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Europhrasi konverents Pariisis
An overview in English by Anneli Baran is available in Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, Vol. 59, at http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol59/news.pdf.
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An overview in English by Anneli Baran is available in Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, Vol. 59, at http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol59/news.pdf.
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Erna Tampere (95), Dan Ben-Amos (80), Arvo Krikmann (75), Wolfgang Mieder (70), Jaak Jaaniste (70), Mare Kõiva (60), Virve Raag (60), Irina Nurijeva (55), Mare Kalda (50), Kadri Viires (50), Reet Hiiemäe (40), Renata Sõukand (40), Tõnno Jonuks (40), Liisa Vesik (35).
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This article is about the constellations in which communities accept extraordinary personalities and the traditional clairvoyant/witchcraft narratives. The person under discussion is the witch of Äksi, Hermine Elisabeth Jürgens (1892–1976), one of the best known Estonian 20th-century clairvoyants. In Estonian, the word nõid (‘witch’) is still used by the general public (a witch is a person with extraordinary powers, a healer, a wise(wo)man). During the Soviet period and also later, the term nõid was construed as an important keeper and interpreter of national knowledge. The article focuses on the life of the witch of Äksi and the corpus of narratives that talk about her, discussing the most common subtopics of narratives and motifs that have led to the folklorisation or narrativisation of her life. The narratives are divided into oral biographies, patient or client narratives (among which stories of divination stand out), and a smaller corpus, which contains the occurrences of the narrativisation of a person. The witch of Äksi was a city-born urbanite, who adapted to country life and unfamiliar socio-political circumstances. The narratives reflect the traditional duties of a witch/clairvoyant: looking for missing family members; searching for criminals or missing people in co-operation with the authorities; looking for stolen goods and animals; helping with matters of love and family relations; predicting one’s future and fate; healing, and single political prophesies.
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Mordovskaja mifologia. Entsiklopedia I: A–K. [Mordvinian Mythology: Encyclopaedia I.] Saransk: Nautšno-issledovatelskii instituut gumanitarnyh nauk pri Pravitelstve Respubliki Mordovia. 2013. 484 pp. In Russian. An overview by Mare Kõiva in English is available in Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, Vol. 59.
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An overview in English by Piret Voolaid is available in Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, Vol. 59, at http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol59/news.pdf.
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The article focuses on the song “Il Pulcino Pio” (in Eng. The Little Chick Cheep), which was released and became a real hit in Italy in 2012, analysing the reasons for its popularity. In a more detailed investigation of the ostensibly simplistic song with no special content, the author explains its deep semiotic meaning and derivation from the most ancient layers of consciousness. The analysis points to the main factors that helped the song get fixed in the minds of the general public: children’s song form reminding of cumulative fairytales, counting-out rhymes and primitive ditties; the chain structure of the alternating text and video; imitations of animal sounds and easily memorable rhythm, and an unexpected finale. The analysis elucidates the mechanism and purpose of “The Little Chick Cheep”: to derive exalted pleasure, free the mind from anxiety, by delving into a childish, primitive, primal state, which is generated by simultaneous visual, audial and semantic techniques directed at activating the archetypes of collective subconsciousness.
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Maailm ja multitasking. Tänapäeva folkloorist 10. [The World and Multitasking. Contemporary Folklore 10.] Compiled and edited by Mare Kõiva. Tartu: EKM Teaduskirjastus. 2014. 258 pp. In Estonian. An overview by Astrid Tuisk.
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An overview about the 4th conference of humour by Liisi Laineste.
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The paper discusses the origins of the Estonian word jumal (‘God’). First, it summarises the versions proposed by previous treatises, and thereafter the linguistic material of Estonian runo songs is analysed in order to detect variations in its usage, pointing to the possible pre-Christian meaning of the word. The body of the paper consists of presenting and discussing the alternative stems that the word jumal could be derived from. Among them are some appellatives (jumm/juma ‘log’; jumi/jume ‘colour of the face’) as well as proper names of the mythological creatures of the neighbouring countries (Finnish Jumi and Latvian Jumis) and the name of the Indo-European divine twin (Yemo).The linguistic and geographical distribution of the term as well as the background information obtained from archaeology suggest that the latter version fits the best. In the following a somewhat more extended summary of the abovementioned sections of the paper is presented. The previous treatises agree that the term jumal is of genuine origin. It is considered to be a derivative term consisting of the stem jumV (the last vocal varying between (a/e/i) and of a suffix (-l-). They disagree on its proposed original meaning (‘cover’, ‘face’, ‘sound of thunder’, ‘good’, ‘essence’, ‘shivering’, ‘dead body’) and on what the function of the suffix has been. There are also different opinions on whether the supposed supreme being has been of “heavenly” kind or it could have been located elsewhere. The analysis of the context in which the term jumal was used in the runo songs revealed that besides the usages in the Christianity-related contexts (co-located with Jeesuke (‘Jesus’) and Mari (‘Mary’)) there were other uses where it omitted such a company. Among them were the stereotypical phrases and addresses for help and the pantheistic nature-related usages (in connection with wind, trees and light). There were also some references to the genuine Baltic-Finnic mythological heritage (the God-Smith, the ‘golden trace of god’, etc.) and some usages that could be cultural influences from the neighbours.
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The aim of the paper is to analyse the collective expression of attitudes elicited by the doping scandal that concerned the esteemed Estonian cross-country skier and Olympic gold medal winner, Andrus Veerpalu. The paper provides an insight into the evolution of an athlete into a national hero on the Internet. The analysis is based on the material collected from Estonian online media during two years (from April 2011 to March 2013), when Andrus Veerpalu’s court case was actively followed by the Estonian sports circles and laymen alike. The data corpus includes the most relevant news texts published in the online news portal Delfi (www.delfi.ee), comments from the same online environment, posts from the Facebook fan sites, e.g., “We believe in Andrus Veerpalu”, etc. The doping accusation called forth a quasi-religious movement, which was built around the belief that the athlete was sacred and it was not allowed to attack or accuse him in any way. The main threads in the comments analysed within this study could be divided into two opposing, although intertwining categories: the serious and the ironic. Both categories included people who believed in Veerpalu’s innocence, and those who did not; in addition, there were those who displayed their superiority towards the entire discussion. The analysis addresses the transformation of an Olympic hero into a national hero, and points out narratives that treat the scandal within the present-day genres of urban legends, conspiracy theories, and Internet humour. The more or less genuine belief of people was reflected in sought-out explanations for the doping test result and counter-arguments (above all, via conspiracy stories, but also through social mobilisation in support of Veerpalu). In the post factum comments, the majority expressed the feeling that their trust had been justified; they renewed their unremitting belief in the acquitted hero. But the rather complicated end to the long case was also a confusing one, and this allowed the ironic discourse to produce parodies, jokes and other critical comments. The questions central to the analysis are the following: (1) How does the audience interpret information provided by the media and which topics do the interpretations initiate in turn? (2) How does the notion of belief emerge in the discussion, which narratives and stereotypes are believed in, and how is the belief rationalised? (3) Which folkloric and other cultural (transmedial) texts have taken inspiration from this doping scandal?
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Tatiana Panina. Slovo i ritual v narodnoi meditsine udmurtov. [Word and Ritual in Udmurt Folk Medicine.] Izhevsk: UIIIaL UrO RAN. 2014. 238 pp. In Russian. An overview by Mare Kõiva.
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The article discusses pseudo-linguistic theories about the kinship of the Estonian language published since the 1920s. The author describes these theories, pointing to their characteristic features and causes of origin, and then proceeds to give an overview of the non-scientific theories of the kinship of the Estonian language devised by Henrik Juhankatti, Arthur Gleye, Edgar Valter Saks, Jüri Härmatare and Oskar-Adolf Põldemaa. All the authors, none of whom are linguists, attach great importance to the Estonian language (resp. Baltic-Finnic languages) in the past, about which there are no corresponding data. They also connect the Estonian language (resp. Baltic-Finnic languages) to the old languages of culture (e.g. Etruscan). These theories have deserved much criticism and they have even been regarded as adverse. The author reaches the conclusion that pseudo-linguistic theories are not necessarily detrimental, but should rather be treated as folkloric manifestations deserving to be studied.
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The link between jokes and social reality is visible in the way that jokes adapt to different socio-political contexts by dealing with the most salient issues of such contexts. This article casts light on another facet of the relationship of jokes and their social context. Ideas about jokes are influenced by their social context, being continuously reformulated by social change or political manipulation. The case study, brought to illustrate the point further, analyses media discourses that address the issues of and relationships between taste and sense of humour, mostly focusing on the reception of ethnic jokes. The different standpoints visible in the media, both in official and unofficial discourse, reflect ideas about the content and functions of jokelore, characterising jokes either as an essentially racist or as a funny (i.e., harmless) genre.
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Scala naturae: Festschrift in Honour of Arvo Krikmann for his 75th birthday. Compiled and edited by Anneli Baran, Liisi Laineste, Piret Voolaid. Tartu: ELM Scholarly Press. 2014. 442 pp. Antropologicheskii Forum [Anthropological Forum] No. 21 (2014), 392 pp. Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship, Vol. 31:2014. 532 pp. An overview by Piret Voolaid in English is available in Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, Vol. 59.
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Mare Kõiva writes about the 11th conference of the International Study of Religion in Eastern and Central Europe Association (ISORECEA) at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania, on April 24–27, and the 2nd international conference of the Latvian Association for the Study of Religions (LRPB) at the University of Latvia in Riga, on October 16 and 17.
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This article deals with the problems faced by the modern Polish folklore studies in the new era of cultural and virtual globalization. In the first part of the article, the author sketches the European background of the term folklore (coined by William J. Thoms in 1846) and its historical and aesthetic Polish determinants. In the second part of the article, the author describes the emergence in last two decades of folklore that has been enabled by the development of a global network based on digital electronic communication (folklore described here as electronic folklore or e-folklore). The new digital culture is seen as an emergent phenomenon arising from globalization. This new culture has changed Polish society, particularly the younger generation. Post-modern homo irretitus spends many hours a day in front of a computer screen, and in consequence online life has become an integral part of people’s existence. The new e-folklore is of great importance because it changes folklore research and study from a historical discipline studying a local heritage of ideas into contemporary anthropological and media studies.
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The article emphasises the variety of contemporary folklore-making situations, which are shaped by electronic media. They influence creation of a new kind of interaction by connecting people with media as well as set the directions of interpersonal reaction, inspire creation of spontaneous situations which support story-telling and influence transformations of traditional oral narration forms. Globally broadcast programs are perceived from a local perspective; each new expression immediately enters into relations with others, already present in the circulation. In the space of shaping the sense, transmissions naturally undergo the process of folklorisation. New technologies (mainly the Internet) enabled people to actively participate in the process of the content reception; they led to the change in conversation rituals, prompted creative activity and created new quality of folklore-making situations by releasing upward convergence, which strengthens the virtual community. The author refers to R. G. Howard’s findings, who used the name of the network dialect to describe an online discourse of the network users, established on the basis of the Internet. His studies should be of interest to folklorists as they analyse this type of content, which originates from local, individual and informal sources in order to enter the area of the meanings shared by the whole community. In the times of common online communication, a folklorist has to focus on new folklore-making situations, which trigger the creative process.
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