Paper short abstract:

Facilitated by archival digitalisation projects, this paper explores extant and potential relationships between digital folklore and the folklore archive as a way of increasing broader participation with archives and reconnecting their materials to wider contemporary global challenges.

Paper long abstract:

Digital folklore – digitally (re)produced and mediated vernacular culture – is a form of active, ongoing and self-including heritage production that can give us insights into what is socially, culturally and politically significant to a diverse public. Ranging from, for example, memes and hashtags to email chains and creepypasta, digital folklore reflects contemporary creative expression and, in some instances, activism. Alongside the interactionist nature of digital folklore, digitalisation of folklore archives heightens their accessibility and has the potential to broaden engagement with folklore materials. This, in turn, gives us greater opportunities to reconnect ‘old’ or analogue folklore of the archive with new, digital folklore practiced online. This paper considers how digital folklore can be utilised as a participatory tool to diversify engagement with folklore archives, and to reconnect and reactivate archival material in relation to broader global challenges and debates. Focusing on Norway and the broader Nordic region, it will consider how digital folklore can reflect a more diverse public in contemporary society which can be excluded from heritage narratives or disenfranchised from heritage institutions such as folklore archives. Drawing on examples of new and ongoing folklore (re)production online, and taking advantage of the digitalisation of archival materials, it will draw out and explore varied relationships and themes between digital and archival folklore to broaden heritage narratives and engagement with the archive. This thus both emphasises the significance of digital folklore and its reconnection to materials in the archive, and illustrates new, active ways to use and sustain digitalisation of such archives.