Studia Fennica Folkloristica

Confessions and Confidences

Academic and Cultural History Revisited in Letters and Other Documents of Life

This anthology draws readers into the epistolary worlds of mainly 20th-century academic and cultural figures in the Baltic region, especially Finland. At the time of writing, many of these individuals, while pursuing vocations in folklore research, linguistics,...

Living Lament

Explorations in Shifting Ideologies

This edited volume opens new approaches to lament research by analysing the intersections between ideologies and lament traditions, providing advancements in methodologies and the knowledge of domains that emerge at this intersection...

Expressions and Impressions

Personal and Communal Aspects of Traditional Singing

Singing is a universal mode of human communication, integral to cultural and social life and serving a wide range of culture-specific functions. This scholarly volume examines traditional singing as both a cultural phenomenon and an embodied vocal practice,...

Kalevipoeg Studies

The Creation and Reception of an Epic

This is the first English-language monograph on the poem Kalevipoeg (1857-1861), composed by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803-1882). The poem is over 19,000 lines long, and is known today as the Estonian national epic...

Hidden Rituals and Public Performances

Traditions and Belonging among the Post-Soviet Khanty, Komi and Udmurts

Why are Khanty shamans still active? What are the folklore collectives of Komi? Why are the rituals of Udmurts performed at cultural festivals? In their insightful ethnographic study Anna-Leena Siikala and Oleg Ulyashev attempt to answer such questions...

Myth and Mentality

The recent fascination in Finnish folklore studies with popular thought and the values and emotions encoded in oral tradition began with the realisation that the vast collections of the Finnish folklore archives still have much to offer the modern-day researcher...

The Irish Folklore Commission 1935-1970

History, ideology, methodology

Between 1935 and 1970 the Irish Folklore Commission (Coimisiún Béaloideasa Éireann), under-funded and at great personal cost to its staff, assembled one of the world's largest folklore collections. The cultural, linguistic, political and ideological factors...

Mythic Discourses

Studies in Uralic Traditions

Mythic discourses in the present day show how vernacular heritage continues to function and be valuable through emergent interpretations and revaluations. At the same time, continuities in mythic images, motifs, myths and genres reveal the longue durée of mythologies and their transformations...

Oral Tradition and Book Culture

A new interdisciplinary interest has risen to study interconnections between oral tradition and book culture. In addition to the use and dissemination of printed books, newspapers etc., book culture denotes manuscript media and the circulation of written...

Genre -Text - Interpretation

Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Folklore and Beyond

This book presents current discussions on the concept of genre. It introduces innovative, multidisciplinary approaches to contemporary and historical genres, their roles in cultural discourse, how they change, and their relations to each other...

Narrating, Doing, Experiencing

Nordic Folkloristic Perspectives

How do people tell of experiences, things and events that mean a lot to them and are unforgettable? Eight Nordic folklorists here examine personal experience stories and the way they are narrated in an attempt to gain an understanding of the people behind...

Tradition through Modernity

Postmodernism and the Nation-State in Folklore Scholarship

In their study of social practices deemed traditional, scholars tend to use the concept and idea of tradition as an element of meaning in the practices under investigation. But just whose meaning is it? Is it a meaning generated by those who study tradition...

Riddles

Perspektives on the use, function andchange in a folklore genre

Riddles are a journey into a fascinating world rich in delightful metaphors and ambiguity. This book is based on material drawn from all over the world and analyses both traditional true riddles and contemporary joking questions...

Storied and Supernatural Places

Studies in Spatial and Social Dimensions of Folklore and Sagas

This collection of articles addresses the narrative construction of places, landscapes and their supernatural dimensions, the relationship between tradition communities and their environments, and the spatial conditions for encounters with the supernatural...

Rhyme and Rhyming in Verbal Art, Language, and Song

This interdisciplinary collection explores the forms and aesthetics of rhyme in a variety of languages and from a variety of perspectives. A wide-ranging introduction that ends with a list and associated bibliography of rhyming traditions of the world is followed by thirteen chapters...

Peasants, Pilgrims, and Sacred Promises

Ritual and the Supernatural in Orthodox Karelian Folk Religion

Lying on the border between eastern and western Christendom, Orthodox Karelia preserved its unique religious culture into the 19th and 20th centuries, when it was described and recorded by Finnish and Karelian folklore collectors...

Words as Events

Cretan Mandinádes in Performance and Composition

Words as Events introduces the tradition of short, communicative rhyming couplets, the mantinádes, as still sung and recited in a variety of performance situations on the island of Crete. Recently, these poems have also entered modern mass media and they...