More information part v shamanic politics in a changing world 219 Shamanism under attack 221 13 S... more More information part v shamanic politics in a changing world 219 Shamanism under attack 221 13 Shamanic revitalizations 14 Neoshamanism 264 Epilogue 291 Bibliography 295 Index 312 vi Contents
This article belongs to a special issue of Oral Tradition published in honor of John Miles Foley'... more This article belongs to a special issue of Oral Tradition published in honor of John Miles Foley's 65 th birthday and 2011 retirement. The surprise Festschrift, guest-edited by Lori and Scott Garner entirely without his knowledge, celebrates John's tremendous impact on studies in oral tradition through a series of essays contributed by his students from the University of Missouri-Columbia (1979-present) and from NEH Summer Seminars that he has directed (1987-1996). http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/26ii This page is intentionally left blank.
In the closing years of the nineteenth century, in the midst of a revived national interest in th... more In the closing years of the nineteenth century, in the midst of a revived national interest in the Kalevala and a neo-Romantic fascination with the fabled epic "song lands" east of the Finnish border, the lexicographer Kustaa Karjalainen recorded a set of epic songs from the illiterate peasant singer Vihtoora Lesonen. Vihtoora was a native of the Vuokkiniemi district of Viena Karelia—one of the most productive regions for the collection of Baltic-Finnic epic song in the nineteenth century. The combined length of Vihtoora's songs amounted to 1483 lines, a substantial repertoire by Karelian standards, although nowhere as long or varied as that collected from some singers in the past. Upon returning home to Finland, however, Karjalainen discovered a terrible truth: in examining the content and phrasing of the songs, it became evident that Vihtoora had somehow learned his repertoire from the Kalevala. Rather than providing a further example of the oral tradition upon whic...
The question of Elias Lönnrot's role in shaping the texts that became his Kalevala has stirr... more The question of Elias Lönnrot's role in shaping the texts that became his Kalevala has stirred such frequent and vehement debate in international folkloristic circles that even persons with only a passing interest in the subject of Finnish folklore have been drawn to the question. ...
Recent research on the topic of shamanism is reviewed and discussed. Included are works appearing... more Recent research on the topic of shamanism is reviewed and discussed. Included are works appearing since the early 1990s in the fields of anthropology, religious studies, archaeology, cognitive sciences, ethnomusicology, medical anthropology, art history, and ethnobotany. The survey demonstrates a continued strong interest in specific ethnographic case studies focusing on communities which make use of shamanic practices. Shamanic traditions are increasingly studied within their historical and political contexts, with strong attention to issues of research ideology. New trends in the study of cultural revitalization, neoshamanism, archaeology, gender, the history of anthropology, and the cognitive study of religion are highlighted.
The "truth" of historical legends is not identical with the "truth" of legal ... more The "truth" of historical legends is not identical with the "truth" of legal documents and history books, and official documents themselves are not necessarily "objective" reports. --Brynjulf Alver 1989, 149 Sami singing is called joiking. It is a practice for recalling other people. Some are recalled with hate, and some with love, and some are recalled with sorrow. --Johan Turi 2011, 161 If the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century witnessed a concerted scholarly effort to divorce the then-emerging ethnographic social sciences--folklore studies, ethnology, anthropology--from the realm of the humanities, the latter decades of the century saw growing efforts by scholars in these same fields to recover lost ground and to restore the humanistic natures of their disciplines. The "men of science" of the formative years of Nordic and American folklore studies gave us epic laws (Olrik 1965) for how folktales were constructed, typologies of memory failures involved in the changing lyrics of ballads (Burns 1970), and continual discussion about the possible or unlikely factual reliability of legends as sources for historical reconstruction (something that I will partly repeat myself in the following pages). Folklorists saw themselves as uncovering the mental scaffolding of oral tradition, and when the formal analysis of Vladimir Propp (1968) became known to scholars in Western Europe and America, it seemed to complete the disciplinary journey toward a scientific understanding of the production and transmission of even complex and nuanced cultural creations like the folktale. Yet, even amid the elation of this march toward morphology (cf. Dundes 1980) as a prime metaphor for the field of folklore studies, there were stirrings in the opposite direction, a desire to look at products of oral tradition as works of creativity, and to look at performers of folklore as creative artists rather than as passive bearers of tradition. These folkloristic stirrings were abetted by parallel acts among anthropologists, and eventually a loose confederation of new terms emerged: ethnohistory, ethnopoetics, and indigenous methodology. This paper deals with the ideas behind these terms and what they can tell us about the expressive culture of medieval Scandinavia. In the quotation that opens this paper, Brynjulf Alver (1924-2009) argued cogently that the fascination--indeed, obsession--among folklorists and historians about whether historical legends could be "true" or not misses entirely the core reasons why people retell legends, and the values or truths that they seek to impart through them. Alver argues in a sense for abandoning "historicity" as a measure of quality or value in folklore studies, replacing it with an attention to the moral, ideological, and aesthetic elements of the legend that are more organic to its nature and ongoing popularity. In other words, he sought to redirect folkloristic discourse toward a more humanistic stance toward memory, one not focused on the retention or loss of verifiable facts, but on the cultural and emotional significance of the related narrative to performers and their audiences. In the second quotation above, the great Sami writer Johan Turi (1854-1956) attempts to explain to a non-Sami audience the meaning and workings of a genre of song he knew as luohti, joik. He describes the genre as a means of muitingoansta--a way of remembering, recalling--that is, of encapsulating into the sounds and performance of a song the remembered essence of another being, be it a person, place, animal, or historical event. Johan Turi also recounts historical legends in his book, but he describes joik in particular as the prime means by which Sami remember their world and the beings that share it. I hope to explore in this paper what it would mean for medievalist folklorists to truly follow Alver's call toward a more humanistic approach to narrative, and what it might mean for the field of folklore in general to embrace the idea of genres like joik or poetry or non-narrative song as important sites for the cultural performance of memory. …
naturally on war campaigns and peace treaties between political entities. When the author lumps i... more naturally on war campaigns and peace treaties between political entities. When the author lumps in the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Venetian Republic, the United States, and al-Qaida, he charts a political and military history of the world and not necessarily the annals of interfaith conflict or interactions. So this is a rather succinct and, as mentioned, extremely readable guidebook to the meeting points among several empires and political powers since Roman times. It holds very little information about religion or its role in these encounters (with a curious and touchingly keen interest in naval campaigns; the reviewer must admit that he did not realize how many campaigns were fought in the sea between all these political powers). The climax of this historical process is the nineteenth century. "The nineteenth century saw European civilization triumph on a worldwide scale," writes Alan G. Jamieson (136). Not surprisingly, one of the major manifestations of this was naval: "European success in the nineteenth century was also a triumph of sea power" (137). The reader may well ask how this relates to the relationship between Christians and Muslims, and the answer is in the question the author contemplates. Was it also the triumph of Christianity? The answer is yes, and the modern history since that triumph is a "Muslim" unwillingness to accept this superiority. But the author does not dwell too long on that question, and the history of the nineteenth century is also presented as a power struggle of politics and economy and much less of religion and culture. The religious element is forced into the story once more when Palestine is brought up. Jamieson laments the bygone good Muslim-Jewish relationship-a cordial alliance that was mainly, in the eyes of the author, a coalition against a joint enemy: Christianity. But within these essentialist and vague definitions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, it is condensed into a power struggle, and "the Jews" moved to the side of the "Christians" in that century. The most profound chapter in this book is the twelfth one. In it the author explains that the present clash between American imperial reach and Muslims in various spots around the world is not the continuation of the Muslim-Christian war of previous centuries. He remarks rightly that the West is secular, the forces it faces are religious revivalists, and this is a new ball game. It is, however, as it was in the past, a power struggle of elites at the expense of their societies. Faith has very little to do with the sword in this narrative; a constant human greed for more power is the essence of the story here.
The article explores the intertwined religious and artistic viewpoints of contemporary Sámi artis... more The article explores the intertwined religious and artistic viewpoints of contemporary Sámi artist Lars Levi Sunna of Kiruna, Sweden. Sunna self-consciously situates his artwork within a personal and familial history that centers around traditional Sámi livelihoods and the practice of handicraft (duodji). Through his duodji-inspired pictorial art and art installations, Sunna chronicles a personal exploration that involved learning about his people's pre-Christian religious traditions and consciously making a place for them within his life and work, while maintaining his identity as a Laestadian Christian.
... His approach, combining sociol-ogy, literary, and folklore theories, as well as psychoanalysi... more ... His approach, combining sociol-ogy, literary, and folklore theories, as well as psychoanalysis, explicates both the sociocul-tural matrix from which the myth was spawned and the modalities of contemporary cultural productions, notably the phallocentrism and materialism of rap ...
Background: The healing knowledge of a Sami (Saami) hunter and reindeer herder was surveyed as a ... more Background: The healing knowledge of a Sami (Saami) hunter and reindeer herder was surveyed as a window into the concepts of health, healing, and disease in early twentieth-century Sapmi (Northern Sweden). The two books of Johan Turi (1854-1936)-An Account of the Sami (1910) and Lappish Texts (1918-19) were examined to determine the varieties of recorded zootherapeutic, mineral, chemical, and ethnobotanical lore, as well as the therapeutic acts, identified conditions, and veterinary knowledge included. Methods: Tabulation of the materials and species mentioned in Turi's descriptions (n = 137) permitted analysis of the relative frequency of differing types of healing in Turi's overall therapeutic repertoire, his relative attention to chronic vs. acute ailments, and the frequency of magic as a component of healing. A qualitative appraisal was made of the degree to which outside influences affected Sami healing of the period. A further assessment of the possible clinical efficacy of the recorded remedies was undertaken.
Writing of Women, Not Nations: The Development of a Feminist Agenda in the Novellas of Aino Kalla... more Writing of Women, Not Nations: The Development of a Feminist Agenda in the Novellas of Aino Kallas. by Thomas A. DuBois KAI LAITINEN, a prominent Kallas scholar, in his authoritative literary history Suomen kirjallisuuden historia, writes,.
... wartime threats throughout the Nordic region, but in the far north they almost always feature... more ... wartime threats throughout the Nordic region, but in the far north they almost always feature aSami hero, regardless of whether the teller is Sami or not (cf. ... follow a similar recurrent plot, one which hinges on the Sami hero's ability to use the natural landscape to his advantage. ...
More information part v shamanic politics in a changing world 219 Shamanism under attack 221 13 S... more More information part v shamanic politics in a changing world 219 Shamanism under attack 221 13 Shamanic revitalizations 14 Neoshamanism 264 Epilogue 291 Bibliography 295 Index 312 vi Contents
This article belongs to a special issue of Oral Tradition published in honor of John Miles Foley'... more This article belongs to a special issue of Oral Tradition published in honor of John Miles Foley's 65 th birthday and 2011 retirement. The surprise Festschrift, guest-edited by Lori and Scott Garner entirely without his knowledge, celebrates John's tremendous impact on studies in oral tradition through a series of essays contributed by his students from the University of Missouri-Columbia (1979-present) and from NEH Summer Seminars that he has directed (1987-1996). http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/26ii This page is intentionally left blank.
In the closing years of the nineteenth century, in the midst of a revived national interest in th... more In the closing years of the nineteenth century, in the midst of a revived national interest in the Kalevala and a neo-Romantic fascination with the fabled epic "song lands" east of the Finnish border, the lexicographer Kustaa Karjalainen recorded a set of epic songs from the illiterate peasant singer Vihtoora Lesonen. Vihtoora was a native of the Vuokkiniemi district of Viena Karelia—one of the most productive regions for the collection of Baltic-Finnic epic song in the nineteenth century. The combined length of Vihtoora's songs amounted to 1483 lines, a substantial repertoire by Karelian standards, although nowhere as long or varied as that collected from some singers in the past. Upon returning home to Finland, however, Karjalainen discovered a terrible truth: in examining the content and phrasing of the songs, it became evident that Vihtoora had somehow learned his repertoire from the Kalevala. Rather than providing a further example of the oral tradition upon whic...
The question of Elias Lönnrot's role in shaping the texts that became his Kalevala has stirr... more The question of Elias Lönnrot's role in shaping the texts that became his Kalevala has stirred such frequent and vehement debate in international folkloristic circles that even persons with only a passing interest in the subject of Finnish folklore have been drawn to the question. ...
Recent research on the topic of shamanism is reviewed and discussed. Included are works appearing... more Recent research on the topic of shamanism is reviewed and discussed. Included are works appearing since the early 1990s in the fields of anthropology, religious studies, archaeology, cognitive sciences, ethnomusicology, medical anthropology, art history, and ethnobotany. The survey demonstrates a continued strong interest in specific ethnographic case studies focusing on communities which make use of shamanic practices. Shamanic traditions are increasingly studied within their historical and political contexts, with strong attention to issues of research ideology. New trends in the study of cultural revitalization, neoshamanism, archaeology, gender, the history of anthropology, and the cognitive study of religion are highlighted.
The "truth" of historical legends is not identical with the "truth" of legal ... more The "truth" of historical legends is not identical with the "truth" of legal documents and history books, and official documents themselves are not necessarily "objective" reports. --Brynjulf Alver 1989, 149 Sami singing is called joiking. It is a practice for recalling other people. Some are recalled with hate, and some with love, and some are recalled with sorrow. --Johan Turi 2011, 161 If the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century witnessed a concerted scholarly effort to divorce the then-emerging ethnographic social sciences--folklore studies, ethnology, anthropology--from the realm of the humanities, the latter decades of the century saw growing efforts by scholars in these same fields to recover lost ground and to restore the humanistic natures of their disciplines. The "men of science" of the formative years of Nordic and American folklore studies gave us epic laws (Olrik 1965) for how folktales were constructed, typologies of memory failures involved in the changing lyrics of ballads (Burns 1970), and continual discussion about the possible or unlikely factual reliability of legends as sources for historical reconstruction (something that I will partly repeat myself in the following pages). Folklorists saw themselves as uncovering the mental scaffolding of oral tradition, and when the formal analysis of Vladimir Propp (1968) became known to scholars in Western Europe and America, it seemed to complete the disciplinary journey toward a scientific understanding of the production and transmission of even complex and nuanced cultural creations like the folktale. Yet, even amid the elation of this march toward morphology (cf. Dundes 1980) as a prime metaphor for the field of folklore studies, there were stirrings in the opposite direction, a desire to look at products of oral tradition as works of creativity, and to look at performers of folklore as creative artists rather than as passive bearers of tradition. These folkloristic stirrings were abetted by parallel acts among anthropologists, and eventually a loose confederation of new terms emerged: ethnohistory, ethnopoetics, and indigenous methodology. This paper deals with the ideas behind these terms and what they can tell us about the expressive culture of medieval Scandinavia. In the quotation that opens this paper, Brynjulf Alver (1924-2009) argued cogently that the fascination--indeed, obsession--among folklorists and historians about whether historical legends could be "true" or not misses entirely the core reasons why people retell legends, and the values or truths that they seek to impart through them. Alver argues in a sense for abandoning "historicity" as a measure of quality or value in folklore studies, replacing it with an attention to the moral, ideological, and aesthetic elements of the legend that are more organic to its nature and ongoing popularity. In other words, he sought to redirect folkloristic discourse toward a more humanistic stance toward memory, one not focused on the retention or loss of verifiable facts, but on the cultural and emotional significance of the related narrative to performers and their audiences. In the second quotation above, the great Sami writer Johan Turi (1854-1956) attempts to explain to a non-Sami audience the meaning and workings of a genre of song he knew as luohti, joik. He describes the genre as a means of muitingoansta--a way of remembering, recalling--that is, of encapsulating into the sounds and performance of a song the remembered essence of another being, be it a person, place, animal, or historical event. Johan Turi also recounts historical legends in his book, but he describes joik in particular as the prime means by which Sami remember their world and the beings that share it. I hope to explore in this paper what it would mean for medievalist folklorists to truly follow Alver's call toward a more humanistic approach to narrative, and what it might mean for the field of folklore in general to embrace the idea of genres like joik or poetry or non-narrative song as important sites for the cultural performance of memory. …
naturally on war campaigns and peace treaties between political entities. When the author lumps i... more naturally on war campaigns and peace treaties between political entities. When the author lumps in the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Venetian Republic, the United States, and al-Qaida, he charts a political and military history of the world and not necessarily the annals of interfaith conflict or interactions. So this is a rather succinct and, as mentioned, extremely readable guidebook to the meeting points among several empires and political powers since Roman times. It holds very little information about religion or its role in these encounters (with a curious and touchingly keen interest in naval campaigns; the reviewer must admit that he did not realize how many campaigns were fought in the sea between all these political powers). The climax of this historical process is the nineteenth century. "The nineteenth century saw European civilization triumph on a worldwide scale," writes Alan G. Jamieson (136). Not surprisingly, one of the major manifestations of this was naval: "European success in the nineteenth century was also a triumph of sea power" (137). The reader may well ask how this relates to the relationship between Christians and Muslims, and the answer is in the question the author contemplates. Was it also the triumph of Christianity? The answer is yes, and the modern history since that triumph is a "Muslim" unwillingness to accept this superiority. But the author does not dwell too long on that question, and the history of the nineteenth century is also presented as a power struggle of politics and economy and much less of religion and culture. The religious element is forced into the story once more when Palestine is brought up. Jamieson laments the bygone good Muslim-Jewish relationship-a cordial alliance that was mainly, in the eyes of the author, a coalition against a joint enemy: Christianity. But within these essentialist and vague definitions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, it is condensed into a power struggle, and "the Jews" moved to the side of the "Christians" in that century. The most profound chapter in this book is the twelfth one. In it the author explains that the present clash between American imperial reach and Muslims in various spots around the world is not the continuation of the Muslim-Christian war of previous centuries. He remarks rightly that the West is secular, the forces it faces are religious revivalists, and this is a new ball game. It is, however, as it was in the past, a power struggle of elites at the expense of their societies. Faith has very little to do with the sword in this narrative; a constant human greed for more power is the essence of the story here.
The article explores the intertwined religious and artistic viewpoints of contemporary Sámi artis... more The article explores the intertwined religious and artistic viewpoints of contemporary Sámi artist Lars Levi Sunna of Kiruna, Sweden. Sunna self-consciously situates his artwork within a personal and familial history that centers around traditional Sámi livelihoods and the practice of handicraft (duodji). Through his duodji-inspired pictorial art and art installations, Sunna chronicles a personal exploration that involved learning about his people's pre-Christian religious traditions and consciously making a place for them within his life and work, while maintaining his identity as a Laestadian Christian.
... His approach, combining sociol-ogy, literary, and folklore theories, as well as psychoanalysi... more ... His approach, combining sociol-ogy, literary, and folklore theories, as well as psychoanalysis, explicates both the sociocul-tural matrix from which the myth was spawned and the modalities of contemporary cultural productions, notably the phallocentrism and materialism of rap ...
Background: The healing knowledge of a Sami (Saami) hunter and reindeer herder was surveyed as a ... more Background: The healing knowledge of a Sami (Saami) hunter and reindeer herder was surveyed as a window into the concepts of health, healing, and disease in early twentieth-century Sapmi (Northern Sweden). The two books of Johan Turi (1854-1936)-An Account of the Sami (1910) and Lappish Texts (1918-19) were examined to determine the varieties of recorded zootherapeutic, mineral, chemical, and ethnobotanical lore, as well as the therapeutic acts, identified conditions, and veterinary knowledge included. Methods: Tabulation of the materials and species mentioned in Turi's descriptions (n = 137) permitted analysis of the relative frequency of differing types of healing in Turi's overall therapeutic repertoire, his relative attention to chronic vs. acute ailments, and the frequency of magic as a component of healing. A qualitative appraisal was made of the degree to which outside influences affected Sami healing of the period. A further assessment of the possible clinical efficacy of the recorded remedies was undertaken.
Writing of Women, Not Nations: The Development of a Feminist Agenda in the Novellas of Aino Kalla... more Writing of Women, Not Nations: The Development of a Feminist Agenda in the Novellas of Aino Kallas. by Thomas A. DuBois KAI LAITINEN, a prominent Kallas scholar, in his authoritative literary history Suomen kirjallisuuden historia, writes,.
... wartime threats throughout the Nordic region, but in the far north they almost always feature... more ... wartime threats throughout the Nordic region, but in the far north they almost always feature aSami hero, regardless of whether the teller is Sami or not (cf. ... follow a similar recurrent plot, one which hinges on the Sami hero's ability to use the natural landscape to his advantage. ...
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