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Paper short abstract

In interviews from northern Sweden 1955-1980, people went a long way in discussing personal experiences of encounters with vittra (fairies). Their reasoning, explanation and rhetorical strategies in negotiating traditional knowledge and modernity’s rationality will be examined in this presentation.

Paper long abstract

In the period of ca 1955-1980, the recently established dialect and folklore archive in Umeå built a large collection, focusing on audio recordings made across northern Sweden rather than questionnaires. Popular beliefs was a favoured topic, and the notion of vittra, the parallel people living underground or in nature (comparable to fairies, elves, trolls, Wittmännchen), was often discussed. Rather than telling well-shaped variants of legends learned from the elders (as folklore then was conceptualised), many spoke of personal experiences with or without distinct narrative closures and took time to discuss the ontological status of this. They negotiated between the traditional knowledge of hearsay and the rational reasoning of modernity proclaimed as proper knowledge in elementary schools, trying out positions, sometimes changing attitude in the course of their speech, rejecting “old fables” but still claiming the existence of the diffuse “something” in the face of the studied representatives of official society. This presentation will give a close examination of reasoning, explanation and rhetorical strategies in making vittra encounters comprehensible.