Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics

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3. Vol 3 No 1 (2009) /
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This paper explores the raison d’être of the only proper Estonian ecovillage, Lilleoru. Exceptional in the Estonian context, this relatively small and young community is a member of three established international networks uniting similar communities. Based on fieldwork and ethnographic interviews, the present article describes some focal aspects of the community and investigates how Lilleoru functions as a community. After a brief overview of the formation of the community, the following questions are touched upon: what is its significance for its members, how are they differentiated from other similar groups, what creates coherence among its members, how is the community managed, what are the everyday practices and how does it fit into the global context. As a result of the study it might be said that although from the outside Lilleoru is mainly seen as an ecovillage, from inside being an awareness training centre is central. The ecological lifestyle is regarded as a side result of a conscious lifestyle.

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3. Vol 1 No 1-2 (2007) /
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The article deals with the impacts of the policy of the 1940s-1950s Soviet authority on the Estonian National Museum. The first, introductory part observes the general frameworks of the (ethnographical) museums in the Soviet Union, thus providing an overview of the goal of Sovietisation policy – what was the system’s perception of the institution that the ENM was supposed to become. The main part of the article focuses on Sovietisation practice in the ENM: what kind of reorganisation took place within the work of the museum in connection with political changes, whether and how the new norms were adapted to and to what extent they were adopted. The source material used for the treatment of the subject matter comprises, in addition to the ENM’s archive materials, the memories of three ethnologists who worked in the ENM during the observed period.

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The Finn Forest Republic is a three-day celebration of cultural heritage and local identity among the Finn Forest population, a people living in small rural communities on both sides of the border between Sweden and Norway. This festival has been celebrated since 1970, and has been an important element in the revitalisation and constitution of a Finn Forest identity. The article investigates how elements of the cultural heritage of the area have been used during the days of the Republic to constitute the idea of a common ethnic identity and a shared past, through a wide range of public displays and performances. The Finn Forest Museum plays an important role in the festival, both with collections manifesting a genuine material culture, as an arena for the performance of intangible heritages, and as a venue for telling narratives about the historic background of this culture. The character of the festival and the cultural heritage it celebrates implies historical references to the immigrant border culture, as well as to conflicts with the other dominant national majority cultures of the area. These cultural relations are presented in sincere as well as humorous ways, and allows for a wide range of identifications with the project of building a Finn Forest cultural heritage.

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3. Vol 14 No 1 (2020) /
4. Notes and Reviews

Book review: Tat’yana Vladykina. 2018. The Udmurt Folklore ‘Worldtext’: Forms, Symbols, Rituals. Izhevsk.

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3. Vol 15 No 1 (2021) /
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Witchcraft and barrenness are two critical issues that African women have had to grapple with since precolonial times. Therefore, the focus of attention in this paper is the songs of the Legi voluntary association among the Ịjọ of Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region. The Legi women’s group is made up of adult women who are barren and/or have been tagged witches by their community. The women of the association compose songs about their experiences in society and sing them at burials. For the women of the Legi Association, art is a means of showing support for or solidarity with a member of the group whose father or mother has died. Moreover, the members of the association perform their songs at burials that are unconnected with them to celebrate with those who invite them.

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3. Vol 14 No 2 (2020) /
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 What children count as their favourite things tell us not only about children but also about their social and cultural experiences. This study, based on the outcomes of a children’s drawing competition organised by the Estonian National Museum and applying a combined framework of visual sociology and participatory research, proposes an innovative angle to using the museum’s experimental approach to contemporary collecting of cultural heritage. This large-sample (n=926) content-analytical study of children’s favourite gifts gives a rich ethnographic and sociological perspective on children’s life-worlds. On the one hand, the children’s wishes reflected contemporary global trends in technology and commercialisation. On the other hand, the children’s prevailing dream of having a pet shows loneliness shaped by societal changes, including urbanisation and changing family models and time regimes.

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3. Vol 14 No 2 (2020) /
4. Notes and Reviews

Bronner, Simon J. 2019. The Practice of Folklore: Essays toward a Theory of Tradition. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. 382 pages.

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The article examines varied interpretations of food heritage in contemporary Estonia, relying on the authors’ experiences of a three-year research and development project at the Estonian National Museum (ENM). The study focuses on the museum researchers’ collaboration with different stakeholders, representing small entrepreneurs and the public and non-profit sectors. The authors tackle the partners’ expectations and outcomes of diverse cooperational initiatives and the opportunities and challenges of a contemporary museum as a public forum for discussions on cultural heritage. The project revealed that diverse, complementary, and contested food heritage interpretations exist side-by-side on the Estonian foodscape. Additionally, the project enabled the authors to become better aware of the researcher’s role in the heritagisation process and of the museum as a place for negotiating the meanings and values of food culture.

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Bandura art is a unique phenomenon of Ukrainian culture, inextricably linked with the history of the Ukrainian people. The study is dedicated to one of the most tragic periods in the history of bandura art, that of the 1920s–1940s, during which the Bolsheviks were creating, expanding and strengthening the Soviet Union. Art in a multinational state at this time was supposed to be national by form and socialist by content in accordance with the concept of Bolshevik cultural policy; it also had to serve Soviet propaganda. Bandura art has always been national by its content, and professional by its form, so conflict was inevitable. The Bolsheviks embodied their cultural policy through administrative and power methods: they created numerous bandurist ensembles and imposed a repertoire that glorified the Communist Party and the Soviet system. As a result, the development of bandura art stagnated significantly, although it did not die completely. At the same time, in the post-war years this policy provoked the emigration of many professional bandurists to the USA and Canada, thus promoting the active spread of bandura art in the Ukrainian Diaspora.

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The established identity of a museum professional is that of a traditional modernist cultural expert, deploying hegemonic power stemming from institutionalised legitimate knowledge. At the same time, its identity work bastions its components against diverse forms of structural audience participation. The museum professional’s identity responds to the challenge of structural audience participation with resistance, anxiety and othering. The museum professional’s identity work involves a considerable amount of bastioning in that regard, and after participatory intervention has taken place, it works towards marking clearer frontiers between the legitimate expert and idealised amateur. With the experience, a small amount of assimilation of participatory diversification also appears, while the possibilities remain of a ‘third expertise’ emerging through future collaborative processes.

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