Tradition archives are rich in source material for understanding vernacular ways of dealing with uncertainties of disease and illness.
Poster long abstract:
The COVID pandemic has brought to the fore ontological risks and uncertainties in the present. Just as today, communities in the past had to deal with the uncertainty of life produced by a myriad of diseases. Tradition archives can elucidate how communities deal with illness and disease and can prompt us to think about how we might tackle them today. This poster presents work on a doctoral research project that in part analyses correspondence about disease in the Norwegian Folklore Archive, particularly the use of nonhuman species and their products.