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3. Vol 8 No 1 (2014) /
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Ethnography of religious ceremonies by theBashkortostan Udmurt. A short introduction based on fieldwork.

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3. Vol 1 No 1-2 (2007) /
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Power in our life can certainly be expressed in a variety of ways. One of them is power transmission through life cycle rituals. Soviet rule denied “religious traditions” and tried to form a new atheistic communist culture (and traditions). The new rituals were expected to replace older religious rites because communist morality and socialist internationalism was expected to overpower bourgeois nationalism. As indicated by scholars investigating into Soviet rituals and by my fieldwork data collected in 1999 in Northeast Lithuania and in 1998 in Southeast Latvia, the mission of creating communist traditions has not always been successful. I shall try to examine this process in my article by analysing the cases of “traditional” baptism as well as the phenomenon of the so-called “modern” name-giving ritual in Latvia and Lithuania.

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3. Vol 5 No 2 (2011) /
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One of the most central findings of recent heritage research in cultural anthropology points to heritage as a social process and as the result of a metacultural operation. This article discusses the metacultural nature of heritage by focusing on the history of heritage both as a concrete social practice and as a powerful concept of cultural policy. For heuristic reasons, the article tends to put the conceptualisation of heritage as a metacultural product in question and proposes to translate concepts from ritual studies into heritage research.

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3. Vol 4 No 2 (2010) /
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The article analyses the marking of song text patterns by means of musical devices in the performances of Estonian regilaul. The article examines which variants of musical rhythm and melodic contour are preferred by four singers in their performance of verses that have different functions within the song structure. In both the text and the musical rhythm, a greater number of syllables, and the attendant changes in musical rhythm, mark the verses that have an initiating function and which communicate entirely new information. In performing such verses, rather than the extension verses of parallelism groups or verse repetitions, in the short melodies with narrow pitch range, the singers prefer more “intense” variants of melody contours in which the higher notes of the scale are predominantly used. In two-line melodies, the singer’s patterning of the song text is largely determined by the musical logic, attempting to align the beginnings of the melodic strophes and verse groups.

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Authors retain the following rights:

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3. Vol 2 No 2 (2008) /
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In the article the gendered motifs found in Anne Vabarna’s Seto epic Peko are analysed. Besides the narrative telling of the life of the male hero, the motives regarding eating, refusing to eat or offering food, and the aspect of the female body or its control deserve to be noticed. These scenes do not communicate the main plot, they are often related to minor characters of the epic and slow down the narrative, but at the same time they clearly carry artistic purpose and meaning. I consider these motifs, present in the liminal parts of the epic, to be the dominant symbols of the epic where the author’s feminine world is being exposed. Observing these motifs of Peko in the context of Seto religious worldview, the life of Anne Vabarna and the social position of Seto women, the symbols become eloquent and informative.

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Under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, the author(s) and users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) under the following conditions: 1. they must attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor, 2. they may not use this contribution for commercial purposes, 3. they may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

Authors retain the following rights:

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Heritage is today actively implemented in policies globally, and yet the categorisation and instrumentalisation of the realm of cultural heritage entails rather contradictory aspects. In the discourse of culture, heritage is an abstraction, and what it signifies is subject to interpretation. This contribution gives a brief overview of the contemporary discussion of the epistemological and ontological premises of cultural heritage. It has been stated that heritage is a social construction, and a mode of cultural production that emanates from a metacultural relationship. The critical assessment and theorisation of heritage includes an enquiry into tangible and intangible heritagisation, knowledge production, heritage politics, and the question of ownership.

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Under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, the author(s) and users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) under the following conditions: 1. they must attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor, 2. they may not use this contribution for commercial purposes, 3. they may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

Authors retain the following rights:

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The origin of the relations between Finnish and Estonian folklorists goes far back to the days of Elias Lönnrot and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald in the first half of the 19th century. In this article, however, I shall concentrate on those decades since the 1930s, when the two archives, the Estonian Folklore Archives and the Folklore Archives of the Finnish Literature Society have existed as institutions. I shall highlight some events, joint projects, historical turning points, and pay attention to individuals, who have had more influence on developing these relations. There were periods of time when the contacts were not possible between the institutions, but still, the continuity of relations existed between individuals. My point of view is micro-historical, as the study of micro-history is interested on the small scale level on the individual, in opposition to macro-history that concentrates on the great changes brought along by political events, on the history of “great men and women”, as well as on the history of institutions. In the history of the folklore archives in Finland and Estonia, we can recognise both of those levels and pay attention to the way how they are intertwined.

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3. Vol 15 No 1 (2021) /
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The article aims to clarify the relations between the early versions of tale type ATU 575. Examining the range of Chinese accounts concerning various wooden birds, the author concludes that two groups can be distinguished. The first consists of stories about flying wooden kite-like birds that are not used as vehicles, while in the second, we deal with wooden birds that can carry people. Records belonging to the second group and evidently having their origin in Indian and Central Asian folk tradition appear later in China. An attempt is made to restore possible outlines of the tale type’s ancestral stories. The article states that the tale of an enamoured weaver in the Panchatantra evolves from the structure of such an ancestral story. 

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@article{JEF, author = {Baburam Saikia}, title = { Marginalisation, Revolt and Adaptation: On Changing the Mayamara Tradition}, journal = {Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics}, volume = {15}, number = {1}, year = {2021}, keywords = {}, abstract = {Assam is a land of complex history and folklore situated in North East India where religious beliefs, both institutional and vernacular, are part and parcel of lived folk cultures. Amid the domination and growth of Goddess worshiping cults (sakta) in Assam, the sattra unit of religious and socio-cultural institutions came into being as a result of the neo-Vaishnava movement led by Sankaradeva (1449–1568) and his chief disciple Madhavadeva (1489–1596). Kalasamhati is one among the four basic religious sects of the sattras, spread mainly among the subdued communities in Assam. Mayamara could be considered a subsect under Kalasamhati. Aniruddhadeva (1553–1626) preached the Mayamara doctrine among his devotees on the north bank of the Brahmaputra river. Later his inclusive religious behaviour and magical skill influenced many locals to convert to the Mayamara faith. Ritualistic features are a very significant part of Mayamara devotee’s lives. Among the locals there are some narrative variations and disputes about stories and terminologies of the tradition. Adaptations of religious elements in their faith from Indigenous sources have led to the question of their recognition in the mainstream neo-Vaishnava order. In the context of Mayamara tradition, the connection between folklore and history is very much intertwined. Therefore, this paper focuses on marginalisation, revolt in the community and narrative interpretation on the basis of folkloristic and historical groundings. The discussion will reflect upon the beliefs, ritualistic aspects, and myths of the tradition. Fieldwork materials will be employed to discuss the tension between local practices and mainstream neo-Vaishnava influence.}, issn = {2228-0987}, pages = {85–102}, url = {https://jef.ee/index.php/journal/article/view/390} }

@article{JEF, author = {Ignasi Ribó and Sitthichok Samachitloed and Prapawarin Noopan and Chanakan Satrakom and Papawarin Kotchamit}, title = { “Kox Kwai Kauv Kox Kwai”: Ecopoetic Symbolisation in Pgaz K’Nyau Oral Poetry}, journal = {Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics}, volume = {15}, number = {1}, year = {2021}, keywords = {}, abstract = {This article presents the transcription, translation, and annotation of an original performance of hta, a traditional form of oral poetry in Sgaw, the language of the Pgaz K’Nyau (Karen) people of northern Thailand. This performance was recorded during ethnopoetic fieldwork carried out in two villages in the province of Chiang Rai. The hta is then analysed to understand the operations of ecopoetic symbolisation that bring particular nonhumans into the domain of human language. This analysis reveals that a metaphorical mode of symbolisation is extensively used throughout the hta to overcome human/nonhuman allotopies by means of implicit or explicit semic transformations. This seems to indicate that a naturalistic mode of identification underlies the whole poem, a conclusion that calls into question the essentialising and mythifying portrayal of the Pgaz K’Nyau as pre-modern and animistic indigenous stewards.}, issn = {2228-0987}, pages = {103–139}, url = {https://jef.ee/index.php/journal/article/view/391} }