The Retrospective Methods Network Newsletter Between Text and Practice Mythology, Religion and Research A special issue of RMN Newsletter Edited by Frog and Karina Lukin № 10 Summer 2015 RMN Newsletter is edited by Frog Helen F. Leslie-Jacobsen and Joseph S. Hopkins Published by Folklore Studies / Dept. of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies University of Helsinki, Helsinki 1 RMN Newsletter is a medium of contact and communication for members of the Retrospective Methods Network (RMN). The RMN is an open network which can include anyone who wishes to share in its focus. It is united by an interest in the problems, approaches, strategies and limitations related to considering some aspect of culture in one period through evidence from another, later period. Such comparisons range from investigating historical relationships to the utility of analogical parallels, and from comparisons across centuries to developing working models for the more immediate traditions behind limited sources. RMN Newsletter sets out to provide a venue and emergent discourse space in which individual scholars can discuss and engage in vital cross- disciplinary dialogue, present reports and announcements of their own current activities, and where information about events, projects and institutions is made available. RMN Newsletter is edited by Frog, Helen F. Leslie-Jacobsen and Joseph S. Hopkins, published by Folklore Studies / Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies University of Helsinki PO Box 59 (Unioninkatu 38 A) 00014 University of Helsinki Finland The open-access electronic edition of this publication is available on-line at: http://www.helsinki.fi/folkloristiikka/English/RMN/ Between Text and Practice: Mythology, Religion and Research is a special thematic issue of the journal edited by Frog and Karina Lukin. © 2015 RMN Newsletter; authors retain rights to reproduce their own works and to grant permissions for the reproductions of those works. ISSN 2324-0636 (print) ISSN 1799-4497 (electronic) All scientific articles in this journal have been subject to peer review. 2 CONTENTS Editor’s Note ........................................................................................................................................ 5 BETWEEN TEXT AND PRACTICE: MYTHOLOGY, RELIGION AND RESEARCH Reflections on Texts and Practices in Mythology, Religion, and Research: An Introduction ............. 6 Frog & Karina Lukin Picturing the Otherworld: Imagination in the Study of Oral Poetry .................................................. 17 Lotte Tarkka Mythology in Cultural Practice: A Methodological Framework for Historical Analysis .................. 33 Frog Folklore and Mythology Catalogue: Its Lay-Out and Potential for Research ................................... 58 Yuri E. Berezkin Females as Cult Functionaries or Ritual Specialists in the Germanic Iron Age? .............................. 71 Rudolf Simek A Retrospective Methodology for Using Landnámabók as a Source for the Religious History of Iceland? – Some Questions ............................................................................................................ 78 Matthias Egeler Baptizing Soviet Children in Contemporary Rural Narratives .......................................................... 92 Nadezhda Rychkova REVIEW ARTICLES AND RESEARCH REPORTS Meta-Mythology and Academic Discourse Heritage ....................................................................... 100 Frog The Blurry Lines among Humans, Gods, and Animals: The Snake in the Garden of Eden ............ 109 Robert A. Segal Social Movement and a Structural Distribution of Karelian Ritual Genres .................................... 112 Eila Stepanova & Frog Lonely Riders of Nenets Mythology and Shamanism ..................................................................... 118 Karina Lukin CONFERENCES AND EVENTS Austmarr IV: The Plurality of Religions and Religious Change Around the Baltic Sea, 500–1300: Methodological Challenges for Multidisciplinary Data ................................................ 128 Kimberly La Palm Interdisciplinary Student Symposium on Viking and Medieval Scandinavian Subjects ................. 130 Seán D. Vrieland 3 Public Engagement with Research: A Viking TeaBreak ................................................................. 131 Lisa Turberfield, Claire Organ & Blake Middleton DISSERTATIONS AND THESES PhD Projects Myth in Translation: The Ludic Imagination in Contemporary Video Games (working title) ....... 133 Robert Guyker, Jr. Pre-Christian Sources on Odin: The Significance of Text and Iconographic Evidence as well as Archaeological Finds (4th–11th Centuries AD) (working title) ........................................ 135 Tom Hellers Porous Bodies, Porous Minds: Emotions and the Supernatural in the Íslendingasögur (ca. 1200–1400) ............................................................................................................................... 140 Kirsi Kanerva Master’s Projects On the dyēus-Semantic Group and the Case of Týr ......................................................................... 145 Petra Mikolić Appropriation and Originality: Hending and Alliterative Word Constellations as Tools for Skaldic Composition ..................................................................................................................................... 148 Cole Erik Nyquist CALLS FOR PAPERS Versification: Metrics in Practice .................................................................................................... 149 The Ontology of Supernatural Encounters in Old Norse Literature and Scandinavian Folklore: 4th Symposium of the Old Norse Folklorists Network ..................................................................... 150 Would You Like to Submit to RMN Newsletter? ............................................................................ 150 4 Editor’s Note The volume of RMN Newsletter that you hold Realities”, as well as some connection with in your hands, or which shimmers on a screen the international, multilingual conference before you, is a thematic special issue Between “Laulu ja runo – Song and Emergent Poetics Text and Practice: Mythology, Religion and – Песня и видоизменяющаяся поэтика” Research. This collection of articles and held at the end of 2013 (Kuhmo, Finland). reports addresses a number of themes that Contributions developed from these events have proven of great interest to our readership are complemented by works by voices and presents a variety of discussions and familiar from RMN Newsletter’s discourse insights. Some contributions illustrate new space as well as additional articles that have methodological frameworks for research on been invited through our networks. The mythology and religion in earlier periods. outcome is a rich and stimulating volume. Others elucidate new types of resources and Between Text and Practice: Mythology, theoretical tools, and there are discussions of Religion and Research is organized as a main inclinations, prejudices and problems that body of scientific articles that are comple- have haunted earlier research, and which may mented by additional relevant review articles still impact us today. Together, the works and research reports. Several reports on the presented here offer a variety of perspectives research projects of junior scholars also from several disciplines and backgrounds of connect directly with the overarching theme. scholarship. Their diversity is complementary, As a whole, these various contributions form encouraging these works to converse with one an ensemble that is both diverse and opulent, another, to dialogic engagements that will with something of interest for all of our reach their fullest richness and potential in the readers. reflections of the reader. We have the hope Of course, this special issue is the product that they may also inspire, and that the reader of only one of many activities current in the may then carry these discussions further, RMN and its daughter networks. A report on along with the insights that they enable. the most recent Austmarr Network can be The special issue is the product of a found in these pages, and its next meeting will cooperation between RMN Newsletter and the be held already in October. The Old Norse Academy of Finland project, “Oral Poetry, Folklorists Network has been no less active: a Mythic Knowledge and Vernacular Imagination call for papers for its up-coming symposium (OMV): Interfaces of Individual Expression “The Ontology of Supernatural Encounters in and Collective Traditions in Pre-Modern Old Norse Literature and Scandinavian Northeast Europe” of Folklore Studies, Folklore”, to be held in December 2015, can University of Helsinki, led by Professor Lotte be found at the back of this volume. RMN Tarkka. This cooperation has involved Newsletter is also already organizing another bringing together researchers linked to the special issue that centers on metrics and will Retrospective Methods Network (RMN) and appear already this winter. There is no doubt researchers involved in the events and that the RMN is vibrantly active and we at activities of OMV. More specifically, this RMN Newsletter are proud to be able to special issue has in its background the OMV’s participate, and to help by providing a panel of two sessions organized at the channel of communication and platform for American Folklore Society’s annual meeting discussion in order to promote and support in 2014 (Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A.), these activities. “Mythology as Cultural Knowing I: Texts, Beings, and Intersecting Categories; II: Frog Between Historical Experiences and Imaginal University of Helsinki 5 B T P ETWEEN EXT AND RACTICE Mythology, Religion and Research Reflections on Texts and Practices in Mythology, Religion, and Research: An Introduction Frog and Karina Lukin, University of Helsinki Mythology and religion in cultures through history, linguistics, literature studies, religious history have proven to have enduring interest studies, sociology and even psychology and for research. This interest was sparked to life semiotics – just to mention a few. Within the under the aegis of Romanticism, in the reflectivity of a Post-Modern environment, fascination of defining and affirming one’s modern reinventions of mythologies of the own culture through reflection on – and ‘other’ have come under scrutiny, from the sometimes the appropriation of – the ‘other’ use of mythology in the service of nationalism (e.g. Csapo 2004). The allure of both the to reworkings in popular culture. It also fantastic and horror has played its part, as became acknowledged that mythology was well as the intrigue held by the riddle of the not exclusive to the ‘other’: mythologies of other’s ‘belief’ that was somehow bound up current, scientific cultures also entered the with sometimes incomprehensible symbols field of discussion. Indeed, it is possible to and perplexing practices. This endurance has view the empirical testing of ‘myths’ on the brought us two centuries rich with intense popular television program Myth Busters as investigations – works, theories and methods yet another form of research on mythology. upon which current research builds – and yet Amid such breadth and diversity, the scope the new perspectives across each of those and aims of the present volume remain quite many decades has carried with it new narrow and modest. challenges, toppling methodological frame- The works collected here present a range of works that are ever being built up anew. views from different disciplines and scholar- Between Text and Practice: Mythology, ships looking at mythology and religion in Religion and Research has been developed to different historical periods. Emphasis is on wrestle with some of these topics, especially pre-modern cultures and religions linked to where they connect with retrospective methods. Northeast Europe, although this frame is Of course, research on mythology and expanded considerably as the time-depth is religion is vast and has advanced in increased owing to the sources available and unnumbered directions. It sought to explore the range of material under comparison. historical others that belong to the heritage of Although research presented here connects the past and cultural others that belong to the with, for example, ethnographic fieldwork, peripheries of the present. Theology entered archaeology and etymology, the contributions into the field of comparison as a frame of to Between Text and Practice: Mythology, reference for interpretation and gradually Religion and Research are generally united by blurred into an object of research, leading to working with written and oral textual the evolution of a field of religious studies. evidence. Studies and discussions range from Rather than a discipline crystallizing around concentration on the analysis of empirical mythology, however, its research has data to concentration on theory, methods, and remained distributed across disciplines, tools and concepts applied in research. A addressed in anthropology, archaeology, number of these discussions elucidate issues, ethnography and ethnology, folklore studies, biases and trends of interpretation that have 6 evolved in the research discourse itself. by RUDOLF SIMEK (cf. also af Klintberg Together, these works can be seen as offering 2010), or linked to a concern that those tools that can be used and further developed lacking social, economic, martial or political in research on these and other cultures. power might have recourse to supernatural means (cf. Stark 2006; Tolley 2009). These Texts and Sources factors make it important to consider potential Sources and how we relate them to the past factors in the context of the mythic discourse present challenges that have been subject to that gave rise to the source (cf. FROGA). ongoing reassessment across the history of Caution is also needed regarding the research. The discipline of philology emerged verisimilitude of descriptions, as underlined around precisely this topic and its offspring, by MATTHIAS EGELER: verisimilitude may in folklore studies, sought to overcome the fact represent contemporary folklore, such as corresponding methodological problems first legends of historical ‘pagan’ religious of oral texts, and then of oral-derived texts practices attached to the heritage of the resulting from fieldwork. The challenges are landscape (cf. af Klintberg 2010: 350, legend- manifold, and increase as the sources become type T62) or legends of practices of the historically remote, sparse, and offer minimal cultural ‘other’, such as Sámi shamanism information. These present first the problem (ibid.: 264–265, types M151–160). Such of a source’s specific representation of a text- circulating plots and motifs may be applied script of performance or description of according to broad, intuitive ontologies that religious practice, and then a secondary issue will generalize it to a category that includes of how the context-specific representation diverse cultures and religions that we would relates to the cultural phenomenon that it distinguish in research (cf. Frog & Saarikivi (potentially) represents, reflects or refers to. 2014/2015; Frog 2014a: 442–443), and such Especially early sources for the vernacular circulating stories of the ‘other’ are religions and mythologies of Northern Europe transferred and adapted to new groups as tend to offer only brief glimpses from the historical circumstances and contact situations perspective of a culturally and religious change (Tanghlerlini 1995). The issues of ‘other’. In practice, this means that the relating such evidence to particular cultures producers of these sources were constructing are increased by the ontologies operative in images of their own culture and practices in a research (FROGB), which may also presume dialectic with those that they sought to abstract and ideal categories of culture in earlier represent, inevitably affecting the elements historical periods. For example, research and features that they chose to foreground and tends to operate on the assumption that Celtic how these were interpreted (cf. Lindow 1995; and Germanic religions were as distinct FROGA; TARKKA – references to articles in this during the Iron Age as their languages, yet volume are indicated by the author’s name in SIMEK points out that the name or role SMALL CAPITALS). Such representations are designation of one purportedly Germanic almost inevitably ethnocentric, in the sense seeress may be etymologically Celtic, which that the producers of the texts view their own in turn produces questions of the degree to culture as superior (Lévi-Strauss 1952; de which the early source in which she appears Castro 1998). Whether Christian or Roman, reflects ‘Germanic’ religion according to the these were often written within a context of ontologies we tend to assume. It thus becomes uneven power relations, in which the author very important to bear in mind the possibility represented the dominant group that was still that these sources are presenting different in the process of seeking to extend and types of ‘lore’, and to be cautious about the exercise power over the ‘other’. However, categories that we assume both for the such representations might also be structured sources, and for our own research. by social apprehension and fear (cf. Hiiemäe Additional issues are entailed in religious, 2004), for example linked to historical events ritual and mythological texts. Texts circulated and encounters that threaten or contest those in written form may fossilize mythological power relations, as in a case brought forward conceptions and paradigms from the period 7 when they were entextualized while the Genres and Registers corresponding models of religion evolve around Valuable tools in approaching mythology and them, as in the case of the Hebrew Bible religion are the concepts ‘genre’ and ‘register’. addressed by ROBERT A. SEGAL. However, The term genre is especially associated with such formalized texts and their uses in folklore studies and literature studies, where it practice may become subject to variation is used to designate and distinguish text-type where a unifying administrative apparatus of categories or performance-type categories organized religion is not in place, as happened (e.g. Honko 1989). It is now normally used during the Soviet anti-religious campaigns with a distinction between etic genres, as discussed by NADEZHDA RYCHKOVA. Variation ideal constructs applied cross-culturally by a is still greater in wholly oral traditions, even researcher, and emic genres, as categories of where oral poems may be formally quite text type that are operative in a local stable in their social circulation. Particularly community and may be extensively inter- in medieval studies, there has been a long- penetrating (e.g. Ben Amos 1976; Tarkka standing tendency to conflate the isolated 2013). The term register has been developed transcription of such a text with tradition. through social linguistics and linguistic Especially in the evolving wake of Oral- anthropology, initially to refer to variation in Formulaic Theory (on which, see Foley 1988; language according to situation and Foley & Ramey 2012), perspectives on participant roles (esp. Halliday 1978). The variation have, however, been increasingly term’s use has gradually extended to the full penetrating into the discussion and into the range of resources for expressive behaviours ways scholars imagine such text-transcripts in that reciprocally function as models for those relation to what would certainly have been a behaviours (esp. Agha 2007). As each term multi-modal performance (e.g. Gunnell 1995). has extended its field of use, ‘genre’ and This does not mean that mythological stories ‘register’ have been inclined to converge and were not historically enduring – such endurance sometimes even become used more or less is unequivocally evident in the vast materials interchangeably. They nonetheless remain surveyed in the discussion of YURI E. complementary tools. Genre places emphasis BEREZKIN – but it does mean that caution is on textual products or performance wholes, needed when considering an isolated text- which in many cases entails informational artefact from the Middle Ages in relation to a content (e.g. a genre of epic cannot be defined tradition which it may (or may not) represent. independent of epic stories) or a performative In the present volume, discussions addressing enactment (e.g. a ritual performance as a such material tend to maintain a level of completed whole affects change in social, abstraction, looking at plots, motifs and images, physical or supernatural reality). Register rites and rituals that exhibit pattered recurrence places emphasis on expressive resources that across a corpus or corpora where they are may communicate the informational content or manifested in multiple context-specific accomplish an enactment but do not include entextualizations (e.g. LUKIN). However, these, and that may be used outside of the variation in those specific entextualizations context of producing generic products or even leads to another crux of analysis: the elements generically mixed products. (See also Frog of mythology and religious practice are 2015.) simultaneously polysemic (TARKKA) and The relevance of genre to studies of ambiguous (FROGA). This leads their particular mythology and religion has advanced semantics and meanings to be emergent in considerably especially across roughly the their specific relation to co-occurring signifiers past half-century. Although the term ‘myth’ is of the particular expression, performance or today quite flexibly applied to, for example, enactment (see further TARKKA). Thus, a text- ‘false beliefs’ (cf. Myth Busters), it was script of a mythological epic or ritual implemented as a term to talk about stories of performance provides challenges no less great non-Christian religions (FROGA). As such, it than texts that describe the religion and continues to be discussed and debated in beliefs of the ‘other’. terms of a genre of text type (see e.g. Briggs 8 & Bauman 1992). This, however, proves registers of mythology. However, it is problematic because cultural qualification as necessary to bear in mind that none of these ‘myth’ is centrally qualitative rather than formal registers form closed systems: as LOTTE (e.g. Doty 2000), which also problematizes TARKKA stresses, verbal art does not exist in viewing ‘myth’ strictly in terms of stories (cf. isolation from everyday speech, nor one genre Barthes 1972; FROGA). Nevertheless, genre in isolation from others, and the potential to remains an instrumental concept for discussing transpose generic strategies and their registers and distinguishing, for example, mythological provides a nexus of activity for the generation epics, incantations, prayers, shamanic songs and negotiation of meanings. Register provides and so forth, which may each have distinct a tool for distinguishing and talking about uses, social functions and relations. KARINA certain of these resources in relation to others. LUKIN illustrates how even across a group of The concept is still relatively young: its closely related genres of Nenets epic and potential has only begun to be widely tapped shamanic singing, common images and motifs and explored across roughly the past quarter- may exhibit conventionalized functions century, while its utility for the analysis and producing distinctive meanings within the exploration of mythology and religion is only different genres as contexts. EILA STEPANOVA just beginning to open (e.g. Stepanova 2012). & FROG correspondingly outline a structural However, it provides a potentially powerful distribution of Karelian oral genres and the complementary tool to genre. groups using them in transition rituals for an individual’s movement from one community Practitioners and Specialists into another. The frameworks of conventions Of course, mythology does not simply exist that structure a genre are also relevant to ‘out there’ in the ether: people must talk about assessing information presented in generic it, tell stories, use it in magic or ritual, and texts, as EGELER points out regarding Old structure their behaviours in relation to the Norse literature. Genre proves an important understandings that it entails – otherwise it tool for considering, among other things, the stops being told, stops being remembered, and variation of different elements of tradition disappears or changes into something else. across contexts of use and the distribution of The same is no less true of religion, which has functional or communicative labour across no reality independent of people practicing it, genres within a cultural environment (cf. whether in the present or historically. Indeed, Honko 1981), as well as considering how a participants in a religion may define it in source of a particular type may shape the terms of the social practices around which information about mythology or religion that their group identity is constructed (Bell 1992). we seek to extract from it. Advancing from the perspective that a register Register provides a complementary tool for may be considered not only in terms of formal attending to how a system of representation resources for expressive behaviour but also shapes what it represents or communicates, reciprocally a model for behaviour, FROG whether this is the linguistic register of a form proposes that: of verbal art or a broad performance register. religion can be broadly considered as a type Just as equivalent narrative elements may of register of practice that has developed vary in use according to genre (Honko 1981; through inter-generational transmission, is LUKIN), mythology becomes interfaced with characterized by mythology, and entails an the speech register and performative register ideology and worldview (FROG , p. 35). A associated with a genre, practice or set of This allows looking at, for example, practices. This interface has the outcome that Christians and non-Christians that share a mythology may vary considerably across common environment as performing their different registers and the genres or practices different religions and religious alignments as associated with them (see also Stepanova broad registers of practice. Of course, this 2012; FROGA). In parallel to the linguistic or broad register of practice would also entail speech registers of verbal art, FROG has numerous genres and registers of verbal art proposed analysing such variation in terms of and performance. Within this frame, it 9 becomes useful to underline that not all the otherworld was necessarily linked to ‘cult’ individuals will be equally competent in all practice. genres and registers (cf. Agha 2007). The It may also be important to distinguish a more socially centralized a practice is, and the potentially exclusive social position of cult more distinguished from unmarked daily functionary from a specialist institution based behaviours, the more concentrated the on specialized competence in particular ritual practice is likely to be in a specialist role. In technologies. In Karelia, for example, activities such cases, the majority of participants in the that we might interpret as ‘cult’ would be practices would be passive rather than active orchestrated by a much broader category of tradition bearers (cf. von Sydow 1948: 11– specialist,1 who would use his power as an 12), whereas the specialists are positioned as intermediary with the otherworld in a variety authorities in the practices, knowledge and of capacities (Siikala 2002). In shamanic use or negotiations of power (e.g. with the cultures, shamans are also generally defined in otherworld) that the practice entails. In other terms of institutional roles linked to techno- words, mythology and religion are simply logies rather than to cult per se. If viewed as a social phenomena linked to different genres broad register of practice, religion may and registers of practice; many genres and include cults and larger publically orchestrated registers are linked to varying degrees with events, but it also includes a diversity of specialist roles, and those specialists – not the specialists and ritual activities that are better genres – become nexuses of competence and approached on their own terms. For example, authority in mythology and religious practice. Karelian lamenters were ritual specialists in Specialist roles are necessarily bound up socially central, public funerary rituals. They not only with the social practices themselves acted in order to ensure that the deceased but also with the structures of society in would be integrated into the community of the which they function, and different areas of ancestors, as well as maintaining reciprocal ritual activity may be associated with different communication with the otherworld thereafter, specialists. Specialist roles in ritualized working for the benefit of both individuals activities draw great interest and attention, but and of the community (STEPANOVA & FROG, caution is needed not only in source-critical and works there cited). These practices might scrutiny of information on a specific case (cf. be framed in terms of a ‘cult of the dead’, but EGELER), but also on the inferences made such a frame would conceal as much as it about what the significance is of someone reveals about living practice. Similarly, being identified with such a social role driving religious practice and its priests from (SIMEK). Within a cultural environment, there the public sphere effectively drives that may be a variety of roles that specialize in religion into the private sphere, which may engagements with beings and forces of the entail non-specialists assuming specialist roles – unseen world. Researchers often begin from a becoming specialists for the community, as in more or less modern, Christian set of the case discussed by RYCHKOVA – in order categories like ‘priest’, ‘witch’/‘sorcerer’, that the essential rituals of lived religion are perhaps ‘healer’, and more recently ‘shaman’. maintained. Beginning from general and Individuals performing ritual activities or simplistic categories may be a practical otherwise acting as intermediaries with the reality, but the dynamics of religion in social supernatural then get grouped into these practice only exceptionally reduce to simple simplistic categories, which can be hazardously black and white terms. misleading. A factor that is easily confused in this regard, as in the cases discussed by Knowledge and Imagination SIMEK, is whether or not the role is identified Mythology can be approached as a category with a formalized function in cult practice, of knowledge (cf. Doty 2000: 55–56). This orchestrating and/or mediating interactions with may be knowledge of the past and future a god or gods at the center of the religious life beyond the present world, or knowledge of of a community. Not every intermediary with the social, empirical and supernatural worlds along with the paradigms whereby they are 10