Meedia, folkloor, mütoloogia
Media, Folklore & Mythology
Teesid * Thesis

Background stories of some Balochi proverbs

Sabir Badalkhan

Proverbs constitute an important part of Balochi oral literature. They are used as an effective weapon for attesting statements, convincingn people, advising or warning them, and winning them too. Proverbs are also used to make a didactic point or to illustrate a belief.
Tens of proverbs are cited by common Baloches in their colloquial discourses and speeches as well as by politicians in their political debates and by authors to verify their claims. There are proverbs for all occasions and for any situation.
Not all but many proverbs have background stories which are often told by recites when they feel that the story is to be related to make further emphasis on the significance of the proverb. In this paper I will discuss some Balochi proverbs and the background stories related to them.

The Influence of Media on Hanti Fairy-Tale Narrators

Anzori Barkalaja

The present paper concentrates on the process ocurring when Hants have to translate their fairy-tales into a foreign language. As only few researchers can speak Hanti, the majority of communication goes on in Russian.
Different nations have different schemas for describing the world and that is also reflected in the languge. Vocabulary covers the spheres and phenomena that have been attributed specific values. Usually the semantic fields different words cover are not equal to each other. Often a word that carries important information about some phenomenon in one language is altogether absent in another as that phenomenon itself is absent in the world view of the speakers of that language.
As long as different nations do not interfere, neither do their world view moleds that the nations takse to be reality. Teh problem arises when different nations come into contact and have to communicate. The premise of communicating is sameness of world views, one important part of which is finding words of same meaning in each other's language. In most cases such words are found, especially those concerning describing the material world.
Difficulties arise in the sphere of mental phenomena. To bring in phenomena with difficult connections people use moslty metaphorical models. Such models are very difficult to translate into a foreign language and finding an appropriate word somtimes requires a most creational attitude but also good knowledge of the culture and language of both cultures. Wood Hants whose school education is mostly below average usually lack that oportunity. A major source for acquiring new Russian notions is mass media. The acquired words seem to be used too freely, using different words to note the same Hanti words. The overall impression of the story may be very syrrealistic as the translator has considered only those aspects of Russian word that interested him in conveying that important aspect of the Hanti word that interested him in connection with that specific story. But for the listener, the used Russian words' other aspects exist, too, giving the story a new colour.

The new questions in human sciences given by the new circumstances of the mass media

Sandor Földvari

The social and economic changes in the east part of Europe give new problems of ambiguous character. From the one hand, the commercial channels and programs appeared by the new social system are the great problem for keeping and publishing of the national culture and traditional values. From the other hand, the new commercial radio programs and TV channels give possibilities to present the old films, or new programs on national folk music which ones have not got place in the repertoire of the official, state television. Forinstance, there is a channel called "Danube Television" in Hungary, which is technically easy-received channel in the neighbor countries, where the great part of Hungarian people is living as a minority and this TV program presents very often the classical old Hungarian films, also literary and folk programs, too, playing an important role to keep and publish the Hungarian culture as well. Certainly, this TV channel is technically open for each Hungarian who has a TV set inside the territory of Hungary, too. So, the new, free-trade economic situation with the new commercial channels gives the possibilities of the more various programs.
At the same time, coming of the west kind of the programs, for instance the soap-operas gives the new research problems to the human sciences. If the each entity of the world can become a subject of scientific research (and this is an evidence), so the psychology, human anthropology, sociology and various other disciplines can take also must take researches on these, e.g. on the soap-operas. As for instance the graffities were a dirty phenomenon on the walls of our cities, and later the graffity as a phenomena became to a subject of researches, the soap-opera can become a subject of researches of sociology, psychology, too. There are some examples in the paper on the most popular American soap-opera, the Dallas presented by the 1st channel of Hungarian state TV in the last years and finished in 24th October 1997, in which aspect this phenomenon can be studied. The history of the Ewing family took important influences to the Hungarian life, pop-music and commercial arts. And, a Hungarian businessman living in Great Britain told in an interview on radio that he had learned very much from J.R. Ewing. Dallas became to the new Olympos, where the Ewings live as the Greek goods was lived in the Olympos, i. e. representing the problems and happiness of the usual life, also of the subject of desire of the modern people. (Or, of the part of the modern people&ldots;) The evaluating of the Mythology of Ewing Family can based only on the serious researches, regarding all of the aspects of ambiguous modern life.

Violence in Mass Media: Stereotypes, Symbols, Reality

Reet Hiiemäe

With the development of media, traditional folklore disappeared and was replaced by media folkore. Media is the one determining subjects and emphasise, influencing the structure of human world concept quite unnoticeably and all in all also culture in a wider sense, too. If in media there is continuos emphasise on depicting violence then that trend will invariably start to spread on the level of individuals, too. The everyday repeating of news connected with violence becomes suggestive as it evokes latent fears. Repeated is the idea: nothing can become better, everything becomes worse and worse till once there will be an end to everything. Media has uncousciously started to propagate chaos, stihia and this has an almost religious background: the end of the millenia and the awaiting of the apocalypsis. Media is so much overflowed with negative news that there is no room left for the positive ones.

Media, for example newspapers, are trusted. Media researcher N. Postman compares such flow of information with the sea: there is water all around but nothing to drink (Postman 1996: 87). Knowledge of acts of violence does not bring a solution to fears connected with them nor decrease the threat of violence. It is rather the opposite: the flood of information causes people to lose their ability to analyse. The receiver is able only to forward the gained information – as they are offered to us they still seem to touch us. But as there are more and more news of violence, reporters have no time to arrange them into a less stereotypic form, as there is not enough time to check the sensational piece of news nor to formulate it differently. It has to be broadcasted/published at once in order not to be the last. In addition, the receiver does not have time to think the news over nor to valuate their objectiveness.

On the other hand, such frequently used expressions like: killed in a most rough way, the victime suffered for hours, etc. have zero importance form the point of view of information and are not a part of the dry, short informing style. They are meant to evoke fantacy and they are the part of news that people tend to memorise. Media's emphasise tends to be on victims; the number of those surviving an accident is not considered too mentionworthy. Also, presenting news of violence is not in proportion with other news.

How many of the news of violence are stereotypical, artificial, based on myths? I daresay that such creating of stress and uneasyness is far from reality. News are created using the actual event as raw material and we are dealing with "media reality". If the proportion of stereotypical violence news in media decreased, there would be a positive impact on mass cousciousness.


Information Circling Within the Own And Foreign Groups
Confrontation - Integration.

Tiiu Jaago

1. The paper is based on the historical traditions that were collected in the 1930s and are maintained in the Estonian archives of Cultural History.1 (The subject is limited to the movement of changing religion in the 1840s and 1880s Estonia. Notes of traditions are compared to the history research "Peasants' Ferment in South Estonia in the 1840s" by Hans Kruus (published in Tartu in the 1930s).)
2. The problem emphasis was called forth by the fact that stories of the movement of changing religion (that is, transition to Russian Orthodox) essentially differ from descriptions of other religious movements. First, in the stories the dominating subject is the reason for such change (this is not the predominating subject in stories of other religious movements); secondly - that reason is economic-pragmatic (this does not appear to be a cause for other religious movements).
3. As the reason of the movement of changing religion is pointed out the Russian Orthodox priests' promises to give land or other economic benefits (for example, free from taxes). Those changing their religion soon find out that the promises have no basis and therefore they want to return to their former religion, Lutheran.
4. Comparing the stories with the history research of Hans Kruus, it appears that the "authors" of such promises were not Orthodox priests but that there had been rumours among peasants that the priests then could have used.
5. In closer analysis of traditions we see that the pragmatic reason of changing religion was stronger in regions where there were bigger confrontations between landlords, vicars and peasants. The own and foreign groups are closed, opposed and there is no communication between them to make them understandable for each other. In these region, rather is believed what other peasants say than what the landlord or vicar explains.
6. In the paper we will take a closer look at examples of preferring information circling in the own group to that received from the foreign group.
7. In a conflict situation (including new and changed situations), information from the own group is trusted more as it is based on previous experience of the group. Life makes its corrections into experience and that is also reflected in both stories and mental attitudes.

1 The material has been worked through in the proseminar works of the faculty of Estonian and Comparative Folklore of Tartu University in 1997.

The problem of folklore in mass- media

Daiva Jankauskaite

1. FOLKLORE AS A NATIONAL SYMBOL
The states whitch rehabilatated independence for example: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and other countries have a very important aim to re-create or revive national identity. According to Norvegian ethnologist Brynjulf Alver that is possible by collecting and studing folklore, whitch becomes a national symbol. A serious attention have to be paid for the national music and dances, national costume, traditional customs and festivals. The maintaince of tradition allow to pride a folklore as a value, whitch helps to actualise and re-create a national identity and that is why folklore becomes a national symbol.
2. MASS-MEDIA AND FOLKLORE
Mass-media has a very important influence in modern society. There are the national TV and Radio and a lot of private TV, radiostations as well as newspapers, journals. The aim of private mass- media companies is clear it is a profit. Folk traditions in modern society are put off by the modern ideas from the West, which seems profitable for private companies. Folklore is a substancial base for national identity and national TV and radio have to stimulate an interest in it. But it is very serious problem, because most folk songs are connected with traditional stile of living, our children can not imagine for example what does it mean is shepherd or what is threshing. That means they do not understand the content of songs. It is not actual for them and not interesting. So the actualization of folklore is very important. Folklore programs in the mass- media seems not profitable, because of a very small audience which chose that kind of programs and articles. The problem is: FOLKLORE VERSUS COMMERCE.
3. THE POSSIBILITIES OF FOLKLORE TO INFLUENCE A REBUIDING OF THE NATIONAL IDENTITY THROUGH MASS-MEDIA.
Mass-media can make an important influence for modern society, especialy for children, because they spend a lot of time watching TV and listening to the private radiostations. It seems possible that increasing of number of folklore programes and articles on it will gradually stimulate of the value of traditions. The Baltic states: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia for 50 years had not almost any possibility to look at folklore as national symbol, but now we regained this possibility and we must understand that folklore is a base for recreating of the national identity and mass-media is one of the most important ways to strengthen it. It could be much more programes or articles about the traditional year- cycle and family cycle festivals as well as on vernaculur languages, local history. Mass-media has to delivier much more time and spice to folk traditions and to give a possibility especial for young generation to orient themselves in contemporary global era and to be able to find their traditions roots in it.

Russian spiritual songs of Lithuania's Old-believers in the process of modern change

Renata Jelenskyte

Russian spiritual songs are the ancient genre of Russian folklore which unites folklore religious songs. Conditionaly spiritual songs can be divided into two basic groups.
1.All Russian songs, which arose in the Middle Ages before the schism of the Russian Orthodox Church (till the Middle of the 17th.)
2. Songs which were created by the dissentersd (the old belivers) and sectorians.
1.1 The existence of the spiritual songs.
The late by birth songs usually enjoyed special popularity were not widely practised in Lithuania. The late spiritual songs were commonly founded by lovers of the antique.
1.2 The evidence hed been made about execution of spiritual songs by the vargant mendicant singers (in Russia they were colled wandering minstrels.)
2. The diffuson of genre.
The secular songs were forbiden to sing in time of fasting , but there was allowed to recite only the religious psalms.Hawever the account of repertory of traditional spiritual songs grow narrow many subjects were forgetten therefore the gap was filled by similar by content works of other folklore genre.The opposite process, the spiritual songs were used as plots ,lullaby and funeral poetry.
3. The repertory of spiritual songs.
The examples of: 1.Epic-all Russian spiritual songs "Aleksei chelovek bozii"
2.Lyrico-epic spiritual songs "O Strashnom Sude"
3.All-Russian spiritual songs "Matushka-pustynia"
The repertory is wide enough.
4.Decay of spiritual songs.
1.The repertory gets narrow.
2.The tune and melody are forgotten, the poetry is crumbled.
3.The texts are change, the actions are transfered from one epoch to the other.
4.When the poetry loose the tune it's conversed into the sto or even legend.
In spite of that metodical collection of Russian folklore in Lithuania begun 40-50 years later than in anther Baltic cantries,the general resolts of collective activity are sufficiently impressive.
During the last 40 decades have been took down over 60 variants of the spiritual songs on the 21 subject.
Such are the basic appropriatenesses of the existence of the spiritual songs in Lithuania in the process of modern change.

"Is providing proverbs a ticklish job"? The use of proverbs in today's newspaper texts

Risto Järv

According to the academic index of Estonian proverbs the idea that "providing proverbs is a ticklish job" ("Vanasõna ei ole varrest võtta", EV 13584) has been recorded only once. Nevertheless, considering the general reliability of the correspondent who has sent it to the archive, it has been defined as an authentic proverb. This paper attempts to seek confirmation to the validity of the sentence, posing the question if today's newspaper articles use proverbs as an embellishment pure and simple or whether these fulfil the function of justifying one's point of view, relying on an authoritative (anonymous) culture of the times gone by.

The search for proverbs in today's newspaper texts has been restricted to those original articles, published in Postimees and Eesti Päevaleht, the two major daily papers of Estonia, that have appeared in the Internet during the past two years. In my search I have confined myself to a method of search that is relatively simple, albeit somewhat diminishing the number of the occurrences of proverbs - only these proverbs have been taken into consideration, in case of which the user has marked the different level of text. In Estonian this is done by using traditional phrases, approximately such as: "as the proverb goes..." (e. g. "vanasõna ütleb, et..."), "as folk wisdom has it..." (e. g. "rahvatarkuse järgi...") etc.

What is different from the methods of the paremiological minimum of proverb usage, is the fact that I have tried to collect proverbs in situations where they are used. The resulting nearly 300 situations have been observed more closely and compared to the number of texts collected in the academic index of Estonian proverbs (in the newspaper articles also a small number of proverbs of other nations has been used). I will also consider the differences between the number, contents and functions of the proverbs contained under different headings, and try to pay attention to the positioning of proverbs in the strategically weightier parts of the article as regards its impact - the beginning and the end.

In addition, the differences between proverbs used by women and those used by men are discussed. Also, an attempt is made to ascertain the possible differences between the two newspapers.


Of a "Beautiful" Funeral Custom on the Way to the Cemetery in Võrumaal

Marju Kõivupuu

1. The traditional and conservative Lutheran funeral customs of the historical Võrumaa (Hargla, Urvaste, Kanepi, Põlva, Rõuge and Räpina parishes) includes up to date some archaic, prechristian elements: watchkeeping by the dead one, putting objects into the coffin, cutting a (membrance)cross into a tree and ritual offering of food and alcohol at least five times. Watchkeepers and mourners also bring cookies (pies, cakes, etc.) and alcohol, but bought snacks (candies, etc) have to be wrapped into something dark.

A person's transition to the "other world" has been celebrated since already the prechristian period with an ample funeral feast that was believed to be participated by the deceased one's soul, too. Mourning feast has also been a conservative factor that keeps the community together.

2. According to the traditional prechristian belief (see Eisen, Loorits, Paulson, Kulmar), we and several related nations have believed that the "earlier left" come to meet the "just left" on the way tothe cemetary and take him to the "other world".

The sex of the first person meeting the funeral procession and the distance of the meeting place from the mourning house are some of the most important omens for the mourners in the whole Estonian area. As characteristic to the magic of analogues, by this it is impersonally predicted of which sex will the next person dying be (if the first meeter is a woman, a woman will die next in that community, etc.) and how soon will the next funeral be (the closer the meeting takes place, the sooner will there be a funeral again).

In south-eastern Estonia, it is a custom that the first meeter is given, depending on the sex, either a bottel of wine or a cookie or both (a child is given a cookie only). The custom is interpreted by south Estonians themselves as the dead one's last present on his/her way to the new home. In that stage of the transition ritual the dead one is still a member of the communtiy.

In Hargla and Rõuge parishes the omen made by the first person met has maintained its religious meaning – meeting a dead person brings death, the body carries death with him. According to that point of view the donation to the first meeter has to be considered a peace offering. Thus it is understandable why locals try to avoid meeting a funreal procession, flee from it or start to cry receiving the peace offering. People from elsewhere think the tradition to be touching, but locals are glad if they manage to give the peace offering to someone not belonging to the community or not aware of the tradition and thus leading death away from the community.


Schizophrenia and shamanism.

Aado Lintrop

If one is searching articles on shamanism in internet he soon will notice that most shamanic links are related with words pagans, paganism, wicca, magick (sic!), new-age, techno, psychedelics, drugs etc. One can find greetings like this: The shaman seers of the Fourth World generally agree that those who tenaciously cling to the past will fall into mass insanity. The serpent power of the Aquarian Age is upon us. The Kundalini of Gaia is about to awaken. No one can avoid being affected. Most human beings may go out of their minds; others will go beyond mind. John Hogue (http://deoxy.org/deoxy.htm).

I am not intending to speak here about all the multicoloured web shamanism and on line healers. Through the analysis of one web site I try to tell you something about modern shamanism.

Few weeks ago I found the website Schizophrenia & Shamanism - Aiming to
make sense of schizophrenia from the perspective of shamanic tradition.
The very first words I red were following:

Computer mediated communication as a tool for intercultural interaction

Leen Rahnu

In this paper I would like to discuss how computer mediated communication (CMC) could be used in order to promote intercultural interaction.
It could be argued that the communication between individuals is always mediated by different codes they use for expressing their thoughts, intentions or feelings.
However, usually face to face communication is considered as direct and not mediated, because there exists no other medium than individuals themselves and thus no additional limits for coding and decoding forwarded messages. CMC creates a different kind of environment, imposing very strict limits for codes in use. I am now interested in how those limits work in communication process. Do people with different cultural background turn to be more similar during this kind of mediated communication or they still maintain their cultural diversity.
My presentation will be illustrated by the examples form the intercultural communication project Babel, organized by the group of people from the University of Tartu.

Television and radio in the Setu tradition in 1994-1997

Ahto Raudoja

Old customs are replaced by new ones. Holy corners have vanished from manu Setu homes. Where formely stood the saint you could turn to is now standing the TV set. Where from you often get foreign information about the world. And the interesting thing is how facts heard from the television or over the radio acquiare a new meaning and the way they are explained. And that an overwhelming majority of things heard over the radio or from television are considered true.
In earlier times, weather was forecasted by signs of nature, but now by television. Also the so-called magnetic days are forecasted.
Another interesting attitude towards the television is the point of view of the church. There have been several notes that it is a sin to watch television during paast. There is also an overall negative attitude towards watching television when there is a decased one in the house. The best example of that is an utterance by an old lady: "Well, you can not watch TV because you must honour the dead one".
The current paper is meant to give an overview of attitudes towards television and radio among older Setus. This attitude as I will represent it may be mistaken as the subject of media is usually avoided when collecting material. The material used originates form transcriptions of recorded tradition.

Charms, Change and Memory

Jonathan Roper

This paper addresses the question of variation and stability in verbal charms by examine differences and similarities in renditions of the same charm-type. Recordings of a witch's and her pupil's versions of the same charm from the unpublished archives of the Museum of Estonian Literature are discussed. Conclusions based on these comparisons are then made in an attempt to elucidate what principles (if any) at work in the memory of the charmer may lie behind these variations.

Burial Ceremony in the Kihnu Island as a Subject of the Visual Anthropology

Ingrid Rüütel

In traditional society folklore exists only as an orally transmitted culture. In the situation where folklore and literature, folklore, amateur and professional art live side by side their mutual relations and interweaving is unavoidable. Nowadays also mass media and even IT are involved into the dissemination and recreation process of folklore.

In the present report some collaboration experiences of the folklorists and Estonian TV are discussed in the field of the visual anthropology and in preparing TV programs.

Burial ceremony of the Kihnu island represents a special local version of an Orthodox ceremony. For a long time there was no priest in the island and the ceremony was carried by Marina Rooslaid, an old woman who has gained an official status of the priest assistant. Our aim was to fix the full ceremony in authentic situation and in its local anthropological context and at the same time to focus on the personality of Marina Rooslaid.

Special problems arise while preparing a TV program on the basis of the collected ethnographic material.


Funeral Customs of Northern Khants in the Last Quarter of the 20th Century

Edgar Saar

The paper gives a survey of funerals in Oktyabrskoye, Beryozovo and Beloyarsk regions of the Khanty- Mansi autonomous okrug (district) and the Shuryshkary and Priuralsk regions of the Yamalo- Nenets autonomous okrug. The paper is mainly based on the material collected by the author during 1974- 1989 and in 1996 at fieldworks.

In Oktyabrskoye, Beloyarsk, Beryozovo and most part of Shuryshkary region the Khants bury their dead in a grave dug into the ground. Nowadays the coffin is made of boards, in earlier time it was made of a boat. The grave is dug after the coffin has been brougth into the graveyard. In the summer of 1988 the author witnessed a funeral in the graveyard of the Azovy village where the depth of the grave was about 80 cm.Some household objects and articles of clothing are also put into the grave. From outside the grave is covered with birchbark or tar paper. On the grave a construction resembling a small house made of a tree trunk or boards is put, in the front side of which there is the so-called soul's opening.

In the northern part of the Shuryshkary region and in the Priuralsk region the Khants bury their dead in a gravebuilding resembling a small house build on the ground. The coffin with the deceased is put inside the gravebuilding together with some clothes and household objects. The roof of the gravebuilding is covered with turf, grass and moss.

During the funeral a fire is made in the graveyard, and meat fish and tea are made on it. The people attending the funeral have a meal in the graveyard. Before leaving the graveyard the soul's opening is covered with a shutter.

In graveyards at or on the gravebuildings one can find small dining tables, buckets, kettles, mugs, reindeer sledges, skies, oars, and so on. There are also many empty bottles for strong drinks.

The female deceased is remembered in the graveyard four days after the funeral, and male one after five days. The next ceremony takes place in 40 or 50 days, respectively. A fire is made in the graveyard and meal is cooked. A table is put near the grave, and the mourners have something to eat and drink.

According to the Khants' belief a human being has several souls. After a person has died, the Khants make a doll image that is colled ittyrma. If the deceased is a women, it is dressed in women's clothes, in case it is a man, it is men's clothes.It is believed that one of the deceased's souls will go into the doll image and later on into a newborn baby.

In case of an unnatural death the Khants living on the banks of the Synya River make still another soul dammy colled ura; it is taken into the forest and put in a small house on top of a pole. The deceased's clothes and belongings are also put there.People come to this house to remember the deceased.

The funerals of the Northern Khants who bury their dead in the ground in a coffin and build a gravebuilding on the tomb, are similar to the funerals of the Northern Mansi and Eastern Khants. The funeral customs of the Khants burying their dead in the gravebuildings on the ground resemble the ones of the Nenets settleng on the lower course of the Ob River.

Nowadays the funerals of the Northern Khants are mainly traditional. However, people more and more tend not to believe in life after death, therefore at many funerals not all the ceremonies are performed and fewer household objects are put into the grave than formerly.


Covers and foklore. Contra's songs

Taive Särg

Vitality of folklore cannot priamrily be measured by how much it is performed but rather by how much and at which level it is created.
There are two traditional stratas of Estonian folk music: the oldest one is regisong (runosong, kalevala-song) and the more modern one stanzaic, with rhymed endings. The tradition of regisong is practically preserved (not far from dying out).
The modern folk song has got an influence of Europe and the acceptance of influencing of the West continues. When end-rhymed song came into being, the songs expanded from one person to another, but today the most important mediator from West is the music industry. Nowadays some young people in Estonia create the words of these songs which they have listened on the radio, TV, LP etc. The texts of the songs are not only sung and written by translators or members of the bands but also by ordinary people, for example, Indrek Rüütle who lives in Tartu country or Contra (Margus Konnula) from Võru country.
It is an old tradition to create or improvise new songs using the previous tune. Some of these melodies can be called symbol-melodies. A social contexts has given to this melody the symbolic meaning. The largest part of students' songs are based on the well-known recorded pieces of music, too.
The endings of modern folk songs are mostly rhymed. The original text can direct when song-writer understands the language in which the song is written. The Estonian text usually is more humorous and trenchant than the original one.
I would like to introduce the young poet Contra who lives in Urvaste village and who sings his coveries with pleasure. He is sooner a folk singer than the professional poet or singer. It is because he sings his songs everywhere, for instance, when travelling by bus, a capella and in a slightly incorrect tune.

Internet - Change or Survival of Education

Anne Villems

Education is known to be one of the most conservative part of society. The pyramid of educational methods, which claimes lecturing to be the least effective method of all (effectiveness 5%) and teaching others the most effective (95%), is well known to educators. But having a looks at secondary schools and colleges - pure lecturing is still one of the most widespread teaching methods.
Introducing new teaching/learning methodologies into school is a very difficult task and if new methods result with worse marks in tests of the old style, opponents of new methods have won. One possibility to bring new teaching methods sussessfully into schools is throught new information tehnology. Our first simulation projects for schools were extracurricular activities for ethusiasts. Projects were supported only by the Open Estonia Foundation. Now, when the government has officially started to computerise Estonian education, simulation games, based on electronic communication and collaborive learning a in distant form have become a natural part of the project. It is supported by the Ministry of Education and is going to be bound to the regular curriculum.
In the presentation, on the basis of the project TYYBEL - an integrated collaborative learning project to support environmental studies and which contains simulation game –, we will show what kind of new problems will arise from the new status, how to gain a good balance between the preparatory stage and the game itself, how to bind playing to the learning process at school and how to build a regular system for new learning methods.

A Database System for Folkore Archives

Sander Vesik

In the paper the design of the database for the folklore material gathered in Estonia and it's current implementation and future trends are viewed and analysed.

The database for folkloristic data gathered in Estonia being developed at the Institute of Estonian language is meant to a a database ulmimately replacing the now paper-form cardfiles and registers of folkloristic data in the various archives of folkloristic data, as well as be an easily accessable repository for the very data in the archives. In it's curerent implementation, the database is a PostresQL database hosted on an UNIX server, in addition for user interface for both data input and searches opening of parts of the database to the WWW is expected to happen this year.

In addition to the current implementation also the problems with the database, mostly data to be used in it - biographic data of the informants, the classification of the piece of folkloristic data into different genres and its further subclassification, the searchability of such data, etc. is discussed.