Welcome!
You are visiting the Estonian folklorists' server Haldjas (fairy, guardian spirit), which was set up in 1995 by the folk belief research group of the Institute of the Estonian Language. Presently, the group and the server have been incorporated under the Estonian Literary Museum. The majority of electronic publications and data corpora in the server are in the Estonian language, which belongs to the Finno-Ugric language family. Estonia is a small country with ca one million people, who speak the Estonian language as their mother tongue.
The server offers a wide range of information on oral heritage, folklore and folk belief, on the institutions actively engaged in folkloristic research in Estonia as well as researchers and research projects. The covered aspects of folklore also include the heritage of other peoples of the Uralic language group. The server features two journals that have been published online and in print since 1996: Mäetagused and Folklore: An electronic Journal of Folklore.
Only parts of the material are currently available in English and/or German; in time the proportion of material in foreign language will grow.
Our news!
Ritual Year WG Seasonal Webinar #18, spring 2026
Ritual Year Working Group Seasonal Webinar #18, spring 2026 - Ritual and festive environmental relationality in Ibero-American mountain regions will take place on Monday, April 27, 2026, at 15:00 BST+2 (10:00 New York, 16:00 Rome, 17:00 Tallinn/Bucharest, 22:00 Manila).
We invite you to listen to our invited speakers Ana Correa, Paula Gabriela Nunez, Letizia Bindi, Tobias Boos and Daniela Salvucci who are going to present us with their research on South American festivals.
Thanks to Georgiana Vlahbei, our working group has recently gone through a visual upgrade, and we are now ready to show off our fresh, new look for this special occasion.
More information (poster, TEAMS link etc.) available here
Folklore and Friends Seminar (April 22): Alevtina Solovyova
Folklore and Friends / Folkloor ja mõttekaaslased
Ülikooli 16–103 (in-person only)
April 22, 14:15
Alevtina Solovyova (University of Tartu). Eschatology and Entrepreneurship in Contemporary Inner and Central Asia
This lecture explores how eschatological narratives and ritual practices are mobilised across Inner and Central Asia in response to intensifying crisis and uncertainty. Drawing on long-term ethnographic and digital fieldwork, it examines how diverse religious and social practices provide frameworks for interpreting pandemics, wars, and geopolitical tensions.
Particular attention is given to the rise of “eschatological entrepreneurs”, who translate crisis narratives into actionable practices through rituals, consultations, communal networks, and digital platforms. The lecture argues that these actors operate within hybrid moral and economic systems, where spiritual authority and livelihood strategies intersect.
Rather than signalling passive belief, eschatological imaginaries and ritual practices emerge as key mechanisms of coping, enabling communities to navigate uncertainty, negotiate power, and enact agency in a rapidly changing Eurasian landscape.
Alevtina Solovyova is a researcher at the University of Tartu whose work focuses on religion, crisis narratives, and digital ethnography in Inner and Central Asia.
Folklore and Friends / Folkloor ja mõttekaaslased March 25, 14:15
Folklore and Friends / Folkloor ja mõttekaaslased
Ülikooli 16–103 (in-person only)
March 25, 14:15
Roomet Jakapi (University of Tartu). What Is the Value of Fieldwork for the Philosopher of Religion?
In this talk, I examine the relevance of fieldwork for philosophers who study concepts such as religious belief or supernatural entities. More specifically, I discuss Neil Van Leeuwen’s view that religious “beliefs” are not genuine beliefs. According to his theory, the cognitive attitude believers adopt toward supernatural ideas is a distinct imaginative state that he calls religious credence.
In January 2025 and February 2026, I conducted fieldwork in Northeast India in collaboration with two Indian-Estonian folklorists. We carried out in-depth interviews with several members of the Khasi tribe who reported transforming into specific animals on multiple occasions over several years. Drawing on this material, I argue that the concept of religious or supernatural belief remains theoretically indispensable and cannot be adequately replaced by the notion of religious credence.
Roomet Jakapi is an Associate Professor of History of Philosophy at the University of Tartu. His research interests include early modern philosophy and contemporary philosophy of religion. Currently, he is a member of two research teams: one examining the cognitive roles of imagination and the other focusing on the beliefs of indigenous peoples.
F&F seminar 25/02: The Uncanny Believer, with Timothy Raymond Anderson
Seminar Folklore and Friends / Folkloor ja mõttekaaslased
Ülikooli 16–103 (in-person only)
25 February 2026, 14:15
Timothy Raymond Anderson (Tallinn University), "The Uncanny Believer: Sincerity, Suspicion, and the Bureaucratic Production of the Other"
The “uncanny” is that which appears strangely familiar, yet feels irreconcilably different. Timothy Raymond Anderson’s research in Estonia’s asylum system reveals a profoundly uncanny political subject: the “true believer.”
This is the outsider — the Russian dissident, the Cuban journalist, the Syrian reformer — who arrives at the gates of Europe having more sincerely embraced its liberal ideals than many of its own citizens. Their presence is uncanny because they function both as a mirror of the state’s self-image and as an unsettling reminder of the gap between its universalist promise and its exclusionary practices.
In this talk, Anderson explores the bureaucratic and narrative strategies through which the state seeks to neutralize this uncanny subject. He discusses processes of “sincerity deconstruction,” in which applicants’ seemingly familiar beliefs are systematically reframed and pathologized as unfamiliar threats.
By examining how liberal democracies respond to these “true believers,” the lecture illuminates deeper anxieties and untold tensions within the contemporary European project.
About the speaker
Timothy Raymond Anderson is a Lecturer in International Relations at Tallinn University. His work theorises the tensions between state-imposed categories and the lived experiences of borders and displacement, with particular attention to recognition, dignity, and political agency.
He has conducted extensive ethnographic research on asylum in Estonia and has worked in applied policy roles with international research institutes, including Nordregio and Shifo in Stockholm.
Webinar of the Ritual Year Working Group
Dear friends, colleagues, members of the SIEF Working Group The Ritual Year, and all interested listeners!
We are delighted to invite you to our next webinar on 19 February at 16:00 (Tallinn time).
This time, we will focus on various Shrovetide traditions (Shrove Tuesday and related customs).
We will hear three presentations:
Guillem Castañar Rubio — The burial of the sardine and other shrovetide traditions in Catalonia
Eva Toulouze — Perspectives from France
Arūnas Vaicekauskas — Shrovetide traditions in Lithuania
We warmly welcome everyone to participate in the discussion, share information, local customs, impressions, and relevant literature.
You are very welcome to join us!
Seminar Folklore and Friends / Folkloor ja mõttekaaslased
Seminar Folklore and Friends / Folkloor ja mõttekaaslased
Ülikooli 16–103 (in-person only)
11 February 2026, 14:15
Kikee Doma Bhutia (Ghent University)
Don’t Wake the Sleeping Mountains. What happens when Ghangchendzõnga, the third-highest mountain in the world, wakes up?
This lecture explores mountain propitiation rituals as vernacular Buddhist practices in the Sikkimese Himalayas, where sacred landscape narratives collide with environmental conservation, glacial floods, and accelerating ecological pressures.
Are these rituals genuinely protecting fragile mountain ecologies—or are they becoming a form of spiritual greenwashing?
Can ancient practices safeguard the environment, or do they risk producing ritual waste in the midst of climate collapse?
Drawing on ethnographic research, the talk critically examines how local religious practices, state environmental policies, and sustainability discourses intersect—sometimes uneasily—around sacred mountains.
About the speaker
Kikee Doma Bhutia is an FWO Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Buddhist and South Asian Studies, Ghent University. Her current project, Local Deities, Natural Disaster, and Ritual Waste in Vernacular Buddhist Practices in the Himalayas (2025–2028), investigates how Buddhist beliefs and rituals shape community responses to environmental change, disaster, and sustainability in Sikkim.
Contact: Anastasiya Astapova anastasiya.astapova@ut.ee
Folklore and Friends / Folkloor ja mõttekaaslased- On 4.02, Ülikooli 16- 216
The Department of Folklore is pleased to launch a new research seminar series “Folklore and Friends / Folkloor ja mõttekaaslased”, bringing together the Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore staff, students, and guests to introduce and discuss their ongoing research.
The second talk is about the afterlife of catastrophe: visual cultures of risk and the ethics of remembering the nuclear age. On 4.02.2026, Ülikooli 16-216.
Veera Ojala is a Doctoral Researcher in the Degree Program in Digital Culture, Landscape, and Cultural Heritage at the University of Turku, Finland. Her research focuses on nuclear cultural heritage and nuclear visual culture, emphasising visual methodologies and participatory culture.
Ojala’s doctoral project examines the cultural production of radioactive landscapes at the Chornobyl and Fukushima disaster sites through qualitative interviews and participant-generated photography.
By analysing selected representations and narratives from non-authoritative perspectives, her research investigates how members of contemporary digital participatory cultures interpret issues related to the nuclear past. This work highlights the importance of visual media and participatory practices in shaping public perceptions of contaminated environments.
The afterlife of catastrophe: visual cultures of risk and the ethics of remembering the nuclear age.
This talk draws on my dissertation research, which examines the visual culture of nuclear heritage, with particular attention to the Chornobyl and Fukushima disaster areas. Employing a participant-oriented approach with an analytical focus on participatory pictures, I discuss how visitors’ visual practices produce meanings, narratives, and imaginaries associated with nuclear technology and the aftermath of nuclear disasters. I also investigate how participants’ meaning-making processes engage in negotiating the significance of contemporary energy landscapes and strategies for risk mitigation.
Incantatio – International Journal on Charms and Charmers
Issue 13 (2025) has been published, bringing readers fascinating articles on the language, culture, and history of charms.
Haralampos Passalis explores how the digital era reshapes the boundaries between prayers and charms, focusing on the healing prayer to Saint Jude Thaddeus in Greece.
Stephen Miller presents a substantial collection of Manx charms recorded by folklorist Sophia Morrison at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries.
Additionally, you will find articles on medieval weather charms (E. Cianci), Irish folklore (N. M. Wolf), linguistic approaches to medieval charms (Frog), book reviews, a conference report, and an interview with D. Vaitkevičienė.
Read the full journal and discover the world of charms!
Erasmus+ intern Maria Żukowska in the Department of Folkloristics at the Estonian Literary Museum
In January 2–9, 2026, the Department of Folkloristics at the Estonian Literary Museum hosted an Erasmus+ internship by Maria Żukowska, a doctoral candidate, historian, and translator from the University of Białystok (Poland).
Maria is writing her dissertation on the transformation of narratives in post-Soviet history textbooks. During her stay in Estonia, she was working with Estonian school history textbooks.
Maria Żukowska is also the author and producer of the Polish-language podcast series Podcasty Dialogu, which explores the cultures of various countries (Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia). This project closely resembles the intercultural educational initiatives of the Department of Folkloristics, such as "SUKK" (led by Sergei Troitskiy and Nikolay Kuznetsov) and "Languages Connect" (led by Sergei Troitskiy).
We hope that Maria Żukowska’s visit will strengthen cooperation between Poland and Estonia, expand the Estonian Literary Museum’s network of partners through the University of Białystok, and foster collaboration with other countries via the Erasmus+ program.
Maria Żukowska’s internship is part of a series of visits by doctoral students from European countries to the Department of Folkloristics at the Estonian Literary Museum. Previous interns have come from Latvia, France, and Poland.
The internship was supervised by Mare Kõiva, Head of the Department of Folkloristics, and organized by Sergei Troitskiy.
