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This paper will discuss the ecosystem of folklore invented by research history. By concentrating on folklore scholars in Finland it will shed light on ideological concepts and emphasis of oral lyric songs in terms of articulation of nature and female.

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This paper will discuss the ecosystem of folklore invented by research history. By concentrating on folklore scholars in Finland it will shed light on ideological concepts and emphasis of oral lyric songs in terms of articulation of nature and female. Finnish-Karelian folk lyric has been defined as a female poetry of sorrow and loneliness and further, this perception has created one of the mental landscapes of ‘Finnishness’. Folk poetry collector, editor, Elias Lönnrot framed the Kanteletar, an oral-literary publication of folk lyric poetry (1840), by a motto song, the song of lonely who identifies herself with birds. The choice illustrates not only poetical but ideological ambitions in textualizing oral songs into written form. Furthermore, attempts to conceptualize oral singers as “bird of elegia” or “forest rose of Karelia” by later scholars have together designated an interpretative frame, an imagined ecosystem of the folk lyric poetry. Equivalent to nature, the forest has been considered a romantic, gendered and mysterious place for the singer's longing. The so-called “forest romance” repeated in folklore studies has engendered an articulation of lyric poetry as poetry of nature and female fragility to the readers. Taking the ecofeminist perspective as a theoretical frame, the paper seeks to disentangle the gendered and ideological bias of folk lyric. It will ask to what extent lyric poetry has been invented by a certain environment of vulnerability and desire of nature and of female in folklore studies and what kind of impacts it has had on the knowledge of folklore.

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Sámi feminists and women artists are working to dismantle colonial structures of power by reimagining a world grounded in Indigenous Sámi practices that include the role of gender, co-productive humans/non-human relations in the remains of patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism.

Paper long abstract

This paper is grounded in the belief that the violence of the state -- the violence of colonialism, the violence of extractive resource industries, and violence against women -- is fundamentally connected to the logic of the patriarchal imperatives that have led us to the impending catastrophe of the “Anthropocene.”

Within Indigenous Studies, Environmental Humanities, and (Eco-)Feminism, this has led to the expansion of knowledge practices that acknowledge complex, extensive, and non-androcentric entanglements. Such different ways of knowing seek to dissolve the binary logic of nature/culture; human/non-human; secular/non-secular; and nature/supernature (cosmological) that typifies the classical humanist paradigm and replace it with relational, interconnected, and responsible ways of knowing, being, and doing beyond colonial world-making practices.

Sámi feminists have taken their activism to the public sphere in the realms of art, literature, and performance, drawing no artificial boundaries between their practice and their ideological activism, to counter what Liisa-Ravna Finbog (2023) has called "epistemicide" in the wake of settler colonialism and the expansion of extractive resources. Sámi female artists are moving away from the male-centered sensibility that typified earlier Sámi post-colonial critiques and are returning to a female-centered sensibility and an emphasis on the “mothers” of Sámi tradition, and a Sámi epistemology of aesthetics and muitalusat [stories] centered within a system of relations that are expressed as bonds of kinship. This indigenous feminist epistemology permeates contemporary art and reflects what Western thought would term a post-humanist sensibility, focusing on female solidarity and empowerment, and an alternative, female-centric perspective.

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In King’s Cinderella (1924), the heroine learns wax-relief textile design (batik) to make her own gown, using materials from home and garden. Drawing on Jane Bennett’s notion of “vibrant matter,” I explore this depiction of non-human animals and plantlife as active collaborators in the tale’s magic.

Paper long abstract

In How Cinderella Was Able To Go To the Ball (1924), Scottish illustrator and designer Jessie Marion King has a godmother teach Cinderella skills of wax-relief textile design, using materials from home and garden, so she can upcycle an existing dress into a gown grand enough for entrance to a royal ball.

I will consider the ways King’s recrafting of the Cinderella story resonate with current conceptions of ecofeminist aesthetics and material feminism, specifically what Jane Bennett calls “vibrant matter” (2010). Bennett seeks to “dissipate the onto-theological binaries of life/matter, human/animal, will/determination, and organic/inorganic” (x) – challenges to binary thinking that resonate with King’s retelling of ATU 510A in word and picture. More specifically, Bennett offers a model for thinking about the vitality of matter (as opposed to “dead or thoroughly instrumentalized matter”), attuned to “a fuller range of the nonhuman powers circulating around and within human bodies” (ix). Beehives and flowering plants (not human figures) serve as visual icons for King’s story, depicted on the front and back covers. Bees surround Cinderella in illustrations of the gown-making processes, which we may take as visual signs of their status as “donor” figures in this version of the tale, but King imagines relations between humans, non-human animals, and plantlife in more dynamic and reciprocal terms than those encoded in Propp’s morphology. King highlights the “magic” of textile arts and dressmaking, as aesthetically and socially transformative practices, enacted through processes of collaboration between human actors and the vibrant matter of their environment.

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This paper traces the burning woman across biblical, classical, Norse, and early modern texts. While men survive fire sanctified, women are consumed—yet their ashes nourish memory. From Eve to witches, pyres to hearthfires, these flames form an ecofeminist mythology of trauma, renewal, and survival.

Paper long abstract

This paper traces the persistent motif of the “burning woman” across biblical, classical, Old Norse, and early modern traditions, reframing flames not only as instruments of patriarchal punishment but also as sources of feminist regeneration. While male figures in scripture and epic emerge from fire sanctified—Aeneas from Troy, Daniel’s companions from the furnace—female figures are consumed. Yet their ashes feed cultural memory, becoming fertile ground for reimagined narratives.

Beginning with Eve and Pandora, I examine how women cast as originators of suffering are bound by fire: the flaming sword at Eden’s gate, the divine punishment inherent in Pandora’s jar. In Old Norse heroic literature, Guðrún’s silence gives way to incendiary agency, her hall-burning vengeance mirroring wildfire’s dual devastation and renewal. Classical queens such as Dido and Brynhild claim their pyres, transforming betrayal into spectacle, flames that annihilate yet immortalize. By contrast, the witch trials of early modern Europe mark the transition to forced flames, where women were executed for their ecological knowledges—midwifery, herb-lore, weather-working—perceived as dangerous “natural magics.”

Finally, I turn to the hearthfire as counterpoint: the quiet, sustaining flame that preserved community and continuity, tended most often by women. Where the pyre consumes, the hearth nourishes. Together, these narratives invite us to reconsider fire as both trauma and transformation. Burning women are not extinguished victims but embers—soil for future growth, flames that continue to shape identity, resistance, and renewal.

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This paper explores how witchcraft trials and histories of madness reframed women’s ecological knowledge as uncanny or abject. An ecofeminist lens reveals how such narratives suppressed female agency and gendered “nature” as threat.

Paper long abstract

Witchcraft trials and the history of madness represent two intertwined systems through which women’s engagements with nature were delegitimized and controlled. Both figures—the witch and the madwoman—were constructed at the border of the human and the non-human, embodying anxieties over porous boundaries: the uncanny neighbor who turns strange, and the abject body whose fluids, words, or gestures resist containment. Drawing on Freud’s notion of the unheimlich and Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject, this paper explores how women’s ecological and embodied knowledge was reframed as either supernatural (witchcraft) or pathological (madness).

Trial records and medical case histories both functioned as narrative spaces where female voices were disqualified: the herbal healers' remedies became evidence of a demonic pact, while the women’s testimony of visions or bodily affliction was reinterpreted as delusion or hysteria. In both domains, women’s ties to the natural world—through fertility, reproduction, or wilderness—were marked as dangerous, excessive, or contaminating.

By examining witchcraft and madness together, I argue that the processes of accusation, trial, and diagnosis reveal a continuous cultural pattern: the transformation of women’s ecological agency into sites of horror, disorder, and exclusion. An ecofeminist re-reading of these marginalized narratives not only reclaims suppressed knowledge but also destabilizes nature as a gendered metaphor of irrationality and threat.

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This paper will examine a number of folk narratives giving rise to a series of questions and answers that explain why a woman was banished from society into the natural realm. Also, the role of the supernatural in creating alternative realities and perceptions of the world will be explored.

Paper long abstract

This paper will examine a number of folk narratives giving rise to a series of questions and answers that explain why a woman was banished from society into the natural realm. An (eco)feminist lens may allow us to reclaim the role such tales may have had on their impact and on related perceptions. The binary position of the female maintaining either a pious or promiscuous image within the community lacks a more nuanced understanding of relationships of power. This is particularly relevant in relation to the tension with organised religion. The sea and the darkness of night loom large as the natural settings of many of these tales and the female engagement with the sea complicates the motherly image of the woman with water. Irish narratives encountering women whose existence was now fully in the natural world may have functioned in order to give women a sense of strength and survival if they too were fearful of being banished due to their own behaviours. This might well have occurred in direct opposition to the message the church would have taken from such tellings. Such tales may have had a strong effect on the communities that engaged and shared them. A close examination of the figure of Petticoat Loose along with legends referred to as ‘The knife against the wave’, reveals ways in which the role of the supernatural in creating alternative realities and perceptions of the world that were manifested in vernacular traditions.

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In 19th-century Icelandic folklore, mothers of disabled children are often blamed for their children's impairments and seen as odd for protecting them. The paper examines the adversity these mothers face, their responsibilities, care, and resilience amid social, natural, and supernatural challenges.

Paper long abstract

In Icelandic folklore from the 19th century, legends and beliefs, the role of mothers of disabled children is particularly interesting. The cause of the children’s differences is believed to be supernatural, and their impairments are literally taken as a mark by the supernatural. Mothers are encouraged to follow the rules of the supernatural to prevent disabilities. Still, they are scolded for failing to do so or for being ineffective, regardless of the measures they have taken. They are therefore blamed for their children’s impairments and are considered odd for wanting to protect them. According to the folklore, these mothers are also affected by this mark, not physically, but socially. In this paper, I aim to decode the adversity faced by mothers of disabled children in Icelandic folklore due to lore and societal expectations; to reveal hidden attitudes and prejudices they may have encountered because of their children’s supernaturally marked status. At the same time, I aim to shed light on their actions in legends and beliefs, which often demonstrate responsibility, care, and strength in the face of conflicting influences from social, natural, and supernatural forces. To achieve this, I use an interdisciplinary approach that combines folkloristics and disability studies theories from the standpoint of a disabled folklorist, drawing on historical context and a careful reading of the material at hand.

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Taking the river protection campaign as depicted in “River Sisters” (2021) as its point of departure, the paper explores the human-river relationship in the documentary econarrative (Stibbe 2024) through the lens of Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology (Neimanis 2017).

Paper long abstract

As one of the most undervalued and misunderstood resources on our planet, rivers need to be put at the heart of human and more-than-human development and wellbeing. The same holds true for the Vistula River in Poland. Often trapped in the realm of technical data or doom-and-gloom images, the river requires that compelling stories be told to make it personal, as well as to simplify its complex nature. The aim of this paper is to explore the human-river relationship in “River Sisters” (2021), a documentary directed by Cecylia Malik as part the River Sisters campaign to raise social awareness and to aid in the process of reconnecting to the river at multiple levels, from the cognitive one, through emotional, all the way to the experiential one. The analysis will be based on Stibbe (2024)’s approach to econarrative analysis with its linguistic and narratological tools to look into the nature of the river, and the feminine dimension of the river protection campaign, as well as socio-political barriers to regenerative river stewardship. The paper will also revisit certain binaries, such as nature-culture and local-global, as well as explore the human-river relationship as depicted in the documentary through the lens of Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology (Neimanis 2017) – all with the overriding goal to facilitate an ongoing search for new narratives to live by (Stibbe 2024).

Keywords: river, sisterhood, water, human, posthuman, more-than-human, econarrative, hydrofeminism

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Looking at depictions of water spirits in Romanian folklore, the paper engages with cultural narratives of water and feminine agencies prescribed to operate on the “nurturing yet dangerous” binary.

Paper long abstract

"Știma Apei", "Femeia Gârlei", "Vâlvă de Apă" - folk mythic imaginary in customary rural Romania portrays a clear prevalence of women as water spirits. Simultaneously guardians, seductresses, monsters, and mothers, they are bound to be representations of fertility and life-giving qualities, while feared as destructive and vengeful. Easy-tempered, their rage turns to floods or draughts and thus control must be exerted.

The entanglement of water and the feminine operates on the “nurturing yet dangerous” duality perceived to emerge from both. Already essential work has been done by hydrofeminist theories as well as other studies (Sparano: 2024, Andaya: 2016, Strang: 2014, Siegel: 2008) to show this is but one of many cultural narratives where women and nature alike have been resized, mystified and demonized, with significant impact.

With water as top priority (UN) on the climate agenda today and women suffering most globally from ecosystem degradation, I propose a reframing of these aquatic archetypes as contemporary embodiments of resistance against patriarchal gaze and anthropocentric exploitation. Mutable, shapeshifting, and capable of existing within liminal spaces, harbingers of category crisis (Cohen: 1996), they may offer engagement with a different kind of imaginary needed nowadays - that of fluidity, interconnectedness and shared vulnerability.

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This paper examines eco-feminist entanglements with nature in Zanzibar (Tanzania) and the Seychelles. By foregrounding women’s sensory engagements with oceanic and forest ecologies, I argue that eco-feminist practices can be creative acts of liberation.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines eco-feminist entanglements with nature among indigenous and African diaspora communities in the Western Indian Ocean, drawing on nearly two decades of ethnographic research in Zanzibar (2007–2025) and the Seychelles (2005–2023). Through these long-term field engagements, I explore how women navigate and reconfigure their relationship with environments marked by colonial legacies, slavery histories, and persistent patriarchal structures.

In Zanzibar, the ethnography of scent and ocean heritage illuminates how women use the materiality of fragrance and the cultural practices of the sea to reshape identities, reclaim spaces, and inscribe indigenous feminist heritage in everyday life. In the Seychelles, life histories from La Digue and Silhouette reveal women’s embodied interactions with forests and seas—as octopus hunters, fishers, fruit gatherers, and plant collectors—and the ways these spaces serve as symbolic and practical sites of freedom. By foregrounding women’s narratives and sensory engagements with oceanic and forest ecologies, the paper highlights how eco-feminist practices emerge not only as responses to structural marginalization but also as creative, embodied acts of liberation. Ultimately, these entanglements represent forms of environmental conservation rooted in cultural heritage, embodied practice, and feminist reimaginings of human–nature relations in the Western Indian Ocean. The discussion builds on foundational ecofeminist scholarship (Shiva 1988; Mies & Shiva 1993) and postcolonial feminist theory (Mohanty 2003; Oyewumi 1997), as well as literature on post humanism (Braidotti, 2016) and pluriversal worlds (Escobar 2018) to offer perspectives on human relations with the sea in the global South.