Keywords: Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore, Jaan Jõgever, folklore, history of folklore studies
In Estonia, higher education in the vernacular became accessible in 1919. This was also the year when a folklore department was established at the University of Tartu, providing three-level education in folklore and enabling acquisition of both master’s and doctoral degrees. Previously (1803–1919) knowledge of Estonian culture had been transmitted to Tartu students by the lecturer of the Estonian Language. In 1909 Jaan Jõgever (1860–1924) was elected to the post. He did four lectures a week, one of which was dedicated to folklore, in particular to tale…

Keywords: place-lore, history of folklore studies, cultural identity, interdisciplinarity, ­Estonian Folklore Archives
The article discusses the necessity of place-based tradition as a multidisciplinary thematic area. A survey is given of the value of place-lore, including place legends, as a subject of research in Estonian folklore studies, beginning from the early days of folklore collection in the late 19th century until today. The concept of place-lore came to broaden the earlier genre- and text-based approach in the early 1990s, right after Estonia had regained its independence, when various paradigm shifts were due in science, as well as in society. This was also…

Keywords: reference, anaphora, demonstratives, personal pronouns, Estonian
This study focuses on reference in the Estonian language by taking an experimental approach to spatial and discourse reference. The aim is to reveal what is the inventory of referential devices in Estonian, and whether there are context-related factors that influence the choices made when referring. In particular, the data from two tasks are analysed. In the spatial setting, participants were asked to describe the surroundings by referring to large visible referents, i.e. houses. In the discourse setting, participants had to narrate a story based on a picture book by referring to animate and inanimate…

Keywords: World War II, diaries, gender history, ideology, Communism, subjectivity
This is the second part of an article that explores the 1941 diary of young provincial female Estonian Communist Luise Vaher (née Kapstas). The article focuses on the ideological and gender discourses in the diary and highlights its source value for the study of Soviet everyday life in general. Vaher evacuates to the Volga region with a mindset of a militant, true-believing Bolshevik, who labels everyday adversaries as “enemies of the people” and threatens them with the full potential of Soviet repressive power. Upon arriving in towns and cities on the…

Keywords: Mati Unt, literary realism, critique of ideology, Soviet-era urban literature
The aim of this article is to reinterpret the style and rhetoric of Mati Unt’s proseworks from the point of view of critique of various so-called everyday myths (“everyday mythology” also being the term title of Unt’s late essay-collections). The critical praise in Unt’s reception has revolved mostly around his unique ability to depict the most modern cultural trends, catchphrases and phenomena of his time. This talent of Unt has been explained by the author’s deep interest in myths and Jungian psychoanalysis. I propose, however, that the key author to…

Keywords: Vsevolod Vishnevsky, Mikhail Bulgakov, monuments and myths, Soviet ideology, Yevgeny Nikonov
The article discusses two episodes related to the name and appearance of a famous Soviet writer and a fierce apologist of the Soviet regime Vsevolod Vishnevsky (1900–1951), who stayed in Tallinn in the first months of the war between Hitler’s Germany and the USSR, as a war correspondent of the Baltic Fleet.
In the first episode, we consider an attempt to instal a memorial plaque to Vsevolod Vishnevsky in Tallinn in 1987. This intention rallied the Estonian intellectuals to seriously oppose the Soviet ideological doctrines and pressure from the centre.…

Keywords: syntax, word order, semantics, grammatical semantics, Estonian des-construction, Estonian mata-construction, Estonian maks-construction.
The relatively free Estonian word order is formed under the combined impact of certain pragmatic and syntactic principles: the word order is based on sentence information structure, but is also organized by the V2 constraint (see Tael 1988; Lindström 2017). Although there is extensive research on Estonian word order (see, e.g., Remmel 1963; Tael 1988; Lindström 2005), the word order in secondary constructions has not been studied in detail (except Martõkainen 2015). The article discusses the variation of word order in standard Estonian converb constructions, i.e. in the des-, mata- and maks-constructions functioning as free modifiers.…

Keywords: history of ideas, demon, artistic genius, modern genius, Estonian genius
The article aims to explore the etymology and semantics of the word ‘genius’, its history, meanings and uses. The concept manifests itself as a human aspiration towards self-sufficiency, a desire to solve the mystery of the human ideal.
The original antique meaning used to be ‘attendant spirit’, and as a genius could be either good or bad, the Middle Ages preferred speaking of guardian angels and demons, respectively. From the Late Middle Ages to the Early Renaissance the concept became increasingly associated with artists, particularly talented (‘ingenious’) poets. The 18th century introduces the…

Keywords: World War II, diaries, gender history, ideology, Communism, subjectivity
This article is based on the diary of a young Estonian provincial female party activist Luise Vaher (née Kapstas), in which she describes her evacuation to the Soviet rear following the German invasion of the USSR in the summer and fall of 1941. The diary offers a rare glimpse into the mindset of recently converted Estonian Communists and their shock in encountering the realities of Soviet everyday life. It shows how a young female Bolshevik is trying to make sense of the abject Soviet poverty and the brutal kolkhoz life, its…

Keywords: gender, body, Henri Bergson, organicism, modern female dancer, World War I
The aesthetic programme of Estonian modernist writer Johannes Semper (1892–1970) is permeated by ideas of holism and organicism. The article explores what could have motivated/reinforced such a value system and how it might have affected Semper’s representations of body and gender.
From the philosophical point of view Semper’s works have been moulded, firstly, by a cognitive strand of German romanticism called organicism, according to which an artistic achievement is also organic, i.e. coming from the living world. Accordingly, an authentic work of art cannot be divided without causing irreparable damage to the…

Keywords: apparent death, seemingly dead, legend, rumour, Lazarus syndrome, ­funeral, Enlightenment, 19th-century Estonian journalism, premature burial
Storylines associated with apparent death are known all over the world. Hardly any other subject or motif of folklore can offer a more coloured bouquet in genre than apparent death, ranging from fairy tales and romantic legends and narratives to rumours, ballads, and jokes. The earlier texts of our folklore archives date back to the late 1880s, but the vast majority of Estonian apparent death stories were collected in the second half of the 20th century. The historical origin of the stories of apparent death…

Keywords: publics, folklore collecting, Jakob Hurt, 19th century Estonia, vernacular literacy
The article focuses on the ambivalent relationship between the public space and the folklore collecting campaigns of the last decade of the 19th century. On the one hand, those campaigns were heavily embedded into public space as all information regarding the collecting as well as feedback to collectors was given through newspapers. But if we look at the position of ordinary collectors in regard of public space, the picture is much more ambivalent – though most of their writings failed to be published, they still seemed to regard writing in…

Keywords: children’s games, children’s culture, post-war period, Soviet cinema, Stalinist Estonia, trophy films.
The article discusses the media-inspired games played by Estonian children in the 1950s. The source material comes from the relevant essays sent to the competition of collecting children’s games, which was organized by the Estonian Folklore Archives at the Estonian Literary Museum. Besides describing their childhood activities the contributors had managed to explain, discuss and contextualize the games. Also, some essays on the topic “Cinema in my life” by the participants of the biography writing group were used. The authors of the essays, having chosen a child’s point of…