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Paper short abstract

On the basis of folklore and vegetation history data, this transdisciplinary study explores connections between surrounding nature and cultural expression, to highlight how oral poetry encodes and transmits environmental knowledge across time and space.

Paper long abstract

Common Finnic oral poetry – often called runosong – is known in most Finnic traditions. On the basis of linguistic history and prevalence of the poetic form over the large Finnic area, it is assumed that it emerged before the final divergence of Finnic languages around 2000 years ago, and spread along with the Finnic peoples and languages. Poem texts have been documented massively, mostly during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Oral poetry has admittedly been a central tool in historical oral cultures to store the information and to convey knowledge. Despite variation that enables recurrent updating and adaptation of poems and motifs, the runosong as a form is remarkably conservative, retaining archaic expressions. Yet, while the texts cover a wide range of topics relevant to pre-modern cultural settings, it remains extremely difficult to establish the age or origins of any individual content element. Furthermore, it is not easy to approach practical and symbolic meanings of versatile poetic expressions in a wide set of varying texts. Our aim is to evaluate these questions by computational contextual reading, using trees as our case.

Deeply embedded in human life in the Finnic region, tree species occur abundantly in runosongs. We examine the tree references in a large runosong corpus and compare their regional variation and poetic associations with vegetation history of the region. This allows us to trace connections between surrounding nature and cultural expression, and to highlight how oral poetry encodes and transmits environmental knowledge across time, and possibly also space.

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Paper short abstract

How do references to place and landscape constitute 'Norwegianness' in folktales? Part of the ERC project AI STORIES, this paper explores and compares nature and culture in Norwegian traditional folktales and in LLM generated 'Norwegian' folktale-like narratives.

Paper long abstract

What makes a folktale 'Norwegian'? How do references to place and landscape constitute 'Norwegianness' in folktales, and how does this question shed light on aspects of Large Language Models (LLMs), the most widespread new text generating technology today? In this paper I present a project where I go back to the basics of folktale studies in order to examine the structures of 'Norwegian' narratives generated by LLMs. Through new and comparative approaches to traditional collected folktales as well as generated folktales, I aim to renew the understanding of Norwegianness in the traditional material as well as in the new.

This paper is part of the ERC project AI STORIES. Narrative Archetypes in Artificial Intelligence, where we seek to understand the underlying narrative structures of LLMs.

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Paper short abstract

This paper argues that the invention and rapid spread of barbed wire in the United States in the late nineteenth century provides a paradigmatic example of the violence embedded in the nature–culture divide.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores the invention of barbed wire (patented in 1874 by Illinois farmer Joseph F. Glidden) as both a material and narrative technology of the nature–culture divide. Emerging in the wake of the Homestead Act of 1862 and the westward migrations it accelerated, barbed wire offered settlers a cheap and effective way to enclose land, restrain bison, and demarcate property. Yet its significance extends beyond its practical function: it became a powerful symbol within the mythic landscape of the “Wild West.” Barbed wire inscribed into the prairie a narrative of domestication and progress, transforming a boundless wilderness—inhabited by wildlife and Indigenous communities—into a space legible as civilized, cultivated, and owned. Folklore and popular culture quickly reflected and reinforced this transformation: frontier ballads, cowboy songs, and later Western films cast barbed wire alternately as the emblem of settlement and as the symbol of loss, fencing off freedom, open range, and Indigenous sovereignty. Drawing on Olivier Razac’s Barbed Wire: A Political History and on folkloristic approaches to myth and narrative, I argue that barbed wire epitomizes the violence of the nature–culture divide. It operates simultaneously as infrastructure and as myth, a device that narrates modernity while legitimizing exclusion. This case demonstrates how folklore and narrative are central to understanding the infrastructures of violence that continue to shape life in the Anthropocene.

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Design education’s technological worldview frames nature simply as raw resources. We must instead empower designers to be stewards of our planet’s riches. I propose integrating myth and folklore in design studies to foster reverence for our environment and inspire authentic regenerative practices.

Paper long abstract

Our current ecological crisis stems largely from a fragmented worldview that treats nature as a passive standing-reserve of resources. This paper argues that contemporary design education perpetuates this calculative stance, aligning with Heidegger’s critique of ‘enframing’ (Gestell). This dominant narrative actively obscures the intrinsic qualities and inherent nature of things in the world. To subvert this system, design education must cultivate practical, craft-based wisdom through a narrative-informed approach that fosters empathy and critical reflection. We could radically redefine the relationship between human and non-human actors by emphasizing interconnectedness, reciprocity, and reverence in the classrooms and studios. Traditional narratives have the power to create a culture of respect for resources and a critical awareness of waste. I therfore propose integrating the study of myth and folklore into design pedagogy to cultivate ecological consciousness and promote authentic and respectful regenerative design practices. By examining and internalizing such narratives, designers can deconstruct the consumerist spectacle from within and feel empowered to be stewards of a regenerative world.

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Paper short abstract

Folktales might be old maps for ceremonies – a report from 34 years of field research engaging with folktales ceremonially via audience-as-artist theater participation to reconcile emotional, social and spiritual dilemmas, and return individuals and communities to healthful equilibrium.

Paper long abstract

If we consider that folktales might be old maps or scripts for ceremonies, then we can engage with them ceremonially to reconcile emotional, social and spiritual dilemmas, and return individuals and communities to healthful equilibrium.

Presentation gives a look into 34 years of field research exploring audience-as-artist theater engagement participation with the folktales, Minnesota Folktale Gardening Club, for enjoyment, and healing.

We tell world folktales. Then, we guide incremental “braiding” experiences with the characters and dilemmas of the stories through perfection-free participatory engagement using voice and action. This embodied learning approach allows us to identify with the characters and dilemmas of the stories, and discover how they might mirror and inform our own lives.

We draw from world folktales, poetry, mythology, archetypal psychology, expressive arts approaches, culture studies, recovery principles, men’s work, and the feminist awakening. This play deepens personal and communal understanding and action. It encourages sovereignty and agency of all involved.

We engage in the nobility and heart of the world folktales to promote emotional and social healing, ignite joy and wellbeing, and empower individuals and communities to act courageously in the world in service to community.

This work is trauma-informed. We model how participation can be ecstatically cathartic, with expressed mirth and grief to metabolize insults to inherent dignity. This addresses colonialism’s effects through “recovery of self” (Albert Memmi). Participants often report significant positive life-encouraging experiences.

Presentation includes lecture, video documentation from sessions, and, if time, voluntary experiential participation.