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- Convenors:
-
Alf Arvidsson
(Umeå University)
Line Esborg (University of Oslo)
Marie Steinrud (Stockholm University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- NARRATIVE
- Location:
- Room H-206
- Sessions:
- Thursday 16 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Re-telling the thoughts and sayings of others in historical scholarship includes negotiations of authorship and agendas. Tensions will always appear and have to be addressed. How are historical and recent power structures to be negotiated by the contemporary researcher?
Long Abstract:
The practice of re-telling (publishing, analyzing, performing, presenting) the thoughts, sayings and writings of others in historical scholarship includes negotiations of authorship and agendas. The thoughts collected in the archives are not only lacking context but also, for the most part, represent a selection made in the past, often without any trace remaining of the selection criteria applied. The agency of letting yourself be interviewed and observed may stem from personal agendas of individual or collective identity or cultural policy. Equally, the decision of what to preserve lies in the past. Today, the importance of the ethical implications of interpreting the historical material is increasingly being emphasized and even challenged. The researcher's intentions on the other hand may or may not be compatible with those of the collaborator, but tensions will always arise and have to be addressed.
Using interviews, answers to questionnaires, and autobiographic texts in ethnological/folkloristic research has been a process of moving between the positions of "giving voice to other people" and "making space for other voices". But whose voice is heard, which voices are given priority? How are historical and recent power structures to be negotiated by contemporary researchers?
For this panel, we welcome proposals including topics such as: Research as cultural translation; Negotiating authorship in publishing; Searching for subjects behind fragments; The careers of "star informants"; Making room for voices of dissent in representations of the collective; The cultural politics of answering questionnaires; The scholarly practice of validating tradition-bearers; Making sense of historical fieldwork practices.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 16 June, 2022, -Line Esborg (University of Oslo)
Paper short abstract:
Methods with a deep connection to natural history seem to have played an important role in informing the methods and genres of what became the study of folklore in Norway. But how were folkloristic and naturalist practices intertwined?
Paper long abstract:
Methods with a deep connection to natural history seem to have played an important role in informing the methods and genres of what became the study of folklore in Norway. The Norwegian Folklore Archives contains the works of pioneers of what can be called both a folkloristic discipline and a folkloristic movement. This pioneering work was closely connected to the collection work of naturalists at natural history museums. Of special interest for this paper, are the works of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812-1885), famous for publishing the first Norwegian folktale collections, but also known for extensive publications which shows a concurrent parallel interest in both folklore and natural historical topics, especially marine zoology. (Re)making sense of his historical fieldwork practices raise big questions, such as how folkloristic and naturalist practices were intertwined. What were the “methodological” commons in these knowledge fields that are normally seen as separated and divergent? How were disciplinary demarcations formulated in these contexts? How has natural history influenced the knowledge history of folklore.
Karin Gustavsson (Lund University)
Paper short abstract:
Is it possible to work with lacking archival sources and still analyze and describe the operations of peoples in the past with a reliable result? In order to trace the background to the position in Swedish heritage making that two specific persons bears, although fragmentary, archives has been used.
Paper long abstract:
Personal archives are wonderful sources for cultural history research. Through the traces given by peoples of the past, we can learn about the conditions for individuals as well as for groups of people in different societies in different times. Patterns that not were obvious for a person while he/she was active can be seen through the lens of time and a broader understanding given to acting and decisions. At the same time, personal archives can be a source for frustrations, when documents that once existed now can´t be found in the collections. In my paper, I will discuss how we can work with lacking sources and still analyze and describe the operations of peoples in the past. I will describe the archival sources from the folklorist Eva Wigström and the collector of textile crafting Lilli Zickerman. Both conducted field works in Sweden in order to collect traces of heritage, Wigström in the 1880s, Zickerman in the 1920s. The results of their collecting has been important to the notion of Swedish heritage. Because of the strong influence of their works on the understanding of Swedish heritage, I want to analyze their field work methods. How did they find their informants? How can the relation between explorers (Wigström, Zickerman) and the informants be understood? Moreover, how were the fieldwork experiences transformed into knowledge? The archival sources are obviously incomplete for both persons. Is it still possible to find credible answers to my questions from the archives, and how can this be done?
Yrsa Lindqvist (The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland)
Paper short abstract:
To collect the cultural heritage of Swedish speaking Finns has a long history at the SLS archive. Throughout the years, many informants have committed to share their traditions in the name of preserving a collective immaterial heritage. Who are they, and what is the motive for the commitment?
Paper long abstract:
In 1952, the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland started to send out questionnaires as a method to collect and preserve both festive traditions, folklore and descriptions of everyday life among the Swedish speaking Finns. The development of the method was in line with changes towards individualism in contemporary society. Initially, collective culture interested collectors and researchers, but soon the voice of the individual was foregrounded. Nevertheless, a collective cultural heritage is visible between the lines in writings of personal experiences as well.
The questionnaire project gave rise to a unique form of community, with several close relationships between informants and archivists. Why have some individuals felt compelled to answer over 60 questionnaires during the course of many decades? Why did many informants perceive the archivist as a friend to whom one could reveal both happiness and despair?
Public archives are obliged to have a relevant role in society. The material should be generic, accessible for anyone, preferable online, even if the context and complex cooperation between collector and informant is vital for a deeper understanding of the material. Many “star informants” have committed to documenting the minority culture of Swedish speaking Finns by continuously describing both everyday life and festive traditions. How should we respect the informants today, as anonymous sources or in a broader context as creators of a cultural heritage?
Juliana Thora Magnusdottir (University of Iceland)
Paper short abstract:
The paper will explore the role of gender in the migration of narratives of rural Iceland in the past, arguing that those similarities found in traditions from different parts of Iceland may rather be rooted in the tendency of women to move between communities than the seasonal travels of men.
Paper long abstract:
The folk narrative archives of the earlier rural communities of Iceland and its recent digitalization have left us with invaluable opportunities to revise some of the assumptions made by earlier scholars and to engage with aspects of tradition that have been largely overlooked in the past. One of these aspects concerns gender-roles and gender-based experiences in the past and the influence of these roles on the ability to become active storytellers in local communities. This paper will present a fresh analysis of the largely ignored role of women in the migration of oral stories in the Icelandic earlier rural community, exploring various types of material contained in the Icelandic folk archives, focusing predominantly on the information provided by the female informants of the Icelandic folklore collector Hallfreður Örn Eiríksson (1932-2005).
As the paper will show, it is evident that a surprisingly large number of the women in these archives, especially those with large repertoires, evidently moved as adults to new parts of Iceland, often as result of marriage. In past scholarship, folklorists have tended to credit those similarities found in the oral narrative traditions of different parts of Iceland to men's seasonal travel, seeing women as having little role to play in migration of narratives. The paper will argue that while this should not be underestimated as source of narrative migration in the past, the more permanent geographical emigration of women often offers better explanations for many of these similarities.