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!
The Ritual Year Seasonal Webinar #16 Summer 2025: flower festivals in the Philippines and Japan
The next seasonal webinar, #16, will take place on Monday, 4th of August 2025, 14.00 Tallinn.
Click here to connect and join the webinar via Teams.
The meeting is the first one of a new mini-series dedicated to the various continents.
This week we will start with Southeastern and Eastern Asia.
Our two speakers will be presenting on flower festivals in the Philippines and Japan:
1. Levy Achanaz-Labor, Flores de Mayo and heritage conservation.
2. Archna, The Chrysanthemum flower festival and memory making in a Shinto shrine
Information sent by Irina Stahl, Co-Chair, The Ritual Year Working Group (SIEF)
15th seasonal webinar of SIEF Working Group "The Ritual Year"
In July 14, the 15th International webinar titled "An Examination of Ritual Space took place", dedicated to Terry A. Gunnell.
Following the SIEF Congress of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore in Aberdeen, it was a pleasure to hold the webinar of the Ritual Year Working Group on July 14, 2025.
Giants in the study of folklore and mythology presented to an audience of over forty listeners.
Program included:
Emily Lyle (University of Edinburgh, School of Celtic and Scottish Studies): Boys' Chants at Oidhche Challainn (New Year’s Eve) on Berneray in the Outer Hebride
Louise S. Milne (University of Edinburgh & Edinburgh Napier University): The Incubus, The Elves and the Fallen Angels: Nature-Spirits and Nightmare
Terry A. Gunnell (University of Iceland): Masks and Space
An open forum followed, featuring questions and recollections. The session was moderated by Irina Sedakova, with technical support by Maris Kuperjanov.
The working group has been active for over twenty years. In the new period, the Ritual Year activities are led by Mare Kõiva (Estonia, President), Irina Stahl (Romania, Vice-President), Athanasios Barmpalexis (Greece), Jenny Butler (Ireland), Lina Gergova (Bulgaria), Jack Santino (USA), Maris Kuperjanov (Estonia), Jurij Fikfak (Slovenia), Tuting Hernandez (Philippines).
Webinars and online outputs are organized and prepared by the Department of Folkloristics at the Estonian Literary Museum.
In memoriam. Ekaterina Anastasova 1962–2025
Dr. Ekaterina Anastasova (1962–2025) was a distinguished ethnologist and folklorist whose work forged meaningful connections between the Balkans and the Baltics.
Her research interests ranged from migration and identity to ritual and oral tradition, always approached with intellectual depth and human sensitivity. She was a dedicated lecturer at Sofia University and a longtime researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She headed key departments, mentored dozens of students, and led research teams with clarity, humor, and care. Many consider her guidance the foundation of a scholarly school in its own right. Studies and editor of the Yearbook of Balkan and Baltic Studies she leaves behind a lasting legacy.
Her voice, presence, and kindness will be profoundly missed.
The 95th issue of Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore is available
The April 2025 issue of Folklore (Folklore 95) presents a diversity of approaches to the study of world cultures, from customs related to birth and weddings to factors impinging on the teaching and performance of traditional music; classification of proverbs in dictionaries; diasporic rituals welcoming the spring; and the mythology of waterwomen.
Of particular interest is Inna Lisniak and Tetiana Cherneta’s article on the historical development of Ukrainian folk dumy, late-stage heroic epics dating back to the 15th-17th centuries. The article also focuses carriers of the tradition, kobzar-playing brotherhoods that performed, preserved and transmitted the epics prior to the 20th century. Recent revivals of the kobzar tsekh in the late 1960s and early 1970s have seen to the transmission of the dumy traditions to the younger generation in the 1980s and beyond. The article discusses the implications of the current performance practices of the kobzars. The cover photo of this issue of Folklore depicts Ukrainian kobzars in the early 20th century.
Louise S. Milne’s article addresses the rich and variegated mythological and folkloric material on waterwomen – e.g river-spirits, seawomen, swan-maidens and Sirens with a focus on visual representations across cultures and eras. With a particular focus on the Sirens, she articulates connections between the Siren figura and a western discourse of desire. Lauren Sébastien Fournier and Lia Giancristofaro’s article on the Slavic (Balkan) historic migrations to the Abruzzi focuses on the cultural dissemination of two rituals brought by the Slavic settlers, the Verge Giorgio (Green George) rites marking the spring and the Orthodox cult of the Madonna Odigitria, which is of Byzantine descent. Matej Meterc’s article is devoted to distinguishing between proverbs and sayings according to Joseph Mlacek’s definition, the criteria of which are used to classify paremiological expressions in two Slovenian dictionaries.
The current issue contains two complementary examinations of Kazakh wedding traditions, both based on written sources and fieldwork. Tattigul Kartaeva and Saltanat Ashimova consider the blending of ancestral and Islamic rituals in the Kazakh traditional wedding, with a detailed account of the „wedding water“ (Neke Sui). Aktoty Mukhan, Kenzhekan Matyzhanov, Zhanna Bugybayeva and Akedil Toishanuly focused on a broader range of Kazakh wedding rituals and analyzed current problems of their transformation.
Emine Atmaca, Reshide Gözdaş and Atila Kartal analyse birth rituals among Karaite Turks drawing upon fieldwork with Karaite source persons in Lithuania. The focus of He Cao, Qian Xu and Yang Li’s article is the enhancing influence of integrating teaching of traditional Chinese music into music education at middle schools. Pinqi Zhang and Jin Gao choose Chinese national motifs in the folk song „ Mo LI Hua“ in its ramifying influences in modern Chinese music.
The issue is concluded by Vadim Nikolenko’s analysis of food security/insecurity issues in recent Ukrainian society along with culinary adaptations.
News in Brief includes an hommage to Irina Sedakova on the occasion of her 70th jubilee and an account of the Nordic and Baltic Digital Humanities Conference in March 2025.
Tiina Ann Kirss, editor and translator
Preservation of Folklore in Modern Archives: Field Research and Documentation Issues in the Context of European Practices
Friday, April 25, 2025, 09:15 – 15:00 (Tallinn time), an online seminar Preservation of Folklore in Modern Archives: Field Research and Documentation Issues in the Context of European Practices
Estonian Folklore Archives, Estonian Literary Museum, Tartu, Estonia
Departments of Ukrainian and Foreign Folkloristics, of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, of Archival Scientific Funds of Manuscripts and Audio-Recordings, and Ukrainian Ethnological Center of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the NAS of Ukraine
Department of Folklore Studies, Educational and Scientific Institute of Philology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine
A collaborative online seminar, organised in conjunction with Estonian and Ukrainian research institutions, will focus on the preservation of folklore in modern archives. The role of archival sources – and the current state of their preservation, research, and processing – is of paramount importance for cultural identification, understanding the past, and interpreting it in the present, as well for building and sustaining a shared national heritage. The issue of preserving archival materials has become particularly urgent in Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. The purpose of this seminar is to discuss the problems and strategies related to safeguarding archival heritage, especially folklore sources, by Ukrainian researchers during wartime. The seminar will also explore the newly discovered or little-known materials in the archival collections of participating institutions, shedding light on cultural ties between Estonia and Ukraine, which are under-researched and largely unknown to the wider public. In addition, the seminar will serve as a platform for sharing information between Estonian and Ukrainian colleagues on best practices of archival preservation, field research, documentation, and modern digital processing. The speakers of the proposed webinar will be researchers from the above-mentioned institutions. The seminar forms part of a collaborative initiative between the Estonian Literary Museum and the M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the NAS of Ukraine, launched in 2024.
We warmly invite you to follow this online seminar.
The working language of the seminar will be English
Contact address: inna.lisniak@folklore.ee
Doctoral defence: Lona Päll "Bridging the disconnections: an ecosemiotic approach to place-lore in environmental conflict communication"
On 31 March at 10:15 in Senate Hall (Ülikooli 18-204) Lona Päll will defend her doctoral thesis "Bridging the disconnections: an ecosemiotic approach to place-lore in environmental conflict communication" for obtaining the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (in Semiotics and Culture Studies).
Supervisors:
Professor Timo Maran, University of Tartu
Lecturer Ergo-Hart Västrik, University of Tartu
Opponents:
Professor Tema Milstein, University of New South Wales (Australia)
Associate Professor Renata Sõukand, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia (Italy)
The dissertation analyses the role of place-lore in environmental conflicts, drawing on recent case studies from Estonia on disputes over sacred natural sites, forestry management, and protecting trees in urban spaces.
Place-lore expresses semiotic engagement with specific environments and diverse forms of ecological knowledge. These kinds of contextual and local narratives are often rooted in interpretations of environmental meanings, such as ecological conditions, temporal changes, etc. and as such, are complementary to the environment they represent. At the same time, place-lore represents identities, knowledge, and ideological perspectives related to cultural heritage and the environment, often playing a role in environmental debates. The semiotic potential of place-lore is inherently ambivalent: it can escalate conflicts by emphasizing opposing perspectives or, conversely, help ground them by integrating ecological and cultural knowledge to foster diverse environmental engagement.
The dissertation critically investigates how place-lore has been used in conflicts and how the characteristics of conflict communication and new presentation contexts (public discussions, protests, legal disputes, and media coverage) influence these stories. In conflict communication, the connections between place-lore and the specific environment it represents tend to be ignored and as a result, the multivocality and environmental meanings originally embedded in the stories are often suppressed. Place-lore is frequently used selectively to create opposition and escalate conflict, which can have tangible ecological consequences.
To respond to these challenges, the dissertation introduces strategies for reintroducing into conflict disputes the multivocality and important ecological knowledge embedded in place-lore for the purpose of making the debates more productive and inclusive. To contribute to the scholarly and practical discourse, the thesis presents a new theoretical framework for the study of place-lore, develops ecosemiotic models, and proposes practical solutions for managing environmental conflicts. In doing so, it lays the groundwork for further research on the role of local, contextual narratives in addressing environmental crises and navigating urgently needed changes in the context of environmental crisis.
Defence can be also followed in Zoom (meeting ID: 962 3899 0293, passcode: 018742).
Meeting of Academic Folklore Society
Meeting of Academic Folklore Society
27th of February at 4:15 p.m in Estonian Literary Museum (Vanemuise 42, Tartu).
Program:
1) Piret Paal: Meditsiiniantroploogiline ja lingvistiline uuring elu lõpu ja surmaga seotud teadmiste tõstmiseks ehk milleks ARS MORIENDI? (in Estonian)
2) Daniel Sävborg speaks about his book ‘Events from the Un-History of Sweden: A Lost Age(Händelser ur Sveriges ohistoria. En försvunnen tid) (in English)
More information about the presentations
Everybody is welcome to join!
The new issue of the Folklore: An electronic Journal of Folklore
We are pleased to announce that the new issue of the Folklore: An electronic Journal of Folklore (No. 94) is available online.
The special issue gathers research articles that are based and elaborate on the presentations given at the conference under the theme “Voice, Connection and Message in Traditional Singing”.
Jelena Jovanovič explores the transcendable ritual function in Serbian traditional songs employed in current singing practices. The article documents an experiment intended to arrange a performance of a selection of multipart repertoires of various peoples in Europe, which was unfortunately altered by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown conditions.
Austė Nakienė and Rūta Žarskienė have studied the singing practice and the preferred traditional repertoires in the first-generation diaspora communities of Lithuanians in the United States, which were recorded by Jonas Balys, a seminal folklorist of the time. This historiographical review traces the documentation of traditional songs in which the image of the homeland left behind connects to memories of the practice of singing traditional songs.
Janika Oras examines the complexities of a colonial subject position by introducing a talented professional stage performer of folklore from the mid-twentieth-century Estonia, Laine Mesikäpp, who practiced traditional singing styles and repertoires. The article focuses on her creative voice and messages, which were compromising, censored, and self-censored, but also resistant, constantly testing the limits.
Savannah-Rivka Powell investigates the encoded Ainu identity and its bonds to the transnational Indigeneity movement, which the Ainu folk music revival promotes. The analysis traces the fusion of historical sources with global popular music styles, which creates a positive hybridity that carries the potential to build connections among the modern urban Ainu.
Liina Saarlo highlights the role of an individual, be it a singer as a performer or the counterpart represented by a documenting folklore collector. The author questions the latter’s aesthetic judgements on the performative qualities as well as the overall scarcity of meta-data concerning the performance context.
Hanna Karhu builds her critical study on the usage of archival materials when presenting Finnish rhymed folk songs that have fed into literary works, which became particularly popular in early-twentieth-century theatrical performances. She illuminates the process of national identity construction in Finland where creative writers of the new literary culture elaborated traditional songs into modern poetry through selection and recontextualisation.
Kati Kallio, Mari Väina, Maciej Janicki, and Eetu Mäkelä introduce explorations of the similarities detectable between texts found in the Estonian language ERAB corpus and Karelian-Ingrian-Finnish language SKVR and JR corpora. Based on their research on various levels – song types, verse types, motifs, and formulae – the authors conclude that there is no single computational method or toolbox suitable for tracking all the aspects of similarities and variabilities.
Olha Petrovych, Inna Zavalniuk, and Valentyna Bohatko study in their analysis the semantic usage of vocative expressions to address or invoke someone, and to serve as guides for introducing substantive and emotional elements, distinguishable in the folk song corpus from the Podillia region in Ukraine.
Taive Särg and Kaarel Veskis address the concepts denoting singer or singing, which have been comparatively extracted from an archival corpus of Estonian media texts from the 1890s, and from the corpus of song lyrics / poetic texts at the Estonian Folklore Archives. The results highlight the verbal quality of the vernacular concept in traditional poetry, while also demonstrating the potential of corpus linguistics.
Folklore: EJF is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal published since 1996, and the current issue is available online.
Tartu Nefa invites to their traditional Ancestors' Evening
Tartu Nefa invites all members, alums, lecturers and Nefa friends to our traditional Ancestors' Evening, where each year we honor a different Estonian folklorist or ethnologist who has made a significant contribution to the development of cultural studies.
This year, we will focus on the life’s work of Gustav Ränk, the first professor of ethnology at the University of Tartu.
New members will also have the opportunity to take their oath.
We kindly ask everyone to bring food and drinks to share at the festive table and to confirm your participation by answering a small survey: link
We hope to see you soon!
The conference "The Symbiosis of Singing, Playing and Dancing in Traditional Music", November 25–27, 2024
We are delighted to announce the 14th scientific conference on traditional singing, which takes place on November 25–27, 2024 at the Estonian Literary Museum in Tartu.
The conference will focus on exploring the relationship between traditional singing, instrumental music, and dance.
Various traditional singing styles are related to instrumental music. Particularly when songs were intended for entertainment, they often had meters and melodies appropriate for dancing and were performed with musical accompaniment. Many folk musicians were both skilled singers and instrumentalists.
Modern arrangements tend to add instrumental accompaniment to traditional a capella songs to make them more appealing. Performing arts are closely interlinked with contemporary
community practices of cultural heritage, as well as in the representation of local heritage outside the community.
Please find the programme of the conference here.
The conference is organized by the Estonian Folklore Archives of the Estonian Literary Museum.
The conference is supported by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (research projects PRG1288 and EKM 8-2/20/3, and TK215 Centre of Excellence EstonianRoots) and the Estonian Research Council (MOB3JD1218).
