Category: Blog

This article is a critical study of how local place-related narratives, i.e. place-lore, is integrated into environmental discussion and how it has significant potential to illustrate local and public, as well as vernacular and institutional, meanings concerned with the environment. Combining the frameworks of ecosemiotics, environmental communication studies, and place-lore research, the article explores how a new storytelling context, ideological selection, and the logic of conflict communication influence the re-contextualisation and interpretation of place-lore. The theory is applied to an empirical examination of public discussion of Palukyla sacred hill in Central Estonia. Tracking references to previous place-lore about Palukyla Hill in the media coverage of the conflict allows a demonstration of how the contextuality and referentiality towards an extra-narrative environment that are originally present in place-lore are often overlooked or ignored in conflict discourse. This, in turn, leads to socially and ecologically disconnected discussion.

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This article looks at the perceptions of fear and ‘the frightening’ in contemporary Mongolian demonology. In the article, I discuss beliefs concerning both human and supernatural – what is supposed to be frightening for humans and what is supposed to be frightening for spirits, ghosts and demons. In daily interaction with the supernatural this mutual ‘fright’ can be regarded as an important part of communication. In this article, I discuss what is believed to be the most frightful for humans and for supernatural agents, what kinds of image this fear relates to and what the roots of these beliefs are, as well as the popular ways to confront and defend against ‘frightening’ in Mongolian folklore.
My research is based on fieldwork materials collected during annual expeditions in different parts of Mongolia (2006–2017) and Mongolian published sources such as Mongolian newspapers and journals, special editions of stories about encounters with the supernatural.

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Authors retain the following rights:

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3. Vol 15 No 1 (2021) /
4. Notes and Reviews

Dajko, Nathalie and Shana Walton, eds. 2019. Language in Louisiana: Community and Culture. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. 

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Torri, Davide. 2020. Landscape, Ritual, and Identity among the Hyolmo of Nepal: Vitality of Indigenous Religions. London: Routledge. 232 pages.

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Authors retain the following rights:

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Benovska, Milena. 2021. Orthodox Revivalism in Russia: Driving Forces and Moral Quests. Religion, Society and Government in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet States series. London; New York, NY: Routledge. 220 pages.

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This article will look at how domestic and sexual violence against women is presented in the Icelandic folk legend collections from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Gender-based violence is a subject relatively absent in Icelandic legend collections which were mostly told, collected and published by men (the exception being the collection of Torfhildur Þorsteinssdóttir Hólm). Violence plays a role in the subordination of women, and there is good reason to consider how violence against women is portrayed in the oral legends of the past. I will among other things consider the effect these particular legends might have had on those who heard them and examine the roles of the legends in maintaining and shaping a discourse which in many cases may well have attempted to normalise this violence.

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4. Editorial

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3. Vol 9 No 2 (2015) /
4. Notes and Reviews

This review of the book of Florian Mühlfried Being a State and States of Being in Highland Georgia summarizes the central argument wrapped around new insights into what means to be a citizen of an erratic state and what cultural mechanisms have been developed by the inhabitants of the Highland Georgian region of Tusheti to cope with the unpredictability of the state policies. The cultural mechanisms allow for simultaneous being involved in and keeping distance from the state. The review gives also some critical points.

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

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This article is about the distinct groups that practised malevolent and benevolent witchcraft in Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia in late-modern Finland according to belief legends and memorates. Placing belief legends and memorates in Mary Douglas’ tripartite classification of powers that regulate fortune and misfortune illuminates the social structure of agents who posed a threat or regulated it by means of their supranormal powers. Powers that bring misfortune dwell outside or within the community, whereas powers that bring fortune live within it but nevertheless may be ambivalent and pose a threat to its members as well. Threat towards the community was based on the concept of limited good, in other words the belief that there was a finite amount of prosperity in the world. The aim is to paint a detailed picture of the complex social structure and approaches to witchcraft in late-modern Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia.

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This study describes the types of taboo words used by the Acehnese people in Aceh, Indonesia. Ten language informants in the district were interviewed for this qualitative study. The interviews were recorded and then transcribed prior to analysis. The data were then analysed by the procedures of condensation, display, and conclusion drawing. The findings of the research reveal that the most common taboo types used by Acehnese speakers are taboos of vulgarity or obscenity, epithet, and the taboo of disease. This implies that calling people bad names, talking about sex, mentioning incurable or ‘repulsive’ diseases are among the most taboo discussions in Acehnese society. Taboo words related to religion are found the least in the data, which could imply that these words are small in number because the Acehnese people embrace their religion strongly and thus minimise verbal abuse related to it.

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