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Oskar Loorits (1900–1961) is an Estonian folklore researcher, who is primarily known as the researcher of the folk tradition and religion of the Livonians, and as the founder and the first director of the Estonian Folklore Archives, founded in 1927. His connections with the University of Tartu have been discussed to a lesser extent. The article is based on the materials of the University of Tartu, mainly personnel records, stored in the National Archives of Estonia. Loorits was admitted to the University of Tartu in 1919, i.e., the same year the university adopted Estonian as the language of instruction instead of Russian and German. This involved the opening of new chairs, including the Chair of the Baltic Finnic Languages and the Chair of Folkloristics. Loorits specialised in Baltic Finnic languages and graduated with a master’s degree in 1923. Thereafter he started doctoral studies, while also changing his specialisation. In 1926, he presented his research on Livonian folk religion, for which he was awarded a doctoral degree in folkloristics. In 1927, he submitted the papers required for habilitation to the university and received the right to work as a lecturer at the university. From 1927 to 1942, he worked as an associate professor of folkloristics at the University of Tartu. In 1944, he left Estonia for Sweden. The article looks at the activities of Loorits at the University of Tartu in the period 1919–1942. As he received a scholarship from the university for both studies (1921–1923) and research (1923–1927), he had to present a report of his completed work to the university’s Faculty of Philosophy and to the university’s government at the end of each term. As he worked at the university at an hourly rate, he continued reporting until the Soviet power was established in Estonia in the summer of 1940. Besides factual information, his reports contain a remarkable amount of information on his personal development. These reports reflect Loorits’ keen eye for research problems and opportunities and reveal his great work ability and strict self-discipline. He was able to manage large research fields as he saw possibilities for organising them. He was a strict lecturer, although supportive of young researchers when they were successful. Loorits’ reports and the accompanying documents also provide an insight into the everyday life at the university of the 1920s–1930s. One can see that at the beginning of the period, the comparative method was predominant (this research method was represented by the professor of folkloristics Walter Anderson), and then the research methods based on the tradition group and presentation (Loorits) and the poetics of folklore (August Annist) were added. This was a period of significant advancement of research and science. While Loorits was able to see potential research perspectives and apply new research methods, his work was also theoretically innovative and shaped the future folklore research.
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The Estonian Folklore Archives of the Estonian Literary Museum hold a valuable collection of Livonian ethnography and folklore – Oskar Loorits’ collection of Livonian folklore. Oskar Loorits started his journey to Livonians and the Livonian language in 1920, when he participated in a Livonian expedition in Courland as an assistant to Lauri Kettunen, professor of Finnic languages at the University of Tartu. His great interest in Livonians and the Livonian language, Livonian ethnography and folklore developed during this expedition. The Livonian folklore collection is valuable material concerned with the Livonian language and culture. The materials were mostly collected in the 1920s from 12 Livonian villages. The article provides an overview of the collection that physically consists of folders and file boxes in quarter format. The materials include both Livonian folklore texts and their translations. An important component part is the Livonian ethnographic dictionary. In 2013, the digitalization of materials started. The entire physical collection and its partially digitized materials are available to anyone interested.
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The article analyses the life and activity of Estonian ethnomusicologist and folklorist Herbert Tampere (1909-1975), as well as the research history of Estonian folk songs until 1945, also paying attention to the influence of the Estonian Folklore Archives and its head Oskar Loorits. The historical background to Tampere’s activity is the establishment of independent statehood in Estonia (1919) after Estonians had existed as an ethic minority group subjected to the ruling classes of other nationalities for hundreds of years. The scientific and cultural background is constituted by the development of European folkloristics and ethnomusicology and the increasing prestige of folk music and non-western music in Europe, which contributed to the rise of the cultural self-awareness of Estonians as a nation with oral lore different from Indo-European culture. The approach is framed with the metaphor of life and death, which in Herderian way of thinking corresponded to the growth and fading of a nation and its creation. In the 1930s, Tampere brought into the discourse of the Estonian folk song, seemingly in opposition with the gradual fading of the living lore and complaining thereabout, a turn in writing about it, unexpectedly confirming that the folk song was alive. The older folk song started to disappear from public use in the 19th century, when people lost interest in its performance and the newer European folk music style spread more widely. At the same time, they tried to overcome the national inferiority complex that had developed due to existence as a lower class, as well as the oral culture considered as a sign of backwardness, creating on the basis of folklore a new national-language and valuable European literary culture. To accomplish this, the old, evolutionally lower traditional culture had to be abandoned. Writings about the dying folk song helped to encourage people to collect folklore and create distance with the past. In the 20th century, with the development of Estonian national self-awareness and literary culture and the rise of the nation’s self-esteem, and on the other hand the recession of Eurocentric and evolutionist way of thinking in the world of science, a new interest appeared in the structure and performance of the folk song, and it started to be increasingly appreciated and considered as living. Such changes in rhetoric indicate how reality is reflected subjectively, according to standpoints and circumstances. Considering the fact that in the 19th-century social evolution theory folklore and literary culture were attributed to different development stages of a nation, the nation with low self-esteem, striving for literary culture in the 19th century, could be satisfied with the dead folk song, yet in the 20th century, in the light of new culture concepts, it could be declared alive again. In summary it can be said that the following factors helped Tampere achieve a novel approach to folk songs in his research. 1. Tampere came from a talented and educated rural home, in which music and literature were appreciated and in whose neighbourhood different music styles were practised. His interests and skills were shaped by good education at schools with remarkable music teachers and an early contact with folklore collection at the Estonian Students’ Society. 2. Good philological education from the University of Tartu and work at the Estonian Folklore Archives, becoming familiar with folklore collections as well as other young folklorists and linguists, especially cooperation with Oskar Loorits, Karl Leichter, and Paul Ariste, added knowledge of newer research trends, such as ethnology and experimental phonetics. Maybe, paradoxically, the absence of higher music education, which would have directed the young man towards other music ideals, was positive in this respect. 3. The knowledge acquired of the methods and way of thinking in comparative music science provided a theoretical basis for understanding, valuing, and studying non-western music. Professional work was also supported by the development of sound recording and -analysis. 4. The immediate contact with living folk music already in his childhood and later on, when collecting folklore, elaboration of folk songs in the archives and compiling voluminous publications made this manner of expression more familiar. Tampere must have enjoyed the performance of at least some of the regilaul songs as he mentioned nice impressions and the need to delve deeper; also he recorded, studied, and introduced these songs to the public. 5. The heyday of national sciences and national ideals in the Republic of Estonia valued engagement in folklore as the basis of cultural identity. The first folk music reproductions appeared, such as folk dance movement and runic verse recitals at schools, which was why the issues of performance started to be noticed and studied. Oskar Loorits supervised the study and publication of the most Estonian-like (in his own opinion) folklore – folk songs – and it was probably also his influence that made Tampere study the problem of scansion, to systematize and study folk songs, and compile publications.
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Each year on 9 May Russia celebrates Victory Day with great grandeur and pathos. However, it is difficult to realize from afar how deep the roots of this pathos are and what it actually means for people to participate in these celebrations. It is also worth mentioning that, besides drilled marching and national pathos, people in some villages are used to combining Victory Day celebrations with the spring commemorations of the dead.
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An overview of the international hybrid-form conference by Katre Kikas.
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No fiction is without a narrative of human relationships. In Chinese literary history, the stories represented by Jin Ping Mei are especially seen as dealing with human relationships. Some researchers have interpreted Jin Ping Mei from the perspective of human relationships; however, the generic concept cannot describe social connections in Chinese culture. The concept of guanxi, the ubiquitous and quotidian social network in China, better describes the specific human relationships in this fiction. Guanxi as a Chinese cultural phenomenon originating from Confucianism is effective in procuring resources through instrumental and sentimental mechanisms. In Jin Ping Mei, which is centered on Ximen Qing, a guanxi network connects all the characters. Ximen Qing’s fortune is built on guanxi manipulation. Guanxi, however, which was expected to embody Confucian values, violated Confucian principles in the late Ming context. Jin Ping Mei marks a turning point for attitudes toward guanxi in literary representation, and this derogatory attitude persisted in the narrative of fiction throughout the Qing dynasty.
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The simiot is a creature in the Catalan Pyrenean mythology. The term can be translated as “a kind of ape” or “similar to an ape”. According to a medieval legend, around the tenth century, these wild beasts terrorized Arles, a Catalan village in the Vallespir region. Up until now, the number of scholarly studies dealing in depth with these beings is very small. Books and papers by several twentieth-century folklorists, such as Joan Amades, have not contributed to clarifying their origin. By and large, authors propose that simiots are remnants of an ancient and pagan religion, perhaps linked to canid cults or forest deities. However, considering their probable etymology, their origin can be traced to the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries.
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Female genital cutting is a vexed issue which has generated a considerable body of scholarship in both the humanities and the sciences. In this study, I focus on the ritual among the Ịjọ of Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region. The paper is purely a cultural analysis of the practice and not one where an argument is put forth, as it were. As such, it gives detailed attention to the performance of the tradition. It also examines some of the reasons why the practice was held in high esteem. The paper further considers some of the subjects of the songs associated with the ritual, including love, sorrow, education, identity, and the supernatural, among others. Data for the study was gathered through observation and interviews.
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This article examines the Palu’e Tata liba ceremony with the help of multimedia research documentation, participant observation, and comparison with other local ceremonies. The form and performance, including reasons and effects, are described and analysed. On Palu’e, a person who is ill, or who has tried medicines without results, wonders if he/she has done something wrong according to custom or toward fellow human beings, and can request one of several ceremonies or healing genres. Tata liba is integrated into a holistic system of general health and can also be performed preventively for good feelings and the maintaining of good relations. The ancestors are called upon with ritual language, shown to exhibit semantic parallelism, to heal the participants’ suffering relations and possible ill health. The overcoming of negative feelings is symbolically displayed by wiping the participants with water, throwing rice grains behind the back, and spitting in a coconut bowl. The main objective is to achieve harmony within or between families, and there is no argumentation or chronological issues producing a win-win situation.
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In this article, the first work in the fantasy literature series, titled A Song of Ice and Fire: A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin will be analyzed in relation to the author’s use of proverbs, in order to determine the role that these play in the narration and what their features are. This choice seems appropriate for the analysis of folklore elements, such as proverbs, given the popularity of the series and its presumed contribution to the spread of phraseology. In the analysis of this text, a rather interesting approach to proverbs emerges, one in which the author makes use of proverbs existing in the real world, as well as creates his own, ad hoc, for this literary composition. These occurrences seem particularly interesting and will be analyzed in detail to determine whether they produce the desired effect and whether they follow the expected use of proverbs in real life.
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With the growth of literacy in society, the tradition of personal collections of texts took root among common people in Lithuania in the second half of the nineteenth century. One of the more popular forms of vernacular literacy turned out to be songbooks which included copied texts of poems and songs. The article focuses on historical and sociocultural contexts which shaped the user of songbooks and formed the distinctive repertory of these collections. The main factors which motivated the distribution of songbooks were the growth of literacy and the increase of secular press. The dynamic of these social and cultural areas of life was also intricately connected with Lithuanian national movement. In the current investigation, songbooks are viewed as a form of self-expression of people and as a manifestation of their cultural and national identity. It has also been observed that personal collections of texts reveal the inclination of their compilers towards the content created and existing within the written tradition. Growing competences in literacy encouraged people to pursue and acquire values associated with the written culture as they were identified with modernity, progress, and authoritativeness. Essentially, songbooks created in the written medium and maintained by it reveal the selective approach of their compilers towards the oral folklore tradition and attest to the priority given to the folk literature of a new style.
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Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), the founder of modern nursing, had influence on the whole of Europe. Nightingale has become the archetype of the queen of nurses and the latter can be used to understand different nursing cultures. The aim of the research is to analyse the manifestation and development of the nursing queen archetype retrospectively in the context of the history of Estonian nursing. The research method involves studying and interpreting historical photographs, documents, and biographies as well as secondary sources. The historical-cultural context provides a framework for analysing the development of nursing, taking into account Pierre Bourdieu’s theory. Data collection and analysis was conducted between 2019 and 2021. There were four developmental periods in the history of Estonian nursing: beginning in the early eighteenth century, the Republic of Estonia (1918–1940), the Soviet period (1940–1991), and the re-independent Republic of Estonia (since 1991). In periods of rapid change, the leaders (Anna Erma, Anette Massov, Ilve-Teisi Remmel) emerged, who became the equivalents to Nightingale or the queens for Estonian nurses.
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The objective of the study was to unpack gender role perceptions in selected South-African folktales. To this end, 65 purposefully selected folktales which reinforce character roles were analysed and interpreted, using narrative analysis. With the exception of a few that are used as instruments of contestation, the studied South-African folktales mainly serve as a tool to confirm the entrenched hegemonic philosophy of patriarchal communal life in terms of marriage, work, character traits, and authority. The rebelliousness of female characters against the patriarchal system in some folktales indicates that there is an emerging dynamism of discourse which aims at transforming the gender stereotype ideology inculcated in the folktales.
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For over 10 years, the academic journal Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore has regularly published news on the activity of The Ritual Year Working Group (RY WG), a group of international scholars with shared interests in ritual activities, customs and festive celebrations throughout the yearly calendric cycle, an affiliate of the International Society of Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF – Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore). This includes reviews of the annual WG’s conferences, reviews of panels organised by the WG at important congresses in the field of ethnology and folklore, and releases of new books. In addition, the journal has dedicated several special issues to topics addressed by the various academic meetings of the WG, reuniting studies written by its members (Fournier & Sedakova 2015; Sedakova & Vlaskina 2016, etc.).
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The Estonian Museum Canada (VEMU) in Toronto, in collaboration with the Estonian Literary Museum in Tartu, organized a campaign to collect the school lore of the Estonian diaspora community in Canada throughout 2021. Submissions for the campaign were welcomed from both current students and individuals who had either worked in education or previously attended an educational institution. The campaign honoured the memory of the former director of the Estonian Supplementary Schools in Toronto, Edgar Marten, who passed away in 2020. The project was centred around collecting general folklore that pertained to five major topics of interest: 1) jokes and anecdotes; 2) fears, beliefs, and predictions; 3) celebrations and important holidays or dates; 4) free time and friends; and 5) games and pastimes. Other interesting material, such as descriptions of guide and scout activities and camp experiences, was gathered as well and helps to further document the school-related and educational experiences of Estonians in Canada.
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Review of: Simon Franklin. The Russian Graphosphere, 1450–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 428 pp.
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Review of: Sadhana Naithani. Folklore in Baltic History: Resistance and Resurgence. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2019. 115 pp.
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The Mishnah tractate Avodah Zarah (Idolatry) contains a list of items that are forbidden to be sold to pagans. This study discusses whether these items played such an important role in pagan cults as it was suggested by the rabbis, or they were special ingredients of magical recipes.
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