Paper short abstract:

Disability understanding is formed and distributed using language and by telling stories. By combining approaches of disability studies and folkloristics I explore the 19th century Icelandic legend Álfkonan hjá Vatnsenda (The hidden woman by Vatnsendi) to see how disability is formed within it.

Paper long abstract:

Disability understanding is both formed and distributed using language and by telling stories. The purpose of the presentation is to explore, by combining approaches of disability studies and folkloristics, the 19th century Icelandic legend Álfkonan hjá Vatnsenda (The hidden woman by Vatnsendi), to discover how disability is formed within it. The legend analysis is built up of the legend-text itself as well as the historical context of the time and space, which is then reflected upon using the theoretical approach of embodiment, folk belief and understanding of body and difference. This will reveal that what looks like a simple tale of visual impairment of a punitive origin, is a complex tapestry of understanding that has been transmitted through tradition and storytelling. It is established within legend scholarship that legends reflect the social and cultural understanding of the people that tell and listen to those stories at the given time. Stories of disability, in past and present, reveal ideas and understanding of difference, and it is important to tell, hear and research such stories. This paper will also reveal clues to the development of the stereotype referred to in disability studies as “the super cryp” and how minute but vital nuances of the context dictate the affect the stereotype can have on disability understanding both then and now. With this paper I offer a new approach, combining disability studies and folkloristics to analyse a single legend of a supernatural encounter, and lives, real or imagined, lived with blindness.

Paper short abstract:

Folklore collector J.K. Harju’s writings about marginal city life in Helsinki in the 1960–1970 are stored at the SKS archives. I ask how and why the institution took this unconventional material into its collections and argue that by doing so, the archives were (re)imagining the concept of folk.

Paper long abstract:

My presentation focuses on Johan Knut Harju (1910–1976), a self-taught writer and folklore collector who created a roughly 20 000-page collection to the Finnish Literature Society’s (SKS) archives during 1961–1977. Helsinki born Harju suffered from alcohol addiction which among other problems had left him homeless. He spent his time on the streets, beneath bridges, as well as in prisons and halfway houses where he created his documentations by writing his own memoirs and by interviewing others. He wrote about marginal city life, non-normative lifestyle of thieves, alcoholics, drug abusers, prisoners, and prostitutes.

SKS was founded in 1831 and their folklore archives were built around the collections of kalevalaic folk poetry created in the 19th and early 20th centuries in close connection to the nation-building process in Finland. The material Harju gave to the archives was different than anything else stored there before. At the time when Harju collaborated with the archives authentic folk culture was still mostly considered to reflect and embody the agricultural past and folklore was understood to fall into clear bounded folklore genres.

Against all odds Harju and his materials were, however, met and stored by the archives. In my presentation I ask how the flexible practices of this nationally important memory institution made this process possible and ask whose heritage was considered to be gained by doing so? I argue that by taking Harju’s writings as a part of their collections, the archives were (re)imagining the concept of folk.

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the role of major Estonian history museums in representing identities related to post-WWII migration within the Soviet Union. We will discuss antagonistic, humanistic, and agonistic modes of representation and their limits in (re)imagining the Russophone minority.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the role of major Estonian history museums in representing identities related to post-WWII migration within the Soviet Union. By combining the theories of transcultural and agonistic memory with the methodology of social positioning we ask what social, cultural, and political roles and options for choices are made available to depict the Russophone population in Estonia? How are they juxtaposed to other positions and to what ends? We aim to test the possible changes in Estonian mnemonic discourses against the background of the national memory narrative, established during the post-communist turn, that externalized the Soviet regime and imagined the Estonian Russians as “Russia’s fifth column” which posed a direct threat to Estonia's national independence. We argue that Estonian history museums have become to differ significantly in what kind of mnemonic possibilities they offer about imagining the role and outcome of the Soviet-time migration. We will discuss antagonistic, humanistic, and agonistic modes of representation and their limits in the Estonian History Museum, Estonian National Museum, and the Estonian Museum of Occupations and Freedom Vabamu, respectively.

Paper short abstract:

In the article, the author analyzes the activities aimed at popularizing the local Mari legends about the heroic past and their characters. Mythical heroes and warriors become "brands" of certain areas of the Mari population and broadcast the ethnoregional identities of the inhabitants.

Paper long abstract:

Based on the field materials collected in some regions of the Russian Federation (The Mari Republic, The Kirov "Oblast") the author scrutinizes the connection between ethnicity and mythological heroes. In the XXI century, some Mari activists began to popularize images of the Mari legendary warriors and rulers (Akpars, Chotkar, Poltysh, etc). to actualize the regional Mari self-awareness. It was the period when many ethnical groups in Russia were in the process of elaborating and revitalizing their national ideas. Nowadays, many districts with the Mari population pretend to have their own local heroes and narratives about so-called "golden-age". Besides, the traditional rituals, celebrations, and folklore texts represent the identities of the locals and the policy towards strengthening this feeling. Using social media, educational practices and regional ethnography, the cultural activists transmit the national folklore symbols of the local history and cultural exceptionalism. In this paper, the author analyzes both the narratives about the possession of legendary heroes and some activities of the cultural workers. For example, he depicts the practices of celebrating "The national Heroe's day", creating symbolic tombs and using the names of heroes in branding.