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A short Hippocratic passage (Epidemiae 5: 86) might constitute the earliest Western surviving variant of the well-known narrative and experiential theme of snakes or other animals getting into the human body (motif B784, tale-type ATU 285B*). This paper aims: 1) to throw light on this ancient passage through a comparative folkloric analysis and through a philological-contextual study, with reference to modern and contemporary interpretations; and 2) to offer an examination of previous scholarly enquiries on the fantastic intrusion of animals into the human body. In medieval and post-medieval folklore and medicine, sleeping out in the field was dangerous: snakes and similar animals could, it was believed, crawl into the sleeper’s body through the ears, eyes, mouth, nostrils, anus and vagina. Comparative material demonstrates, meanwhile, that the thirsty snake often entered the sleeper’s mouth because of its love of milk and wine. I will argue that while Epidemiae 5: 86 is modelled on this long-standing legendary pattern, for which many interesting literary pre-modern (and modern) parallels exist, its relatively precise historical and cultural framework can be efficiently analysed. The story is embedded in a broad set of Graeco-Roman ideas and practices surrounding ancient beliefs about snakes and attitudes to the drinking of unmixed wine.

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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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Preface to the Special Issue.

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Authors retain the following rights:

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Preface to the Special Issue.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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 right to use the substance of the article in future own works, including lectures and books,

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Overview of the Arctic Workshop at the University of Tartu in Estonia May 31 – June 1, 2013.

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Authors retain the following rights:

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This paper highlights the internal contradictions of museum institutions when they are influenced by neoliberal market-driven policies and new museology from the viewpoint of the museum-working researcher. Museums increasingly interface with the public because they are now part of the leisure market. Recent transformations have affected the roles and responsibilities of museum researchers. Whereas marketing, communication and sales specialists have gained more prominence in museum decision-making, the researchers’ role has been marginalised. Semi-structured interviews at five national museums in Finland and the Baltic Statesgive voice to museum researchers and reveal their subjective reflections. The interviews revealed two discursive patterns: 1) caring for museum collections is more of a priority than conducting research, and 2) if academic results are prioritised, researchers are less involved in servicing the collections.The analysis showedhowperceived marginalisation has caused role conflict and ambiguity for researchers, and that current shifts reduce researchers’ motivation to contribute to research.

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Authors retain the following rights:

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This article analyses Estonian fairy tales with regard to perceiving supernatural lapses of time, focusing on the tale type cluster A Mortal Visits the Other World, which includes tale types ATU 470, 470A, 471, and 471A. In these tales the mortal finding himself in the world of the dead, heaven or fairyland experiences the accelerated passage of time. Returning to the mundane temporal reality and learning the truth the hero generally dies. The difference in time perception has been caused by the hero’s movement in space and between spaces. Three vertical spheres can be detected: 1) the upper world (heaven, paradise); 2) the human world; 3) the netherworld (the world of the dead, hell). Usually, the events of a particular tale take place only in the human world, and either in the upper or the netherworld. The relativity of the passing of time on earth and in the other world makes the tales ‘behave’ in a peculiar manner as regards genre, bringing to prominence features of representation of time typical of legends or religious tales. Although the tales contain several features that make them close to legends (a concrete place and personal names, the topic of death, dystopic endings, characters belonging to the reality of legends, etc.), based on Estonian material they can be regarded as part of fairy tales.

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Authors retain the following rights:

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3. Vol 10 No 1 (2016) /
4. Notes and Reviews

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jef-2016-0005 Book review of Ion H. Ciubotaru’s Obiceiurile funebre din Moldova în context naţional (Iaşi: Editura Universităţii „Alexandru Ioan Cuza“, 2014. 762 p.).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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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3. Vol 1 No 1-2 (2007) /
4. Articles

The purpose of this article is to assess changes in the museum institution as a response to the social environment. A metaphor of natural evolution is employed. The idea of ‘effective history’ is also introduced. The case in point in this article is Hungary and its museums. The period after 1962 witnessed strong growth in the public sector. The growth was seriously hampered by inflation in the second half of the 1980s. The environment, however, did not change drastically until the 1990s when there were dramatic changes in the amount and principles of public funding. A case study is introduced to mirror these changes.

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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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Museums constitute an important cultural and social resource. The main objective of museums is making certain objects in the collection visible or, on the contrary, leaving them invisible. In contemporary society the institution serves many important roles, being a place for displaying historical and contemporary values, an institution for preserving and displaying personal and collective memory, cultural values, for collecting tangible and intangible values, an institution for creating identity and ethnic kudos, a work place, an educational environment, a framework for promoting ethnic handicraft and art, a place for integrating different folklore festivals, exhibitions, shows; they are connected to tourism patterns and museum business. The article reflects the changes in the development of museums in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, focusing on the main key words being multifunctional museum, the museum as an open classroom, presentation of tangible and intangible history, the relation and mergence of permanent and temporary exhibitions. The issues of digitalization and preservation and the role of the exhibition curator and the person represented on displays have increased in the museology of the past few decades. The museums’ tradition of self-replication and an increased interest in museological anthropology indicate that museums fulfil an important role in society.

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Authors retain the following rights:

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