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!
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.
Opening Christmas Seminar of the "Folklore and Friends / Folkloor ja mõttekaaslased" Series
Invitation
Opening Christmas Seminar of the “Folklore and Friends / Folkloor ja mõttekaaslased” Series.
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.
Save the date for the first - Christmas - talk!
An Unexpected Source of Folklore Data: Dictionaries
Speaker: Jonathan Roper
When: 19 December, 14:15–16:00
Venue: Ülikooli 16–103
In addition to well-known sources of folklore data—archives, monographs, fieldwork—there exists a more unexpected corner where relevant material appears: ordinary language dictionaries. This talk considers the advantages and limitations of using dictionaries as collateral folklore data.
For questions about the seminar series, please contact: anastasiya.astapova@ut.ee
Conference dedicated to the anniversaries of Oskar Loorits and Paul Ariste
Evaryone is invited to the conference dedicated to the anniversaries of two eminent scholars: Oskar Loorits (125th anniversary) and Paul Ariste (120th anniversary) “What Loorits and Ariste began, we continue to explore”
Date: 25 November 2025
Venue: Estonian Literary Museum, Vanemuise 42, Tartu
In program
12:00 – Opening of memorial benches by Urmas Klaas (Mayor of Tartu) and Piret Voolaid (Director, Estonian Literary Museum)
12:50 – Opening remarks by Mart Saarma (President, Estonian Academy of Sciences) and Helle Metslang (Chair, Mother Tongue Society)
presentations:
13.10 Ave Goršic- Of culture, vitality and (grand) strategies
13.35 Vasil Baltadzhiev- The culture of play: tabletop wargaming as a tool for social integration
13.55 Risto Järv -„I’ve become a blue-winged bird…“: tracing violent deaths in folktales
14.15 Eda Kalmre- Puma hunting in Estonia: wild animals in media and folklore
14.40 discussion
15.00 Tommy Kuusela -Supernatural beings in Swedish folklore
15.25 Mare Kõiva- Aetiologies and thinking animals
15.50 Nikolay Kuznetsov -'Good', 'fish' and 'corpse': the Old Komi alphabet and its letters
16.15 Anastasya Fiadotava- The identity and languages of small Finno-Ugric peoples in internet memes
16.40 – Nikolai Bajuškin. Ariste. Memories in Erzian language
16.50 Monika Jõemaa. Oskar Loorits
Exhibitons: Oskar Loorits (by Monika Jõemaa)
How do you know that elves exist? (by Ell Vahtramäe)
Organizers:
Estonian Literary Museum, Academic Folklore Society, The Mother Tongue Society
Seminar: Vernacular culture as tool in symbolic collective coping – the Romanian far-right identity
Lecture by dr. Adrian Stoicescu: "Vernacular culture as tool in symbolic collective coping – the Romanian far-right identity"
Time: 24. November at 11:00
Place: 4th floor seminar room, Vanemuise 42, Tartu.
Acknowledging that ethnonationalism is not a new ideological tool in shaping the political everydayness, its power to capitalise on an increasingly larger arsenal of ‘bending’ cultural fact to fit its alterity creation strategy has reached new intensities. Vernacular cultures are not left outside this emotionally-dense, partly adherent to reality fabricated discourse used to divide communities into quite antagonistic subgroups pitted against each other.
This lecture will focus on the mis-/dis-/mal- uses of vernacular culture in the Romanian far-right discourse integrated into the framework of symbolic collective coping (Wagner et al. (2002)). Seen as transactional information, the vernacular culture is integrated in the strategy solution offering to present challenges, irrespective of its connection to turmoil triggering events. Seen at large, despite the intended strategy to quiet social unrest, the uses of vernacular contribute to the deepening of insecurity and fear, thus contributing to the intensification of the polycritic landscape.
Dr. Adrian Stoicescu is an Associate Professor of Ethnology at the University of Bucharest. He specialises in Digital Anthropology, researching among others, forms of digital ethnonationalism, conspiracies, and, more recently, generative AI artefact. He teaches literary folklore and cultural and digital anthropology.
Anyone interested is welcome to participate
Supported by research project EKM 8-2/20/3
The Walter Anderson Lecture 2025
The Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore presents the Walter Anderson Lecture 2025: "Containment Failures: Supernatural Visitations, Folk Performance, and Europeans on the Edge in Mérimée's Ethnographic Fictions".
Guest lecturer: Prof. Dorothy Noyes (The Ohio State University)
Date: Monday September 22nd.
Time: 18:00
Place: Ülikooli 16, 216
Abstract:
What is it to be European? The tension between authenticity, modernity, and cosmopolitanism is at the core of both historic and contemporary European dilemmas of self-definition. It is nicely captured in the title and mission of Tartu's own Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore. It is, indeed, a tension more easily acknowledged at Europe's periphery than in its core, as much recent theory from southern and eastern European scholars points out. But one writer from the core was able to recognize, as early as the 1830s, the centrality of the periphery, and of folklore, to the formation of the modern European self. In this lecture, I examine this self-formation in the short fiction of Prosper Mérimée, a libertine intellectual who forged Balkan folksongs in his youth and created the French heritage bureaucracy in his maturity. He is best known for four tales (“La Vénus d’Ille,” 1837; Colomba, 1840; “Carmen,” 1847; “Lokis,” 1868) in which a fussy metropolitan folklorist on a field excursion to a frontier region is made witness to a violent, supernaturally tinged encounter between an earnest provincial man seeking to join the modern world and a shapeshifting woman seeking to exploit it. Each tale is carefully grounded in linguistic and cultural realia, and each is set in a region that evoked specific French political anxieties in the middle of the 19th century: Catalonia, Corsica, Andalusia, and Lithuanian Samogitia. Each region, although distanced in metropolitan discourse by a rhetoric of archaism and backwardness, was in fact a space of contagion that threatened to destabilize France’s precarious equilibrium and reopen the nation-state to liberal or imperial futures. Despite that suspicious French perspective, the flexible strategies of provincial actors, as elucidated by Mérimée, offer insight into current ambivalences over European belonging. More immediately, they illuminate ongoing but productive tensions in the practice of European folkloristics as it has been shaped from the periphery - by such multilingual, migratory characters as Walter Anderson and his current heirs in Tartu.
Dorothy Noyes (PhD, Folklore and Folklife, University of Pennsylvania) is University Distinguished Scholar, Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of English, Professor of Comparative Studies, and Director of the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at the Ohio State University. She studies the traditional public sphere in Europe, the careers of policy concepts, and performance and ritual in international relations. Among her books are Fire in the Plaça: Catalan Festival Politics After Franco (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Humble Theory: Folklore’s Grasp on Social Life (Indiana University Press, 2016); and Sustaining Interdisciplinary Collaboration: A Guide for the Academy (coauthored with Regina Bendix and Kilian Bizer; University of Illinois Press, 2017). Exemplarity in Global Politics, coedited with Tobias Wille, will appear in November 2025 from Bristol University Press. She is a past President of the American Folklore Society, and was awarded a doctorate honoris causa by the University of Tartu in 2018.
