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Network for the Folklore Fellows FFFF NETWORK FOR THE FOLKLORE FELLOWS No. 28 June 2005 In this issue: Anna-Leena Siikala Folkloristics and globalisation 2 Seppo Knuuttila Getting lost 3–9 Diarmuid Ó Giolláin The national and the local – practices of de- and retraditionalization 10–13, 16–18 Recent publications of the Finnish Literature Society 14–15 Reviews by Jurjen van der Kooi Toshio Ozawa Laura Stark 19–26 The Types of the International Folktales is published 27 A new volume in the FF Communications 28 Publisher: The Folklore Fellows by courtesy of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters Love songs are favoured by young people at the www.folklorefellows.fi Southern Cook Islands. Photo by Jukka Siikala. ISSN 0789-0249 Folkloristics and globalisation by Anna-Leena Siikala, Professor Folklore Fellows Network, Chair Summer is congress time. The 14th Congress of the and leads to the educational politics of supporting International Society for Folk Narrative Research at technology and natural sciences. The value of hu- Tartu, Estonia, will bring together folklorists from all manities and social sciences has been on the decline. over the world. And in June researchers in folktales, Folkloristics is a small field within the humanities, representing Scandinavia, the Baltic, the British Isles whose future depends on its ability to find a place in and the United States, are meeting in Iceland. Inter- the worldwide crisis facing university faculties. The national gatherings are needed all the more, despite examination of the field’s principles and central re- the strengthening of contacts between different coun- search questions is more relevant than ever. Instead tries and corners of the globe in the age of the inter- of following the route of other fields and their prob- net. The presentations receive immediate feedback in lematisations and research methods, it is worth look- the sessions and through personal meetings cooper- ing into what folklorists themselves are aiming for, ative relationships are forged. In a globalising world what the folkloristic intellectual capital is that other the tightening of links between researchers and the fields cannot offer. creation of cooperative schemes is more important Characteristic of globalisation is the strengthen- than ever, and, for folklorists, essential for survival. ing of large political, governmental and economic For globalisation is changing both university or- structures and the disappearance of small ones. All ganisation and the status of faculties throughout the social changes and the ideas lurking behind them world. have affected the intellectual reasoning, and so it is From 1980 to 1995 the world’s universities saw an today too. Many favourite theories in humanities increase in student numbers of 31 million. The great- and social sciences seek out common features in cul- est annual growth was in southern Africa, the Far tures and societies, and create an intellectual founda- East and the Pacific, in Arab nations and the Carib- tion for builders of a unified world. Uniformity is bean. Growth over the last ten years has accelerated not, however, a prerequisite for equality or coopera- everywhere. The significance of universities as pro- tion. A profound understanding of cultural differ- ducers of advanced knowledge and offerers of voca- ence in fact affords us the possibility for honouring tional training is understood the world over. difference and for international communication on The operation of higher-education institutions in an equal footing. Folklorists can highlight cultural different countries is based on varying traditions. In diversity, those differences in ways of life and in the Europe universities have historically been builders oral cultural domains whose varied spectrum en- of national culture. Hence European universities re- riches the global whole and for the nurture of which ceive more support from public funds than those in UNESCO, amongst others, has striven. other areas. As a result of globalisation, however, It is clear that as globalisation increases the signi- university institutions relying on state funding have ficance of international organisations and networks ended up in the vicious circle of diminishing re- in folkloristics is more important than ever. Through sources. Project funding directed at research has be- them we can strengthen our work together and at- come more important than hitherto. In future groups tain support as we build a future in the field. The of researchers representing different countries will Folklore Fellows’ Network Advisory Committee is need to seek such funding more often from inter- meeting at the ISFNR conference in Tartu. We are national sources. hoping for initiatives from the network’s member- The free-market thinking behind globalisation ship for new openings to strengthen cooperation. emphasises the maximisation of economic benefit - 2 - Getting lost by Seppo Knuuttila, Professor of Folkloristics University of Joensuu Mankind’s experience of the relationship with na- ials, illuminating the perspective of autocommuni- ture is, for many reasons and influences and aspira- cation, are my own records from the late 1990s, as tions, always ambivalent. It is so even for those well as responses to the Finnish Literature Society’s people who live in so-called harmony with nature. (FLS) folklore archive questionnaire on “Have you The individual relationship with nature changes been lost?” (2002, see http://www.finlit.fi/kra/ according to age. Women’s and men’s experiences keruut/eksynyt.htm). differ. The dwelling place affects what nature signi- fies, as do profession, interests, even political affili- The perspective of the forest covering ation. Finns believe themselves to be a forest people In the field of getting lost, researchers in tradition more than most other forest peoples of the world. In have been interested chiefly in the belief called the the rhetoric of constructing Finnishness the forest “forest covering”, in which the forest’s difference has been and still is the most important element of and its different danger as compared with other en- nature, the origin of whose meaning cannot truly be vironments is emphasised. The forest covering is a attained nor wiped away – not even by protecting multifaceted concentrate in oral tradition. This be- old forests, or by felling them. In this article I will comes clear in a fundamental way from the broad examine one phenomenon connected with the forest, article from 1923, “Metsän peitossa” (“Under the for- well-known to countless people in some form: the est cover”), by Uno Holmberg (Harva, from 1927), experiences and interpretations of getting lost. The which is a key text for the topic. He first presents the subject perhaps seems superficial beside the great basic idea of the forest covering: ecological and economic questions facing the forest, but it is fruitful in the sense that a great number of “The forest covering” signified not only that for some- writings from oral tradition have been recorded one lost in the bosom of the great backwoods it was impossible to find their way home, for it is believed to about getting lost over a period of several gener- be possible to end up in the forest covering even in a ations, in which the ambivalent relationship between nook of the home, but‘“covering” means here that the culture and nature appears as a generalisation from person in question has ended up in a quite special the experiences of individuals. The lost is paradoxic- space, where he is hidden from others, invisible. At the ally in a space without time, place, the coordinates of same time his home world is invisible to him. Nor do identity. Regardless of how the values of the forest the seekers see the lost person, even though they may may be emphasised in public speeches, the experi- be right beside them. To them the lost one is like “any stone or log in the wood”. In other places, however, the ence of getting lost has its roots far in the past and concept is found that although the family cannot see future, according to where the seeker’s glance alights. the lost person, he or she can certainly see them, but I shall try and seek to interpret the communica- cannot reveal him or herself by bodily movements, tive meanings of the experiences and narratives of gestures or voice. (Holmberg 1923: 16–17.) getting lost: how the familiar and safe changes sud- denly into the strange and frightening, how attempts Uno Harva presents, in addition to many narrative have been made to forge a connection between the examples, charms and spells which have maintained lost and the searcher both actively and narratively, and expressed the traditional belief in the forest cov- how knowledge and feeling become confused for the ering. Central to the arrangement is the notion that lost person. I shall begin by examining the inter- those belonging to us and beings of other realities pretation of the “searcher” motif in the forest-cover- (fairies, demons, goblins) battle over people and ing tradition from the perspective of non-communi- animals who have become lost – or rather been led cation. Then I shall outline the “grammar” of getting astray. Matti Sarmela, commenting on this inter- lost on the basis of materials of autocommunication pretation, has asserted that especially “in legends of and narratives of the experience recounted by lost animals stuck in the forest covering there are op- people themselves. Finally I shall present some ob- posed a wizard of the agriculturalists and a fairy of servations on
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