The 6th Folklore Fellows’ Summer School at Lammi

(FFN 23, April 2002: 7-12)

The sixth FFSS course will be held at the biological research station of Helsinki University at Lammi on 15–24 July 2002. The title, “Memory, Recollection and Creativity”, focuses on the memory processes and creative activity of folklore and verbal tradition. The course will, however, also continue to discuss the place of folklore in the modern globalising world. These themes will be approached via five sub-themes giving structure to the course.

The role of folklore and oral tradition in dialogues between local and global will be examined in the first section of the course. The second section entitled “The Ethics and Politics of Heritage”, will continue the discussions on ethics begun at the FFSS in Turku in 1999 and on the heritage politics introduced by the Scandinavian research network concentrating on the relationship between heritage building and cultural diversity. Aspects of creativity in epic singing and mythical epics are among the classical topics of folkloristics and will be addressed in the third section. Defining “We” in the contemporary world is a question that ties in closely with the first two themes but has relevance in discussions of collective memory, too. The last section “Memory and Narrated History” will examine narrating and the reproduction of folklore on the level of both individuals and their emotions and of societies and cultures.

The daily programme for the course will consist of lectures and group discussions on themes presented by participants. This time the course will stress discussion rather more than, perhaps, in previous years and all participants will have a chance to raise themes of their own for general discussion.

Although the funding policy of Finnish, Scandinavian and European research training is now confined to a narrower geographical area than before, the 2002 Summer School will be widely international. The teachers and participants represent different countries and continents; there will be participants from such countries as Argentina, China, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, India, Iceland, Kenya, Lithuania, New Zealand, Sweden and the United States. The teachers are well known in folkloristics and cultural anthropology circles and represent different research traditions. Details of the teachers and participants are given with the programme in this volume.

The Lammi research station proved to be a pleasant FFSS venue in 1997. It is near a village, surrounded by typical Finnish landscape with fields, forests and lakes and is furnished with all the modern equipment needed for fieldwork and small seminars. There are both indoor and lakeside saunas, boats for those wishing to spend their free time on the lake, and plenty of forest paths to explore.

I warmly welcome all participants and teachers to Lammi! I am sure that we can together create an unforgettable Summer School rich in intellectual stimulus and new contacts with colleagues.

Folklore Fellows’ Summer School 2002
Programme

15.7. MON
Arrival and registration at the FFSS office. Accommodation and orientation to the Lammi Research Station and to the course programme.

Get-together. All participants on the course will be given an opportunity to briefly introduce themselves. Registration continues after the get-together.

16.7. TUE
Dialogues between Local and Global

Morning
Opening: Anna-Leena Siikala: Ethnic/National Tradition in the Age of Globalisation
Diarmuid Ó Giolláin: Universalism, Particularism and the Identity of Folkloristics

Afternoon
Lauri Harvilahti: Indigenous and Traditional Knowledge in the Context of a “Global” World

17.7. WED
Dialogues between Local and Global (cont.)
Chair: Lauri Harvilahti

Morning
Barbro Klein: History, Museum Politics, and Folklore Scholarship
Presentations by participants:
Suzanne MacAulay: Diaspora by Degree
Jarno Väisänen: Global Processes, Local Arguments
Xiaohui Hu: Protection of Folklore and the Desire for Development

Afternoon
Encounter with local culture. Visit to Lammi Linen Centre.
Excursion to Lammi. A master of traditional home-brewing will demonstrate his skills.

18.7. THU
Ethics and Politics of Heritage
Chair: Margaret Mills

Morning
Barbro Klein: A World of Nations: Folklore, Heritage Politics, and Ethnic Diversity in Four Countries
Stein Mathisen: From Narratives of Noble Savages to Discourses on the Ecological Saami

Afternoon
Pertti Anttonen: How Do We Own History? Heritage Politics and the Concept of Tradition in Perspective
Presentations by participants:
Fernardo Fischman: Narrative Discourse and Museum Displays: Intertextual Relations in the Construction of a Jewish-Argentine Memory
Juratè Semetaitè: Lithuanian Folklore Groups
Johanna Jacobsen: Malerische Reisen, and Oriental Fantasies: An Initial Forray into the Relationship between Folklore and Travel(logues)

19.7. FRI
Ethics and Politics of Heritage (cont.)
Chair: Diarmuid Ó Giolláin

Morning
Lauri Honko: Comparing Ethical Codes in Anthropology and Folklore Research
Margaret Mills: Constructing and Deconstructing the Discourse of Cultural Loss

Afternoon
Presentations by participants:
Valdimar Hafstein: Theorising the Copy/Right: Culture’s Proliferation and Containment
Anastasja Buenok: Folklore and Ethnography of Finnish Ethnic Groups in the Tihvinä Region
Victoria Vlasova: “Holy Places” in Komi Old-Believers Tradition: Folklore, Symbolic Texts and the Text of the Researcher

20.7. SAT
Epics and Creativity
Chair: Anna-Leena Siikala

Morning
Lauri Honko: Aspects of Creativity in Epic Singing: Elias Lönnrot, Anne Vabarna and Gopala Naika
Lauri Harvilahti: Creativity in South-Siberian Mythological Epics

Afternoon
Presentations by participants:
Martin Skrydstup: From Oral Epic to World Literature: A Generational Perspective on the Orality-Literacy Transposition of the Mvet Epic
Niina Hämäläinen: Some Remarks on Textualisation: Elias Lönnrot’s Kullervo Poem
Desmond Kharmawphlang: The Egg Divination Ceremony of the Khasis
Jouni Hyvönen: Idiosyncratic Variation in Narrative Strategies

21.7. SUN
Defining “We” in the Modern World
Chair: Barbro Klein

Morning
Diarmuid Ó Giolláin: Culture for the People and Culture of the People
Stein Mathisen: The Politics of Collecting and Exhibiting Saami Folklore and Culture

Afternoon
Presentations by participants:
Ezekiel Alembi: The Construction of the Abanyole World View on Death through Okhukoma Poetry
Kaarina Koski: The Power of Death in Finnish Folk Belief Tradition
Eeva-Liisa Kinnunen: Narrating Identity through Humour
Merili Metsvahi: Legends and Saint Legends: How they Make Sense of Living

22.7. MON
Memory and Narrated History
Chair: Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj

Morning
Margaret Mills: Family and Personal: Discursive Analysis of Two Life Histories
Jukka Siikala: Marking the Past. Monuments and How They Are Talked about

Afternoon
Presentations by participants:
Pauliina Latvala: Narratives and Cultural Meanings: the Family History in Finland
Taisto Raudalainen: Title to be announced later
Pasi Enges: Experience, Narrative, and Interpretation. Supernatural Experiences in River Saami Folklore
Elena Dubrovskaja: Title to be announced later

Hypermedia presentation (Jukka Saarinen) and discussion on cultural representation

23.7. TUE
Memory and Narrated History (cont.)
Chair: Jukka Siikala

Morning
Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj: Memory, Narratives and Emotions
Anna-Leena Siikala: History in the Landscape

Afternoon
Presentations by participants:
Merrill Kaplan: Nornagestr and the Burden of Memory
Jonathan Roper: Investigating English Verbal Charms
Annamari Iranto: Folk Ideas on Law and Justice – Research Based on Folklore Texts
Blanka Henrikson: Collecting Memories. Swedish and Finland-Swedish Friendship Verse and Memory Albums from Two Centuries – Form, Function and Change

24.7. WED
Morning
General Discussion of the FF Summer School 2002. Conclusion.
Chair: Anna-Leena Siikala

Afternoon
Departure

Participants

Ezekiel Alembi is Lecturer in the Literature Department, Kenyatta University, Kenya. His research interests include Abanyole funeral poetry, discourses on African art, children’s oral poetry and the reconstruction of African history using oral sources.

Anastasja Buenok is Researcher in the Department of Ethnology, the European University in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her main interests include children’s calendar rites and folklore of the Vepsian and Karelian people in Tihvinä.

Elena Dubrovskaja is Senior Researcher interested in the history of Karelia, especially of Petrozavodsk from 1917 to the 1920s.

Pasi Enges is Researcher in the Department of Folklore at the University of Turku. He is currently writing his dissertation on Saami narratives.

Fernando Fischman is Assistant Professor at the University of Buenos Aires. His present research interests include Jewish immigration to Argentina, folk art and folk artists in museums and public culture.

Valdimar Hafstein is a graduate student/teacher at the Reykjavik Academy. His research interests focus on contemporary Icelandic folklore, the cultural and conceptual ramifications of human reproduction in the age of assisted reproductive technologies, Greenlandic legends of early encounters with Norsemen, and an Icelandic folklore encyclopaedia for children.

Niina Hämäläinen is Research Assistant at the Kalevala Institute, Turku, Finland. She is currently preparing her dissertation on the textualisation of the different versions of Elias Lönnrot’s Kullervo poetry.

Kirsi Hänninen is a graduate student in the Department of Folklore at the University of Turku.

Blanka Henriksson is Researcher at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland. Her research interests are in the field of children’s autobiographical books.

Xiaohui Hu is Associate Research Fellow in the Department of Folk Literature, Institute of Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Peking. Her work explores the intercultural dialogue of folkloristic theory and method.

Jouni Hyvönen is a researcher on the project “Ethnopoetics, Processes of Textualisation, and Cultural Dynamics” at the University of Helsinki. He is writing his dissertation on the process of textualising the Kalevala.

Annamari Iranto is a postgraduate student in the Department of Folklore at the University of Joensuu. She is investigating folk ideas on law and justice.

Johanna Jacobsen is a post-graduate student in folklore at the University of Pennsylvania. She is interested in the portrayal of immigrants and ethnic groups in ethnographic and folkloristic literature, and in folklore’s methodology in striking a balance between academic interpretation and what used to be called “emic” interpretation.

Merrill Kaplan is Researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. Her primary interests include traditional ideas about runic writing and runic monuments; theoretical connections between the publishing of folklore and the introduction of dramatic realism in 19th century Norway; Old Norse myth; Norwegian and Icelandic legend and folk belief.

Desmond Kharmawphlang is Senior Lecturer, Centre for Cultural & Creative Studies, NEHU, Shillong, India. His research interests are in the weretiger tradition of the Khasis.

Eeva-Liisa Kinnunen is Researcher at the Institute for Cultural Research in the Department of Folklore at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She is writing her dissertation on gender and humour.

Kaarina Koski is a doctoral student at the Institute for Cultural Research in the Department of Folklore Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her main interests are folk belief and narratives, death, magic, worldviews, and the adoption, representation and various uses of traditional concepts.

Pauliina Latvala is Researcher at the Institute for Cultural Research in the Department of Folklore at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She is participating in the project “Myth, history, society: Ethnic/national traditions in the age of globalisation” led by Academy Professor Anna-Leena Siikala. Her doctoral dissertation is focusing on written life histories/family histories and their linguistic strategies.

Suzanne MacAulay is Visiting Fellow at the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies, Victoria University of Wellington. She is also a Director of Quay School of Art, and a Professor of art history. Her current research interests focus on national identity and the urban revitalisation of the Cook Islands traditions of Tivaevae making: themes of memory, immigration, diaspora, and cultural politics among exiles living in New Zealand.

Merili Metsvahi is a Ph.D. student at the University of Tartu. Her doctoral research concerns the Estonian werewolf tradition.

Taisto Raudalainen is an Estonian researcher and a post-graduate student at the University of Helsinki, Institute for Cultural Research, Department of Folklore Studies. He is currently writing his dissertation on Ingrian life stories.

Jonathan Roper is Researcher at the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition at the University of Sheffield. He is at present concerned with Anglophone verbal charms in England and Newfoundland.

Juratè Semetaitè is a researcher at the Lithuanian Folk Culture Centre. Her research subjects include Lithuanian children’s songs and present-day folklore groups.

Martin Skydstrup is a Ph.D. student in anthropology at Columbia University, New York. He has done fieldwork in Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon. His research investigates the historical trajectories of the Fang oral epic Mvet, the politics and ethics of material culture.

Victoria Vlasova is Researcher at the Institute of Language, Literature and History of the Komi Scientific Centre of the Ural Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Her main areas of interest are folk belief and mythology.

Jarno Väisänen is a post-graduate student in the Department of Finnish and Cultural Studies, Folklore Studies, University of Joensuu. His research concerns the problems of globalisation in the local culture.

Teachers

Pertti J. Anttonen, Ph.D., Docent, Academy Research Fellow, earned his Ph.D. degree in folklore and folklife at the University of Pennsylvania in the USA in 1993. His current research concerns the concepts of modernity and tradition, as well as the relationship between the conceptualisation of folklore and the construction of modernity, history and heritage in the nation-state of Finland. Other research interests include the study of rituals, ethnopoetics, rhetorical analysis, and research methodology and history. He is currently an Academy Research Fellow at the Academy of Finland. He has edited three anthologies within international folkloristic research: Folklore, Heritage Politics, and Ethnic Diversity (2000)Making Europe in Nordic Contexts (1996); and Nordic Frontiers (1993).

Diarmuid Ó Giolláin is Senior Lecturer at the University College, Cork. His main interests include history of folkloristics and ethnology, populism and nationalism, national identity, popular religion, and oral and popular history. His publications include: Locating Irish Folklore. Tradition, Modernity, Identity (2000); “Folklore and ethnology” in Cornelius G. Buttimer et al. (eds), The Heritage of Ireland: Natural, Man-made and Cultural Heritage: Conservation and Interpretation; Business and Administration (2000); “The Pattern” in J. S. Donnelly and Kerby A. Miller (eds), Irish Popular Religion 1650–1850 (1998); “Heroic Biographies in Folklore and Popular Culture” in Gabriel Doherty and Dermot Keogh (eds), Michael Collins and the Making of the Irish State (1998); “The Stagnant Pool and the Stream. New and old symbols of Irish identity” in Ethel Crowley and Jim MacLaughlin (eds), Under the Belly of the Tiger. Class, Race, Identity and Culture in the Global Ireland (1997); “The Boundaries of the People” in Laurier Turgeonet et al. (eds), Transferts culturels et métissages Amérique/Europe XVIe–Xxe siécle / Cultural Transfer, America and Europe: 500 Years of Interculturation (1996).

Lauri Harvilahti is Director of the Institute for Cultural Research, and Professor in the Department of Folklore Studies at the University of Helsinki. He is also leading a project financed by the Academy of Finland: “Ethnopoetics, Processes of Textualisation, and Cultural Dynamics”. Professor Harvilahti has carried out fieldwork over the past twenty years 1982–2002 in the Altai mountains, Mongolia, China, India, Bangladesh, Kenya and Ingria. His theoretical interest lies with the ethnopoetics processes of various peoples, computer folkloristics and questions of globalization and ethnic identity. His publications include scientific monographs, articles and conference papers. Among the latest in English: “Substrates and Strategies: Trends in Ethnocultural Research” in Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj and Ulrika Wolf-Knuts (eds), Pathways. Approaches to the Study and Teaching of Folklore (2001); “Altai Oral Epic” in Oral Tradition 15 (2), (2000); “Variation and Memory” in Lauri Honko (ed.), Thick Corpus, Organic Variation and Textuality in Oral Tradition (2000).

Professor emeritus, Director Lauri Honko founded the Kalevala Institute for comparative research on epics at the University of Turku, Finland in 1998. He was Professor of Folkloristics and Comparative Religion at the University of Turku 1963–96, Director of the Nordic Institute of Folklore, Turku (1972–90) and Academy Professor at the Academy of Finland (1975–78, 1991–96). He has done fieldwork on Tulu oral epics (Karnataka, India 1985, 1989–2002), on Karelian laments in Tver Karelia (Russia, 1958, 1976–78) and on Saami folk beliefs (Finland, Norway, 1967–75, 1986–90). He has authored or edited the following books: (ed.) Thick Corpus, Organic Variation and Textuality in Oral Tradition (2000); (ed.) Textualisation of Oral Epics (2000); (ed. with others) The Epic: Oral and Written (1998); Textualising the Siri Epic (1998); (with others) The Siri Epic as performed by Gopala Naika I–II (1998); (ed.) Epics along the Silk Roads (1996); (with others) The Great Bear (1993); (ed.) The Kalevala and the World’s Epics (1990); (ed. with P. Laaksonen) Trends in Nordic Tradition Research (1983); (ed. with V. Voigt) Genre, Structure and Reproduction in Oral Literature (1980); Geisterglaube in Ingermanland (1962); Krankheitsprojektile (1959).

Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj is Professor of Folkloristics in the Department of Cultural Studies, Turku, Finland. In addition to oral narratives her studies have covered enigmatology, popular dream interpreting and old wedding customs. She has done fieldwork in Finland, among Finns living in Sweden and the old Finnish population around St. Petersburg in Russia. Her publications in English include Riddles. Perspectives on the use, function and change in a folklore genre (2001); Narrative and narrating: variation in Juho Oksanen’s storytelling (1996); Models of expression in the Finnish riddle genre: syntactic, stylistic, semantic and structural investigations (1978).

Barbro Klein is Professor of Ethnology at Stockholm University and one of three directors of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (SCASSS) in Uppsala. She has written extensively on narratives, ritual, material culture, and ethnic diversity in the United States and northern Europe and has also worked on methodological issues in ethnology and folkloristics. Her publications in English include “Folklore” in Paul Baltes and Neil Smeser (eds), The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2001); “More Swedish than in Sweden, More Iranian than in Iran? Folk Culture and World Migrations” in Bosse Sundin (ed.), Upholders of Culture Past and Present (2001); “Anna Birgitta Rooth and Folkloristics in Sweden” in Folklore Fellows Network No. 22 (2001); “A World of Nations: Notes on Internationalism, Ethnic Diversity and Folklore Scholarship in Four Countries” in Ethnologies 23 (2), (2000); “The Moral Content of Tradition: Homecraft, Ethnology, and Swedish Life in the Twentieth Century” in Western Folklore 59 (2000); author of several chapters in Swedish Folk Art, ed. with Mats Widbom (1994); (ed. and intro. with Regina Bendix) Foreigners in Europe: Expressive Culture in Transnational Encounters. Special issue, Journal of Folklore Research 30 (1993); (ed. with Åke Daun and Billy Ehn) To Make the World Safe for Diversity. Towards an Understanding of Multi-Cultural Societies (1992); Legends and Folk Beliefs in a Swedish-American Community: A Study in Folklore and Acculturation (1980).

Stein R. Mathisen is Associate Professor in Culture Studies, Finnmark College. He is currently working on a book on the shifting presentations of Saami ethnicity through different times. His major research interests include folk medicine and folk belief, the role of folk narratives in the constitution of identity and ethnicity, questions of heritage politics and ethnopolitics. He has recently published the following articles in English: “Travels and Narratives: Itinerant Constructions of a Homogeneous Sami Heritage” in Pertti Anttonen et al. (eds), Folklore, Heritage Politics and Ethnic Diversity. A Festschrift for Barbro Klein (2000); “Changing Narratives about Sami Folklore – A Review of Research on Sami Folklore in the Norwegian Area” in Juha Pentikäinen et al. (eds), Sami Folkloristics (2000).

Margaret Mills is Professor and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA. Her textual work has concerned oral narrative performances of various kinds recorded in pre-war and wartime Afghanistan, in Persian language (Dari). Her major themes have included politics and performance, the inter-relations of literary and oral traditions, and gender studies. She has also done fieldwork on material culture topics (food, handicrafts), literacy and education development in Pakistan. She has proposed a project to support the enhancement of Afghan women’s leadership roles and capacities in the reconstruction of Afghan society. Publications include: (co-ed. with Peter Claus and Sarah Diamond) South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia (in preparation); Tale, Voice and Life (working title; in preparation); Repertoire and life-history study of an Afghan woman storyteller before, during and after the Afghan-Soviet war (in press); “The Gender of the Trick” in Asian Folklore Studies 60 (Spring 2002); “One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Short and Medium-Term Prospects for Women in Afghanistan” in SSRC Website publication: www.ssrc.org (2001); “Seven Steps Ahead of the Devil: A Misogynist Proverb in Context” in Maria Vasenkari et al. (eds), Telling, Remembering, Interpreting, Guessing: A Festschrift for Prof. Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj on her 60th Birthday (2001); “Women’s Tricks: Subordination and Subversion in Afghan Folktales” in Lauri Honko (ed.), Thick Corpus, Organic Variation and Textuality in Oral Tradition (2000); Rhetorics and Politics in Afghan Traditional Storytelling (1991); (co-ed. with A. Appadurai and F. Korom) Gender, Genre and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions (1991).

Academy Professor Anna-Leena Siikala from the University of Helsinki, Finland is the Chair of the FFSS Organising Committee. Her research interests are poetry in the Kalevala meter, folk beliefs, mythology, shamanism, oral discourse and tradition processes. She has led several international research projects, and conducted fieldwork among Finno-Ugric peoples in Europe and in Siberia, as well as in Polynesia. She is editor-in-chief of The Encyclopedia of the Uralic Mythologies and Studia Fennica. Her publications in English include: Mythic Images and Shamanism. A perspective on Kalevala Poetry (forthcoming); (ed.) Myth and Mentality: Studies in Folklore and Popular Thought (in print); (ed. with Sinikka Vakimo) Songs Beyond the Kalevala: Transformations of Oral Poetry (1994); (with M. Hoppál) Studies on Shamanism (1992); Interpreting Oral Narrative (1990); The Rite Technique of the Siberian Shaman (1978 [1989]).

Jukka Siikala is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Helsinki. He has done extensive research on Pacific cultures and his research interests range from history of colonialism to modern diasporic cultures. He has analysed Polynesian oral traditions and used mythology, historical narratives and rituals to study collective memory, social collectives and religious movements in Polynesia. His publications include: (ed.) Departures. How societies distribute their people (2001); “Chief and impossible states” in Communal/Plural: Journal of transnational & crosscultural studies 9 (1) (2001); “This is my beautiful line of chiefs: Social life and how it is talked about” in Suomen Antropologi 25 (1) (2000); “Writings between cultures” in Postcolonialism and cultural resistance (1999); “The Elder and the Younger – Foreign and Autochtonous. Origin and Hierarchy in the Cook Islands” in J. J. Fox and C. Sather (eds), Origin, Ancestry and Alliance (1995); Akatokamanava. Myth, History and Society in the Southern Cook Islands (1991); (ed.) Culture and History in the Pacific (1990); Cult and Conflict in Tropical Polynesia. A Study of Traditional Religion, Christianity and Nativistic Movements (1982); (ed.) Oceanic Studies. Essays in Honour of Aarne A. Koskinen (1982).

Organising Committee of the FFSS

Anna-Leena Siikala, University of Helsinki (Chair)
Lauri Honko, University of Turku (Vice Chair)
Lauri Harvilahti, University of Helsinki (Secretary General)
Pauliina Latvala, University of Helsinki (Course Secretary)
Satu Apo, University of Helsinki
Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj, University of Turku
Pekka Laaksonen, Finnish Literature Society
Timo Leisiö, University of Tampere
Ulrika Wolf-Knuts, Åbo Akademi University

Organising institutions of the FFSS

Department of Folklore Studies, University of Helsinki
Department of Cultural Studies, University of Turku
Department of Folklore Studies, University of Joensuu
Department of Folklore, Åbo Akademi University
Folklore Fellows of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters
Kalevala Institute, University of Turku
Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki

Staff

Pauliina Latvala, Course Secretary, Researcher, University of Helsinki
Maria Vasenkari, Editorial Secretary, Kalevala Institute
Saara Paatero, B.A., University of Helsinki
Marja-Leea Hattuniemi, Translator, University of Helsinki
Pirkko Hämäläinen, Project Assistant, University of Helsinki