination of mythological motifs of Earth-diving and the creation of the world from an egg. The article considers in detail the main components of the motifs and offers a hypothesis about the origins of these components.
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In order to provide a general overview of particular aspects of the topic in the title of this article, the author suggests having a look at one specific example from the Komi tradition of incantations. In the analytical part of the article, the author makes a hypothesis: Linguistic transformations verified as zaum (beyonsense, educanto) can occur as a result of compression of a source text (pretext, prototext) into a rhythmical matrix of the act of incantation. By the rhythmical matrix we mean a complex fixed structure of rhythmical subsystems: sound-rhythmical, rhythmo-melodic, metrical-rhythmical, and other dimensions. The compression of the prototext into the text of an incantation can have a non-linear character and be the result of a peculiar strategy of the transfer of knowledge pertaining to incantations from a teacher to a student. By virtue of a number of specific psychophysiological attitudes and limitations, the student does not remember the text of the incantation, but reproduces some deeper levels of the magical and ritual performative related to the rhythmical matrix. And it is into the matrix reproduced by his or her consciousness that a new verbal stream made up of the components of the source text, fixed in the short-term memory of the student, is incorporated.
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This article contains an analysis of a verbal component of cattle-breeding rituals. In terms of their genre, incantatory texts are divided into five different categories: sorcery, ritual dialogues, incantations, lamentations, and prayers, out of which the most widespread is sorcery. As a result of a structural-semantic analysis of sorcery, two types of texts have been singled out. Sorcery with a closed structure consists of two parts, and its parts can be related as opposition or comparison. Sorcery with an open structure is divided with respect to its recipients: animals, saints, and the domovoi.
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This article deals with the children’s game of calling upon a domovoi1, which is unique for the traditional spiritual culture of the Komi. New authentic texts as well as archival material that has never been used before is cited. Their analysis allows the area of the spread of this game to be expanded. According to the new sources, it did not only exist among the Komi living on the shores of the basin of the Vychegda River (with the tributaries of the Vishera, the Vym, and the Sysola), but also among the northern Komi-Permiaks in the traditions of Kosinsky District. The games have similar scenarios and are aimed at establishing contact with the invisible inhabitant of the house living in the cellar, and checking if it really exists. The most noticeable variation exists in the names of the demonym, poetic addresses, and characteristics. The image and terminology pertaining to the domovoi addressed in the game contain reflections of mythological concepts that are similar to ‘adult folklore’, but quite often the addresses to the character called upon take on the features of ‘childishness’, i.e., diminutive forms, reduplication, and personal names. In the context of experiencing collective fear, this game is close to the magically playful calling upon the neo-mythopoetic characters (the Queen of Spades, a Dwarf, devils, etc.), which is common among modern schoolchildren, including the Komi schoolchildren.
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The article deals with the tradition of Christmas youth gatherings within a narrow local tradition that exists at the Vishera River (a tributary of the Vychegda River, the Komi Republic). The structure of the research includes the following sections: the history of studying the ethnocultural specific character of the Komi at the Vishera; a combination of the circle dance and a game; some aspects of the existence of borrowed songs; merrymaking entertainment and disguises; and the transformation of the ritual (merrymaking of youngsters). Different stages of the existence of this ceremonial complex, which are historically determined, are represented: traditional, adolescent from the Soviet period, and the modern one.
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The article introduces folklore materials collected in the early twenty-first century mostly from the Russian population of the mining settlements in the Komi Republic, which were founded when iron mining started in the area in the middle of the eighteenth century. The authors analyse the Christmas rituals and poetry used by children and adults when visiting neighbours at Christmas. The use of certain scenarios related to the celebration of Christmas and the Christmas period shows how the local traditions that developed among the varied population were integrated into the culture of Russian North and Central Russia.
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The article introduces folklore materials collected in the twenty-first century from the Russian population of the mining villages in the Komi Republic, founded when iron mining started in the area in the middle of the eighteenth century. The folklore traditions originated from the Russian settlers coming from the northern, north-eastern, and central provinces of the European part of the Russian Empire. The author studies the stories of oral historical prose, reflecting the values of the settlers, events in the course of settling and reclaiming the territory, the beginning and development of pig iron and iron production, local dynasties, and information about actual historical prototypes. She also considers the procedure of forming a folklore repertory in a certain local tradition. By using historical sources and mass media publications and comparing them to folklore materials, the author concludes that in the twentieth century, the collective historical memory was ‘designed’, among others, by resources, the mass media, and book culture, and that local intellectuals were directly involved in the process.
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The article focuses on the most significant stages of the formation of the Kazakh diaspora in the Kyrgyz Republic, to point out what reasons contributed to the rugged Kazakh migration process in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and how it affected the forms and types of their settlements (compact or disperse). The researched issues also include the identification of factors provoked by humans and the state to launch these migrations. Surprisingly enough, opposite to the claims made by independent Kazakhstan leadership in the early 2000s, the number of Kazakhs in Kyrgyzstan wishing to become repatriates to their native country is still far from the desired. Thus the article is an attempt to find out what reasons and factors influence the Kazakh residents’ desire to stay in the neighboring country as a minority. To provide the answer, the authors analyzed the dynamics of statistical variations in the number of migrants and the reasons of these changes. The other key point in tracing what characteristic features separate Kazakhs in Kyrgyzstan and their kinsmen in Kazakhstan is the archival data, statistical, historical, and field sources, which provide a systematic overview of the largely unstudied pages of the history of the Kazakh diaspora.
More...Interview with Mexican Mythologist Martín Cuitzeo Domínguez Núñez
This year the Estonian Literay Museum organized the 13th Annual International Conference on Comparative Mythology in cooperation with the Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies. At the end of the conference I had a chance to conduct an interview with Mexican mythologist Martín Cuitzeo Domínguez Núñez, who works at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS), Mexico City. He is an expert on the astronomical culture of the Pa ipai people. Also, Domínguez Núñez is one of the organizers of the next international conference on comparative mythology. In this interview he talks about Mexican myths, reveals some details about the forthcoming conference, and draws parallels with Estonian mythology.
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Review of: Michael Herren. The Anatomy of Myth: The Art of Interpretation from the Presocratics to the Church Fathers. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 231 pp.
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Henri Zeigo’s interview with Mexican mythologist Martín Cuitzeo Domínguez Núñez is available in English in Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, Vol. 76 (www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol76/).
More...Peter Grzybek
Peter Grzybek (2 November 1957 – 29 May 2019). Mare Kõiva reminisces about the linguist, semiotician, and Slavist.
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The materials on the calendar rites of Krasnoufimsk Udmurts collected by the author in the 1990s, with texts and ethnological and etymological comments are presented, describing the New Year, Shrovetide – Pancake festival, the Great Day – Easter, end of ploughing, Semik – Trinity Day, the great summer sacrifice and praying for rain. Krasnoufimsk Udmurts were the most eastern peripheral Udmurt group, never formally Christianized, who for more than three centuries lived separately from other Udmurts but together with Mari and thus under their great cultural and linguistic influence. Therefore the Krasnoufimsk dialect, discovered and first described in the 1970s by R. Š. Nasibullin, developed into a very special Udmurt vernacular with strong features of interference from the Mari language, which became dominant among the Krasnoufimsk Udmurts in the late 20th century. Nowadays the Krasnoufimsk dialect is very probably extinct and the published materials represent the last information available on the language and culture of this interesting group.
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L’époque de la communication a sans doute changé la conception sur la vie et les activités principales de l’homme. Le domaine le plus « affecté » parles nouveaux moyens de communication (Internet, les médias, la télécommunication mobile, etc.) est l'économie. Les entreprises ont vite assimilé les principaux moyens de communication dans ses structures et ontcommencé à les utiliser pour se faire connaître par les consommateurs, et ce qui est encore plus important, pour les convaincre de la qualité de leurs produits et leurs services. C’est toujours la communication qui a aidé les grandes entreprises traverser les frontières de leurs pays et devenir multinationales. Dans ce contexte, l’adaptation de l’identité des marques aux cultures cibles est devenue une nécessité. Pour ce faire, nous croyons qu'il convient d’implémenter une nouvelle profession dans le domaine de la communication d’entreprise: le consultant interculturel de la marque. Les compétences nécessitées par le consultant interculturel de la marque sont multiples et incluent la traduction et adaptation de l’identité visuelle de la marque. N’étant pas une étude exhaustive, cet article essaye de trouver des réponses à quelques questions essentielles en ce qui concerne l'adaptation de l'identité visuelle de la marque : comment traduire le nom, le slogan et les textes publicitaires d'une certaine marque ; comment adapter les symboles visuels de la marque ?
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The movie Azra, directed by Mirza Idrizović, is the story about the activism of a member of the Resistance Movement, a staunch communist hoping that through her effort she might change the society and free Muslim women of the imposed traditional costume which prevents them from entering public space. Simultaneously, there are personal problems caused by family strife, when her parents-in-law move into her house together with her husband’s brother who used to be a German soldier. Azra’s marriage ends soon due to misunderstandings, which does not discourage her from continuing with her activities, having the desired goal in sight.
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We are witnesses of the worldwide phenomenon of the exploitation of not only the character of "Count Dracula" but also the motif of vampirism in general, both in popular literature and cinema, but also in the form of museums or tourist tours. Certain parts of the world are forerunners in the context of "vampire tourism" because they are culturally and geographically linked to belief in vampires or had local vampires who became world famous throughout history. Aside from Romania which cashed in on its Dracula myth a long time ago, Serbia has great potential to realize an especially attractive offer of vampire tourism. Namely, there is an almost thousand-year old tradition of belief in vampires in Serbia, and the western literary and later cinematic vampire (including Stoker’s Dracula) came into being thanks to cases of vampirism noted in Serbia in the 18th century. This paper deals with the ways in which different interest groups approach the idea of commercializing both nationally popular and internationally famous vampires in Serbia. The aim of this paper is to give an analysis of the positive and negative attitudes toward the use of the motif of the "local vampire" which the residents and representatives of three villages and one town displayed in the media. The analysis of these initiatives encompasses the dispute between Valjevo and Zarožje over the use of "Sava Savanović" as their own, and the attitudes of the villages of Kisiljevo and Medveđa which have attempted to erase "local vampires" from the collective memory and identity of the villages. In both cases – the positive and the negative attitudes towards the identity connection with "local vampires", I have attempted to determine the influence of the socio-economic context and migrations on the attitudes and initiatives supported by these locales.
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Међувладин комитет за заштиту нематеријалног културног наслеђа УНЕСКО-а, на свом редовном деветом заседању одржаном од 24. до 28. новембра 2014. године у седишту УНЕСКО-а у Паризу, донео је Одлуку о упису "Породичне славе", као првог уписа из Републике Срије на УНЕСКО-ву Репрезентативну листу нематеријалног културног наслеђа чове- чанства.
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