Welcome!
You are visiting the Estonian folklorists' server Haldjas (fairy, guardian spirit), which was set up in 1995 by the folk belief research group of the Institute of the Estonian Language. Presently, the group and the server have been incorporated under the Estonian Literary Museum. The majority of electronic publications and data corpora in the server are in the Estonian language, which belongs to the Finno-Ugric language family. Estonia is a small country with ca one million people, who speak the Estonian language as their mother tongue.
The server offers a wide range of information on oral heritage, folklore and folk belief, on the institutions actively engaged in folkloristic research in Estonia as well as researchers and research projects. The covered aspects of folklore also include the heritage of other peoples of the Uralic language group. The server features two journals that have been published online and in print since 1996: Mäetagused and Folklore: An electronic Journal of Folklore.
Only parts of the material are currently available in English and/or German; in time the proportion of material in foreign language will grow.
Our news!
Doctoral defence: Lona Päll "Bridging the disconnections: an ecosemiotic approach to place-lore in environmental conflict communication"
On 31 March at 10:15 in Senate Hall (Ülikooli 18-204) Lona Päll will defend her doctoral thesis "Bridging the disconnections: an ecosemiotic approach to place-lore in environmental conflict communication" for obtaining the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (in Semiotics and Culture Studies).
Supervisors:
Professor Timo Maran, University of Tartu
Lecturer Ergo-Hart Västrik, University of Tartu
Opponents:
Professor Tema Milstein, University of New South Wales (Australia)
Associate Professor Renata Sõukand, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia (Italy)
The dissertation analyses the role of place-lore in environmental conflicts, drawing on recent case studies from Estonia on disputes over sacred natural sites, forestry management, and protecting trees in urban spaces.
Place-lore expresses semiotic engagement with specific environments and diverse forms of ecological knowledge. These kinds of contextual and local narratives are often rooted in interpretations of environmental meanings, such as ecological conditions, temporal changes, etc. and as such, are complementary to the environment they represent. At the same time, place-lore represents identities, knowledge, and ideological perspectives related to cultural heritage and the environment, often playing a role in environmental debates. The semiotic potential of place-lore is inherently ambivalent: it can escalate conflicts by emphasizing opposing perspectives or, conversely, help ground them by integrating ecological and cultural knowledge to foster diverse environmental engagement.
The dissertation critically investigates how place-lore has been used in conflicts and how the characteristics of conflict communication and new presentation contexts (public discussions, protests, legal disputes, and media coverage) influence these stories. In conflict communication, the connections between place-lore and the specific environment it represents tend to be ignored and as a result, the multivocality and environmental meanings originally embedded in the stories are often suppressed. Place-lore is frequently used selectively to create opposition and escalate conflict, which can have tangible ecological consequences.
To respond to these challenges, the dissertation introduces strategies for reintroducing into conflict disputes the multivocality and important ecological knowledge embedded in place-lore for the purpose of making the debates more productive and inclusive. To contribute to the scholarly and practical discourse, the thesis presents a new theoretical framework for the study of place-lore, develops ecosemiotic models, and proposes practical solutions for managing environmental conflicts. In doing so, it lays the groundwork for further research on the role of local, contextual narratives in addressing environmental crises and navigating urgently needed changes in the context of environmental crisis.
Defence can be also followed in Zoom (meeting ID: 962 3899 0293, passcode: 018742).
Meeting of Academic Folklore Society
Meeting of Academic Folklore Society
27th of February at 4:15 p.m in Estonian Literary Museum (Vanemuise 42, Tartu).
Program:
1) Piret Paal: Meditsiiniantroploogiline ja lingvistiline uuring elu lõpu ja surmaga seotud teadmiste tõstmiseks ehk milleks ARS MORIENDI? (in Estonian)
2) Daniel Sävborg speaks about his book ‘Events from the Un-History of Sweden: A Lost Age(Händelser ur Sveriges ohistoria. En försvunnen tid) (in English)
More information about the presentations
Everybody is welcome to join!
The new issue of the Folklore: An electronic Journal of Folklore
We are pleased to announce that the new issue of the Folklore: An electronic Journal of Folklore (No. 94) is available online.
The special issue gathers research articles that are based and elaborate on the presentations given at the conference under the theme “Voice, Connection and Message in Traditional Singing”.
Jelena Jovanovič explores the transcendable ritual function in Serbian traditional songs employed in current singing practices. The article documents an experiment intended to arrange a performance of a selection of multipart repertoires of various peoples in Europe, which was unfortunately altered by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown conditions.
Austė Nakienė and Rūta Žarskienė have studied the singing practice and the preferred traditional repertoires in the first-generation diaspora communities of Lithuanians in the United States, which were recorded by Jonas Balys, a seminal folklorist of the time. This historiographical review traces the documentation of traditional songs in which the image of the homeland left behind connects to memories of the practice of singing traditional songs.
Janika Oras examines the complexities of a colonial subject position by introducing a talented professional stage performer of folklore from the mid-twentieth-century Estonia, Laine Mesikäpp, who practiced traditional singing styles and repertoires. The article focuses on her creative voice and messages, which were compromising, censored, and self-censored, but also resistant, constantly testing the limits.
Savannah-Rivka Powell investigates the encoded Ainu identity and its bonds to the transnational Indigeneity movement, which the Ainu folk music revival promotes. The analysis traces the fusion of historical sources with global popular music styles, which creates a positive hybridity that carries the potential to build connections among the modern urban Ainu.
Liina Saarlo highlights the role of an individual, be it a singer as a performer or the counterpart represented by a documenting folklore collector. The author questions the latter’s aesthetic judgements on the performative qualities as well as the overall scarcity of meta-data concerning the performance context.
Hanna Karhu builds her critical study on the usage of archival materials when presenting Finnish rhymed folk songs that have fed into literary works, which became particularly popular in early-twentieth-century theatrical performances. She illuminates the process of national identity construction in Finland where creative writers of the new literary culture elaborated traditional songs into modern poetry through selection and recontextualisation.
Kati Kallio, Mari Väina, Maciej Janicki, and Eetu Mäkelä introduce explorations of the similarities detectable between texts found in the Estonian language ERAB corpus and Karelian-Ingrian-Finnish language SKVR and JR corpora. Based on their research on various levels – song types, verse types, motifs, and formulae – the authors conclude that there is no single computational method or toolbox suitable for tracking all the aspects of similarities and variabilities.
Olha Petrovych, Inna Zavalniuk, and Valentyna Bohatko study in their analysis the semantic usage of vocative expressions to address or invoke someone, and to serve as guides for introducing substantive and emotional elements, distinguishable in the folk song corpus from the Podillia region in Ukraine.
Taive Särg and Kaarel Veskis address the concepts denoting singer or singing, which have been comparatively extracted from an archival corpus of Estonian media texts from the 1890s, and from the corpus of song lyrics / poetic texts at the Estonian Folklore Archives. The results highlight the verbal quality of the vernacular concept in traditional poetry, while also demonstrating the potential of corpus linguistics.
Folklore: EJF is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal published since 1996, and the current issue is available online.
Tartu Nefa invites to their traditional Ancestors' Evening
Tartu Nefa invites all members, alums, lecturers and Nefa friends to our traditional Ancestors' Evening, where each year we honor a different Estonian folklorist or ethnologist who has made a significant contribution to the development of cultural studies.
This year, we will focus on the life’s work of Gustav Ränk, the first professor of ethnology at the University of Tartu.
New members will also have the opportunity to take their oath.
We kindly ask everyone to bring food and drinks to share at the festive table and to confirm your participation by answering a small survey: link
We hope to see you soon!
The conference "The Symbiosis of Singing, Playing and Dancing in Traditional Music", November 25–27, 2024
We are delighted to announce the 14th scientific conference on traditional singing, which takes place on November 25–27, 2024 at the Estonian Literary Museum in Tartu.
The conference will focus on exploring the relationship between traditional singing, instrumental music, and dance.
Various traditional singing styles are related to instrumental music. Particularly when songs were intended for entertainment, they often had meters and melodies appropriate for dancing and were performed with musical accompaniment. Many folk musicians were both skilled singers and instrumentalists.
Modern arrangements tend to add instrumental accompaniment to traditional a capella songs to make them more appealing. Performing arts are closely interlinked with contemporary
community practices of cultural heritage, as well as in the representation of local heritage outside the community.
Please find the programme of the conference here.
The conference is organized by the Estonian Folklore Archives of the Estonian Literary Museum.
The conference is supported by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (research projects PRG1288 and EKM 8-2/20/3, and TK215 Centre of Excellence EstonianRoots) and the Estonian Research Council (MOB3JD1218).
Symposium "Visual Rhetorics of Humour: Using and Forming an Iconography of Stereotypes"
The Symposium "Visual Rhetorics of Humour: Using and Forming an Iconography of Stereotypes" will be held on October 10-11, 2024 in Kondas Centre (Pikk 8, Viljandi) and in the The Estonian Literary Museum (Vanemuise 42, Tartu).
11:10 – 11:30 Open ceremony in Viljandi
Mari Vallikivi (Kondas Centre) and Liisi Laineste (Humour Research Group of the Estonian Literary Museum)
11:30 – 12:30 Plenary lecture 1:
Juho Korhonen (University of Turku, Finland) "Finland Meets the World: Global Politics and Local Stereotypes in
the Satirical Press of the Grand Duchy, 1890s – 1910".
7 presentations will follow.
Friday, 11 October, Tartu, Estonian Literary Museum
10:00 – 11:00 Plenary lecture 2
Liisi Laineste (Estonian Literary Museum, Estonia)
"Visual Stereotypes of Good and Bad: Villains in Present-day Online Communication".
Presentations.
Please, find the schedule by clicking on the title of the symposium in the events calendar.
Access via TEAMS. Click here.
The conference “Humour and Conflict in the Public Sphere”
Dear colleagues,
We invite you to the conference “Humour and Conflict in the Public Sphere” that will take place in the Estonian Literary Museum on September 4-6, 2024.
In today’s media-saturated European societies, humour often takes centre stage in social conflicts. Why is studying the relation between humour and social conflict important? What kind of humour do people create in the face of the conflict, and how do they react to such humour? This conference is the grand finale of the CELSA network project “Humour and Conflict in the Public Sphere: Communication styles, humour controversies and contested freedoms in contemporary Europe”. We are looking forward to sharing our findings and getting feedback from humour scholars and practitioners interested in similar topics.
There is no conference fee and no registration is required for those who want to attend - just come and take part in the discussions on humour!
The conference programme can be found here.
Organisers: Liisi Laineste, Anastasiya Fiadotava and Guillem Castañar.
The international technological art exhibition 'Enter Woodland Spirits'
On June 28, at 4 p.m., we will open an international technological art exhibition Enter Woodland Spirits. The show together with our new online anthology Estonian Nature Folklore is part of the main programme of the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024 (See).
The international technological art exhibition Enter Woodland Spirits explores how technology-driven art can revive the wisdom of folklore and make the essence of nature tangible and perceptible. The nearly 20 participating artists from the Nordic and Baltic countries embrace the essence and reverence for nature in their work. The artists come from Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Latvia and Estonia.
The exhibition Enter Woodland Spirits takes the visitor on a journey through two neighbouring historical buildings on Vanemuise street in Tartu – the Estonian Literary Museum (Vanemuise 42) and the University of Tartu Natural History Museum (Vanemuise 46. There, one may encounter installation environments, sound and video works, interactive installations and other hybrid forms that create immersive spaces where perception is multi-sensory. Several new artworks are based on materials of our new online anthology Estonian Nature Folklore.
Looking forward to seeing you!
The Estonian Literary Museum and organisers of the exhibition Henri Hütt, Evelyn Raudsepp, Taive Särg, Ave Goršič.
Guest lecture: Melinda Harlov-Csortán "Introduction of intangible cultural heritage in Hungary"
Dr. Melinda Harlov-Csortán (Apor Vilmos Catholic College, Hungary) will deliver a guest lecture on
"Introduction of intangible cultural heritage in Hungary. From safeguarding folklore in an ideological driven political system to the management of the Secretariat of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee of the Hungarian National Committee of UNESCO"
at the UT Institute of Cultural Research on Tuesday, May 21 at 10:15 am in Ülikooli 16-214, Tartu, Estonia.
Please join us!
Webinar on Monday, 13 May
At the webinar on Monday, 13 May Dr. Liat Steir-Livny (PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Culture, Sapir Academic College, Israel / The Open University of Israel) will present her new book "Holocaust Representations in Animated Documentaries - The Contours of Commemoration (Edinburgh University Press, 2024).
Animated documentaries dealing with the Holocaust, Holocaust survivors, and their descendants constitute a new phenomenon and inaugurate a new field of Holocaust commemoration. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of animated Holocaust documentaries. It explores movies produced in the USA, Canada, Australia, Europe, and Israel.
Based on theories developed in the fields of animated documentary, Holocaust studies, cinema studies, trauma studies, and memory studies, this volume discusses the ways in which animated Holocaust documentaries create a new layer of Holocaust microhistory, their advantages, and their disadvantages. It shows how these movies visualize subject matter that previously eluded live-action documentaries such as the unfilmed past and people’s inner worlds.
The book shows that Holocaust animated documentaries also have specific shortcomings and have generated a new set of problems relating to Holocaust memory and representation. For example, the vast majority marginalize the horrors and instead focus on bravery, resilience, and hope.
The seminar will take place on Monday, 13 May 2024, at 11:00 Tallinn time via MS Teams.
Please use the link to join the seminar
