The aim of
the Estonian Science Foundation’s grant project Estonian Fairy Tales (1999–2002) was to create an electronic text
corpus of the fairy tale manuscripts (AT 300–749) collected at the Estonian
Folklore Archives, to systematize the typology of fairy tales, to publish the
first volume of a scholarly anthology of fairy tales and to discuss in separate
studies the different aspects of Estonian fairy tales.
The
participants in the project were mostly graduate students of Folklore at the
University of Tartu; also some undergraduates were involved. By the end of the
project approximately 4.000 texts had been included in the corpus (more than
12.700 pp altogether), which can be estimated to make up 75% of all Estonian
fairy tales. An authenticity database was launched that by now contains data
both about 1.700 publications from the period 1786–1960 as well as the
(non)inclusion of fairy tales in them. During systematic typologization the
type of a quarter of all texts entered into the corpus was identified and/or
checked. Composing type annotations was started for an anthology that is to
contain data regarding the familiarity and spread of each fairy tale type. A
scholarly anthology of Estonian fairy tales was published in the framework of a
continuation project that started in 2003. In the course of this project a text
publication of a collection of Jaan Sandra’s fairy tale texts compiled by Paul
Hagu and Risto Järv will be published together with a commentary.
Project
participants have made presentations both in Estonia as well as at
international conferences. One MA thesis
(a monograph on the story type AT500) has been completed; publications
include 12 scholarly articles, a comparable number of abstracts and
popularizing writings. The most important topics treated in these are short
monographs on different fairy tale types (AT300, 311, 403B, 500, 530A),
analyzing the distribution of storytellers according to their gender, problems
of authenticity of the fairy tales, and possible interpretations of fairy
tales.
Risto Järv