RMN Newsletter 6 2013
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May 2013 № 6 Edited by Frog Helen F. Leslie and Joseph S. Hopkins Published by Folklore Studies / Dept. of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies University of Helsinki, Helsinki ISSN 2324-0636 (print) ISSN 1799-4497 (online) www.helsinki.fi/folkloristiikka/English/RMN/ 1 CONTENTS Editor’s Note .................................................................................................................................... 5 COMMENTS AND COMMUNICATIONS The Notions of Model, Discourse, and Semantic Center as Tools for the (Re)Construction of Old Norse Religion .......................................................................................................................... 6 Jens Peter Schjødt The Tradition of Icelandic sagnakvæði .......................................................................................... 15 Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir How Can You Tell Who’s Talking? – Transitions between Direct Speech and Narration in Vambarljóð..................................................................................................................................... 20 Haukur Þorgeirsson Remembering the Golden Past: Nostalgia as a Narrative Practice of Karelian Evacuees in Finland ........................................................................................................................................... 25 Ulla Savolainen Sigvatr Þórðarson’s Vestrfararvísur and Cnut the Great’s Conquest of Norway in 1028 ............. 31 Jakub Morawiec Forecasting the Rain of Óðinn: Referential Ambiguity in Kennings Referring to POETRY ........... 40 Debbie Potts Þjálfi’s Journey: An Example of How to Incorporate Younger Sources in the Comparative Study of Indigenous Religions of Northern Europe ....................................................................... 47 Maths Bertell The (De)Construction of Mythic Ethnography I: Is Every þurs in Verse a þurs? ......................... 52 Frog Events Conference Report – Historical Infrastructure of the Baltic Sea: Ways, Reason and Consequences: 3rd Meeting of the Austmarr Network ................................................................... 73 Karolina Kouvola Conference Report – The 2nd Meeting of the Old Norse Folklorists Network: “Encounter with the Otherworld in Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss”, Symposium and Workshop ........................... 76 Mart Kuldkepp Projects, Networks and Resources The Tartu Model ............................................................................................................................ 78 Daniel Sävborg and Karen Bek-Pedersen The Danish Folklore Nexus ........................................................................................................... 80 Timothy Tangherlini Austmarr Network Website ........................................................................................................... 81 Kendra Willson 2 PEOPLE Research Reports Frog Death by Wisdom: Myth and the Ideology of Oral Knowledge-Objects in the Circum-Baltic Region ............................................................................................................ 82 Mythology, Poetic Register and Dialects of Singing ............................................................. 83 Karina Lukin The Grammar of Moving between the Worlds in Nenets Epic Poetry .................................. 83 Eila Stepanova “Kallehen kandajazen kandamaista kaimatah”: Variety and Flexibility of Alliteration in Karelian Laments ................................................................................................................... 84 Kendra Willson Localization in Saga Dreams and Dreaming Scenes .............................................................. 84 Runic Coordination and the Death of IE *kue ....................................................................... 85 Lectures Eldar Heide Why Care about Later Folklore in Old Norse Studies? ......................................................... 87 Published Articles Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir Saga Motifs in Medieval Art and Legend .............................................................................. 89 Frog Alvíssmál and Orality I: Formula, Alliteration and Categories of Mythic Being .................. 90 Jonathan Roper Synonymy and Rank in Alliterative Poetry ........................................................................... 91 Monographs Stefan Brink Vikingarnas slavar: Den nordiska träldomen under yngre järnålder och äldsta medeltid [‘Slaves of the Vikings: Nordic Thralldom in the Late Iron Age and Early Midde Ages’]... 91 Emily Lyle Ten Gods: A New Approach to Defining the Mythological Structures of the Indo-Europeans ...................................................................................................................... 93 PhD Projects Niina Hämäläinen One Family, Shared Emotions: Textualisation Methods and Articulation of Lyrical Folk Poetry in the Kalevala .................................................................................................... 94 3 JOURNALS Studia Metrica et Poetica ............................................................................................................... 98 Mihhail Lotman PLACES The Kalevala Society Encourages the Study and Interpretation of Kalevala ................................ 99 Elina Lampela The Folklore Society .................................................................................................................... 102 Caroline Oates CALLS FOR PAPERS Song and Emergent Poetics: Oral Traditions in Performance ..................................................... 103 Reading and Writing from Below: Exploring the Margins of Modernity ................................... 104 Indigenous Ideas and Foreign Influences: Interactions among Oral and Literary, Latin and Vernacular Cultures in Medieval and Early Modern Northern Europe ....................................... 105 Sagas, Legends and Trolls: The Supernatural from Early Modern back to Old Norse Tradition ....................................................................................................................................... 106 Would You Like to Submit to RMN Newsletter? ........................................................................ 107 RMN Newsletter is oriented to constructing an informational resource and discourse space for researchers of diverse and intersecting disciplines. It welcomes and encourages its readership to engage in that discourse space and also promotes an awareness that such participation will support, maintain and also shape this emergent venue. For further information on guidelines for submission, please visit http://www.helsinki.fi/folkloristiikka/English/RMN/contributors.htm Please submit contributions to RMN Newsletter electronically in *.doc, *.docx or *.rtf formats to: Frog University of Helsinki [email protected] 4 Editor’s Note RMN Newsletter appeared in response to the yet its value is implicit in the degree to which need for a medium of contact and examples from modern cultures are naturally communication for members of the used when illustrating points and propositions Retrospective Methods Network (RMN). Our concerning cultures past and present in international reception revealed that the research practice, pedagogy and raising social publication not only filled an immediate need awareness. Comparison and analogy appear to for the RMN, but that it simultaneously met a be essential tools for producing much broader international interest. In the understandings. three and a half years since its inception, the RMN Newsletter set out to provide a venue readership and circulation of this small, and emergent discourse space in which multidisciplinary journal has been growing individual scholars can discuss and engage in exponentially, as has our reputation. Our first vital cross-disciplinary dialogue, present special issue, Approaching Methodology reports and announcements of their own (RMN Newsletter № 4, May 2012), has current activities, and where information already gone on to a second revised edition about events, projects and institutions is made with an international academic publisher, and available. Several contributions to the present our second special issue, Limited Sources, issue are responses to pieces published in Boundless Possibilities (RMN Newsletter № previous numbers, attesting to the interest and 7, December 2013) is well underway. With significance in the discourse this enables, and the present issue, we are also advancing from anticipating dialogues that will continue into a purely electronic publication to a parallel the future. printed form. The international electronic medium of The vital and extensive development and RMN Newsletter has allowed it to become a activities of RMN Newsletter have been nexus of contact and communication through paralleled by the extending activities of the which the broader membership in the RMN RMN itself. This has been realized in the has increased tremendously, inciting a foundation of additional networks of scholars surprising amount of interest, inquiries and within the nurturing environment of the responses. As a consequence, RMN RMN. These have held at least six inter- Newsletter has taken on a life of its own, and national conferences, seminars and workshops both the newsletter and the network are being in four countries since 2010, and additional defined through participation. That events already planned for the future. participation has provided RMN Newsletter The RMN is an open