Keywords: ethnography, colonialism, Finno-Ugric peoples, Khanty, scull, artefacts
The idea of Finno-Ugric kinship is based on the linguistic affinity of the languages spoken by these peoples. The fact of Finno-Ugric linguistic affinity was academically established in the 18th century, and this inspired further scholarly searches for historical links between these peoples. Not only material and spiritual culture, but also the study of physical anthropology was regarded as potential sources for demonstrating the Finno-Ugric kinship and its historical developments. The focus of this article is on the darker side of tracing Finno-Ugric connections through material evidence. The quest for knowledge included search…

Keywords: Soviet camp literature, short story, picaresque, Jaan Kross, Rolf Hochhuth, life writing
The article deals with the experience of Gulag as reflected in Jaan Kross’s fiction, memoirs and letters from the camp, focusing on its fictional representation in his short stories. The article argues that Kross conveys his experience by using the conventions of the picaresque novel: a loose plot that is based on lucky coincidences and satire that is meant to criticise the power relations in the society. By comparing Kross’s representation to the canonical text about Soviet camp experience by Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov, the article shows that the…

Keywords: borrowings, corpus planning, foreign words, language contacts, loanwords, standardization, variation
The fixation of foreign word spellings should rather be based on usage. If actual usage demonstrates the users’ preference for a certain variant, there must be a reason worth closer examination. According to the present study, a reasonable quota to rely on in general dictionary work could be as follows: if a non-standard variant makes up at least 20% of total usage, both variants should be deemed equally acceptable.
So far, the parallel variants due to a shift of the primary stress in a foreign word have been usually accepted by…

Keywords: ethnographic texts, ethnology, female researchers, ethnic history, food culture
The article is focused on the research career of ethnologist Aliise Moora (1900–1996) in a changing society. The material is drawn from Moora’s research papers and the archival collections of the Estonian National Museum (including the materials personally collected by Moora), her work reports and correspondence, but also on various documents reflecting the activities of the museum. A closer look is given to her complicated adaptation to Stalinist cultural policy in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The authors analyse Moora’s way of text creation as well as how she worked…

Keywords: Juhan Liiv, Estonian poetry, literary theory, aesthetics, poetics, Friedrich Schiller
I explored Juhan Liiv’s understanding and definition of poetry. The starting point was above all his critical work, mainly his essay Marginalia, which he wrote towards the end of his life. I draw three main conclusions: (1) Liiv did not live in a cultural void. The material he read shows that despite his lack of formal education and his mental imbalances, he was able to delve deep into the German-language sphere of thinking, and doing so held significance for him. There is no reason to assume that his comprehension of…

Keywords: Finno-Ugric minorities, national politics, Finno-Ugric cooperation
Despite the continuing decline of the already small numbers of the Finno-Ugric peoples of the Russian Federation, the government makes efforts to prevent the development of education in their ethnic languages and teaching those languages. The few attempts of the Finno-Ugrians to stand up for their rights are dealt with as manifestations of separatism against the Russian state.
What is particularly repugnant to the Russian authorities is Finno-Ugric cooperation, which brings along distancing from the influence of Russian culture and a weakening of integration into the society meant to bear a Russian identity. Moreover, the…

Keywords: indigenous peoples, terms, language planning
In recent years, opinions have been divided over the meaning of the term põlis­rahvas ’indigenous people’. The article compares some foreign counterparts of the term, particularly those used in the UN official languages. As it turns out, the Estonian word has two meanings in the least, while international law interprets the word differently from general Estonian. In order to avoid future misunderstandings, Estonia should adopt a special term for use in international law. In my opinion the hitherto synonymous pärisrahvas could do nicely. Also, the term päriskeel could be introduced to replace põliskeel in the…

Keywords: multilingual users, multilingual university, higher education language policy, Estonian, English
In recent decades, the domination of English in higher education has triggered many language policy reactions from governments, universities, and language users. This paper examines the principles underlying the language choices of students and academic workers at a multilingual university to illuminate how top-down language policies could be developed to sustain the use of the local language. The study has been carried out at the University of Tartu, where Estonian and English are the dominant languages. The use of both is institutionally supported by the university and the state, although…

Keywords: Estonian language, dialects, primers, ethnofuturism, chronotope, idyll
In recent decades publication of primers in local dialects has flourished in Estonia. The reasons for this process are related to the availability of financial support shemes for advancing regional culture as well as to identity creation on a more specific (local) level than just national identity. There are nine dialect primers issued in Estonia in 1998–2021. The initial inspiration for compiling such books comes from the ethno­futurist movement, but the reasons for publishing efforts are multiple, mostly related to the felt need of promoting local identity. The article describes the ­primers…

Keywords: multilingualism, exophony, macaronic poetry, Estonian poetry, language contacts in literature, multilingual literary field
Apart from Estonian, some other language – from local dialects to major languages such as German and Russian – has usually been spoken in parallel on the Estonian territory. As a result, the literary culture of the local (small) language came to evolve in dense contact with some foreign literatures and cultures. However, there is still no thorough analysis of how the historical change in the linguistic situation manifests itself in Estonian literature. The aim of our article is to draw attention to the multilingual nature of…

Keyword: literature in Irish, minoritized languages, minority literatures, translation
This paper uses modern and contemporary literature in the Irish language to reflect on the creative potential of small or lesser-used languages. The paper gives a brief overview of the current status of the Irish language in Ireland and traces the major literary developments since independence. Despite its minoritized and endangered status, Irish continues to function as a vital literary medium, thus manifesting a creative and intellectual resistance to the forces of assimilation and homogenization. Drawing on some recent Estonian connections, attention is given to the importance of translation and cross-cultural dialogue…

Keywords: Meänkieli, minority language, grammaticography, language contact
Meänkieli is a Finnic language belonging to the Uralic language family. It is spoken in Sweden, where since 2000 it has had the status of an official minority language. Its estimates of the number of speakers range from 20 000 to 75 000. It is closely related to Finnish, and there is a great deal of mutual intelligibility between the two, although Finnish speakers may find it difficult to understand Meänkieli as it has many loanwords and constructions borrowed from Swedish, whilst for Meänkieli speakers Finnish comprehension may be hampered by colloquial Finnish and its standardization,…

Keywords: endangered languages, linguistic variation, mixed dialects, idiolects, ­Karelian language, Kola peninsula
Our research question is whether the remarkable morphological diversity observed in dying Finnic languages occurs just on community level, or is it also characteristic of the usage of a single speaker. To answer this question we take a closer look at idiolect variation in a hitherto unexplored variety of Karelian, namely, the Kolvitsa dialect spoken in the Kola peninsula. Examining lexical, morphophonological and morphological variation we focus on the possible reasons behind the use of parallel forms. We observe that lexical variation is often conditioned by dialect geography,…

Keywords: natural languages, pidgins, (re)constructed languages, language complexity, language decay
In this article it is discussed what the notion small language apart from its designation of a language with a small community of speakers may actually mean. A natural human language, which functions as a full-fledged means of communication, is never small. A language may have a comparatively small phoneme or case system, but the entirety of that language cannot be called small. However, reduction due to language decay, or restriction to certain functions as in case of pidgins, or incompleteness in case of constructed or reconstructed languages may indeed produce…

Keywords: language history, literary language, sublanguages
The article discusses the uses and opportunities of the Estonian language in the early modern times, focusing on the 17th and early 18th century. In the 18th century the Estonian territory was subjected to violent Christianisation by conquerors whose native language was German. The local elite was formed of native speakers of German (and in the 17th century, when the area was part of the Swedish Kingdom) also of native speakers of Swedish. The bearers of the traditional Estonian culture fell into the lowest social stratum. For centuries following the Reformation the Estonian literary language…

Keywords: language of history, Estonian terminology, cultural translation
This essay aims to discuss some aspects of the language used in the study of history. Similarly to other disciplines, historical research makes use of a specialized language. Writing about the past requires a distinctive style and specific genres. Widespread arguments identify historical writing with the narrative form, and thus attempt to equate historical text with literary artifact (White 1992). This general opinion, however, overlooks the specific features of historical texts, such as lexical and grammatical structures, inherent vocabulary, and academic conventions. The common language of history has points of contact with neighbouring…

Keywords: Baltic provinces, nation-building, Russian empire, glocality, transnational history, historiography
This article seeks to understand what a “glocal” approach to local history might add to the story of Estonia’s past. One of the aims in introducing the concept glocal into the social sciences and later also the humanities was to re-assess the duality of global and local processes which are seen as mutually constituent concepts (Victor Roudometof). In other words, a glocal approach deals with tendencies toward homogeneity and centralization that appear alongside tendencies toward heterogeneity and decentralization. As indicated in the article, this parallelism of directions can be observed in…