Muinasjutt ja turismireis
Tale and Tour

Summary/Abstract: A number of similarities can be found between storytelling and travelling. Both have a similar social function of offering a temporary escape from reality or being lifted out of the everyday. Both are characterized by liminality, i.e. storytelling takes place in a liminal period, when the impossible becomes possible, while a tourist has an „upside-down” experience of the novel environment causing him/her to behave differently from usual. Also, both a fairy tale and a tour bring about a different sense of time; like a tale, modern organized mass tourism often proves a safe voyage of discovery full of imaginary fears instead of real dangers. The souvenir brought along by the traveller resembles a token brought back by a fairy tale hero from the world of wonders, just a trifling for that world, yet necessary for the hero as a proof of having been there. A lot of similarities can also be detected in the general structure of both a tale and a tour; e.g., Vladimir Propp has found, from tourist narratives, equivalents to 31 functions of a fairy tale.

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