This collection of articles addresses the narrative construction of places, landscapes and their supernatural dimensions, the relationship between tradition communities and their environments, and the spatial conditions for encounters with the supernatural as they are manifested in European folklore and in early literary sources, such as the Old Norse sagas. Articles in the book discuss places cursed and sacred, churches, graveyards, haunted houses, cemeteries, grave mounds, hill forts, and other tradition dominants in the micro-geography of the Nordic, Baltic and Baltic-Finnic peoples. It emerges that places accumulate meanings as they are layered by stories and memories about personal experiences. In addition to the local dimension of place-lore, the book scrutinizes the history of folklore studies, its geopolitical dimensions and its connection with nation building. It also sheds light on the social base of folklore and examines vernacular views of legendry and the supernatural.
Author(s): Ülo Valk, Daniel Sävborg (eds.)
Series: Studia Fennica Folkloristica, 23
Publisher: Finnish Literature Society
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 284
City: Helsinki
Ülo Valk, Daniel Sävborg / Place-Lore, Liminal Storyworld and Ontology of the Supernatural. An Introduction 7
I. Explorations in Place-Lore
Terry Gunnell / The Power in the Place: Icelandic "Álagablettir" Legends in a Comparative Context 27
John Lindow / Nordic Legends of the Churchyard 42
Kaarina Koski / The Sacred and the Supernatural: Lutheran Church Buildings in Christian Practice and Finnish Folk Belief Tradition 54
Sandis Laime / The Place Valence Approach in Folk Narrative Research: The "Church Sinks Underground" Motif in Latvian Folklore 80
Ülo Valk / Ontological Liminality of Ghosts: The Case of a Haunted Hospital 93
Kristel Kivari / Webs of Lines and Webs of Stories in the Making of Supernatural Places 114
II. Regional Variation, Environment and Spatial Dimensions
Frog / When Thunder Is Not Thunder; Or, Fits and Starts in the Evolution of Mythology 137
Madis Arukask / Sorcery, Holiness, the Third Sex – The Role of Herdsman in Finnic and North Russian Folk Culture 159
Bengt af Klintberg / The Wonders of Midsummer Night: Magical Bracken 181
Daniel Sävborg / The Icelander and the Trolls – The Importance of Place 194
Mart Kuldkepp / A Study in Distance: Travel and Holiness in "Eiríks saga rauða" and "Eireks saga víðförla" 206
III. Traditions and Histories Reconsidered
Jonathan Roper / Folk Disbelief 223
David Hopkin / Legends and the Peasant History of Emancipation in France and Beyond 237
Diarmuid Ó Giollain / People, Nation and "Combative Literatures": Baltic, Celtic and Nordic Configurations of Folklore 256
List of Authors 269
Abstract 272
Index of Persons 273
General Index 276
