Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics

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

The article focuses on the conflict between Karula National Park in South-Estonia and a local tourist entrepreneur, caused by restrictions due to the heritage protection of the national park. The conflict is regarded as a dialogue between different ways of interpretation of cultural heritage or heritage representations in which different ideological contexts, convictions and coping strategies are intertwined. The article describes the representational practices of both dialogue partners or the implementation of conceptual worlds through concrete behaviour and demonstrates how such actions can express certain social relations, as well as the use of the notion authenticity as an ideological argument in order to legitimize specific heritage representations or, on the contrary, prevent them.

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:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

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

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.

1. Home /
2. Archives /
3. Vol 4 No 2 (2010) /
4. Articles

This article examines public letters as an expression of everyday household problems and practices. The sources used are those letters from among the archival materials of the Tartu Retail Trade Association and the Tallinn Markets Administration that have survived from the 1960s and 1980s. Using qualitative thematic analysis, I examine the points of criticism that have arisen in connection with retail trade and the (deficit) reality behind it, along with specific behavioural practices. In addition, my aim is to show the relations between individuals and the state, and their dynamics, by presenting criticism with the help of discourse analysis.

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:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

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

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.

1. Home /
2. Archives /
3. Vol 5 No 2 (2011) /
4. Articles

This article discusses recent developments in the home-based lifestyle business featuring the example of two cases: Tammuri farm restaurant near Otepää in South Estonia, and home restaurant MerMer in Kolga-Aabla in North Estonia. We study the restaurants from a Goffmanian performance perspective, focusing on the lifestyle entrepreneur’s viewpoint of creating a restaurant experience in their homes. Accordingly, the home and its surroundings are considered a setting in which food has an important role as a performance medium and multiple roles are enacted by a single entrepreneur as a performer. Freshness, quality and locality of food, homeliness and personalised service are used for creating a special home restaurant meal experience. The two cases also shed light on the dynamics of the concepts of home and lifestyle entrepreneurship in contemporary Estonia, challenging the understanding of restaurant cuisine and home cooking as oppositional practices of food preparation and consumption.

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:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

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

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.

1. Home /
2. Archives /
3. Vol 2 No 1 (2008) /
4. Articles

Structuralism in folklore studies was in many ways a reaction against the previous scholarship and the historic-geographic method in particular. In this paper the relationship between the two is analysed through a comparison between Walter Anderson’s historic-geographic and Alan Dundes’ structuralist treatment of chain letters. Anderson published his article on types of Estonian chain letters in 1937, whereas Dundes dealt with chain letters repeatedly in the 1960–70s. Drawing on T. Kuhn’s concept of paradigm as a “way of seeing the world”, the article examines the concept of folklore and folklore studies proposed by either scholar in his discussion of chain letters and seeks to interpret his reasons for taking interest in such a phenomenon. It argues that rather than being incommensurable, the historic-geographic method and structuralism as represented by Anderson and Dundes share an understanding of folklore as a collection of classifiable single items characterised by simultaneous variation and stability.

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:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

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

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.

The protest of the North Ossetian nativist religious movement against discourses of dominant institutions in the public sphere involves as its necessary component ‘re-description’ of religion in general and ‘re-constructed’ religious systems in particular. Usually, this means revealing allegedly forgotten ancient meanings of indigenous customs, rituals and folklore texts through the use of various concepts taken from esotericism and/or practical psychology. The language for this re-description is provided by conceptual apparatus developed by New Age movements. Of particular interest in this respect is the language of ‘new science’, ‘alternative history’, ‘transpersonal psychology’, etc., employed as a tool for criticising the established system of Christian-centric understanding of what religion is and what its social functions are.

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:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

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

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.

1. Home /
2. Archives /
3. Vol 14 No 2 (2020) /
4. Articles

The article presents a study of the use of family humour in public comedy and the mutual influence of family humour and public humour on comedians’ performances and everyday life.  The interrelations between these domains lie at the level of the content of humour, its format, its performance and the interaction between humour producers and their audience. Family and public humour often overlap and interweave in various ways, especially in the experience of those who engage in humour production both in public and in private spheres. The study is informed by interviews with UK-based comedians on their family humorous folklore and its interrelation with their public humour performances. The interconnection between public and family humour was identified on several levels: textual, communicative, personal and conceptual.

This multidimensional interplay indicates that family humour is contingent on the context, but at the same time is often conditioned by comedians’ public personae and cannot be fully separated from the humour they perform publicly. The study illustrates the vagueness of the dichotomy between public comic performances and family humour and points to multiple ways in which the boundaries between these domains can become blurry.

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:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

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

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.

This article offers a folkloristic analysis of telling personal experience stories in the Estonian Midwives Association’s Family School discussion forum (www.perekool.ee), focusing on the Conception, Pregnancy and Childbirth sub-forums. In the article women’s My Stories about their journey to motherhood are under discussion. The central question is how the practice of telling these stories is shaped and affected by the peculiarities of the online community, its communication space, traditions, and daily operation. The article seeks to answer this question in relation to the following topics: accepted and non-accepted topics and experiences; the message of the stories; the structure of the stories; vocabulary competence; and the style of storytelling. From the theoretical perspective, the focus is on participatory storytelling, that is, on the interplay of the specific online environment, narrator, story, and group, as well as the process by which the teller and the audience co-create the stories.

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:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

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

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.

1. Home /
2. Archives /
3. Vol 8 No 1 (2014) /
4. Articles

Processes of comparison are central when we make our decisive choices of ways of living. This article is based on an interview with an immigrant who negotiates with himself over why he went away from Finland and why he stayed in South Africa. His line of argument can be analysed using Abraham Maslow’s theory of human motivation. Conduciveness turns out to be his main motivation, and comparison is, implicitly or explicitly, a tool for verbalising this conduciveness. 

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:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

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

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.

1. Home /
2. Archives /
3. Vol 9 No 1 (2015) /
4. Articles

This paper focuses on the meanings assigned to Tatar language among the Tatar diaspora in Estonia. According to interviews with Estonian Tatars as well as descriptions of field material from Tatarstan, language is an important aspect of Tatar ethnic identity. This paper will track common discourses about the Tatar language and the way it is connected to Tatar ethnic identity. Issues concerning Tatar language are used to demonstrate various ways of enacting Tatarness in Estonia. It is shown that Estonian Tatars worry about the vitality and purity of Tatar language, but for some, marginalization of dialects is also an issue. People categorized with the same identity labels by self and others can experience and enact their Tatarness in a variety of different ways.

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:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

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

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.

1. Home /
2. Archives /
3. Vol 2 No 2 (2008) /
4. Articles

As in many other countries, the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century marked times of modernisation in Finland. Rapid changes also took place in the health care system at this time. Until the 1920s most health concerns were addressed using the ethnomedical practices. New legislation gave the dominant position in health care to the Western (evidence based) health care system. According to the official record, the majority of ethnomedical treatments were declared marginal and generally useless and the state began to support the construction of hospitals. The slow pace of development in social health care held up the treatments given by legally approved medical practitioners. All of which supported a deliberate shift towards the modernisation of the health care system leading to primary health concerns being solved in local health care centres by doctors trained according to the conventions of evidence based medicine. Unlike many other countries, where the representatives of conventional medicine also consider complementary and alternative medicine as a part of their treatment, the use of non-evidence based medicine is extremely unusual in Finland. However, patients with long-term illnesses are eager to try all available cures in their desire to become well and this leads to a situation in which complementary treatments are used in a somewhat secretive manner. The article follows the discussion concerning the use of complementary and alternative medicine in cancer narratives in order to point out its significance as a part of a self-negotiation process characteristic to the patients with long-term illnesses.

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:

– copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,

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

– the right to reproduce the article for own purposes, provided the copies are not offered for sale,

– the right to self-archive the article.