Meditsiin on-line

The adaptation of information technology to everyday clinical practices coincided with the emergence of online databases, personal medical history and institutional information websites. One of the central issues in online medicine is source credibility. This paper overviews the types and communication of online medical information that have changed the logistics of doctor-patient communication. Inter-doctor communication also benefits from the possibilities for professional communication, and application of multiprofessional knowledge; it helps shape and unify professional terms and nomenclature, guarantees the confidentiality and security of data, while providing easy management of high-quality data; makes provisions for knowledge management and ambulatory e-services.The paper overviews the information portal Kliinik.ee (www.kliinik.ee, OÜ Tervisenõuanne) which shares medical information made available by medical professionals for non-medics, mostly for patients. The portal offers a range of e-medicine services, such as responses by specialists, psychologists, pharmacists. The Communication groups offer the patients free medical advice, feedback, a second opinion to their treatment scheme, as well as an opportunity to share knowledge and their personal experiences, and receive emotional support. Writing therapy is becoming increasingly popular and has spontaneously moved online. Today, there are discussion forums available for people suffering from diabetes, cancer and other serious (or incurable) medical problems. The Internet is in manyrespects advantageous for this type of therapy: it provides an opportunity to establish a dialogue with others with a similar condition while protecting one’s privacy and anonymity. Medical professionals post comments under their own names which gives them credibility.Seeking medical help at an institutional site from practising doctors makes the language use and attitudes of the online forum official, polite and serious. A closer look at the construction and vocabulary of the doctor-patient communication act reveals that the most common features are formality and distancing – the partners are not equal in their sociopolitical standing. Inter-patient discussion groups are more varied in their style of communication and language use, ranging from informational notices to narratives and displays of emotion. A discussion concerning a visit to a folk healer is treated at more length. Interaction of this kind is a discussion that preserves the individual characteristics of many people in writing. Opinions are individualised, making the discussion similar to oral dialogue in which different strategies are used in reasoning. The posted messages reflect natural personal language use in forms ranging from informational notices to lengthy narratives. The general attitude is supportive and trusting towards official medicine and the personal reactions to social and situational events. A medical discussion board comprises a conditional group that does not form a network or community but engages in a dialogue to obtain and provide expert opinion. Users of patients’ discussion group and their narratives have a close connection to reality. The Internet offers the users new ways to share their practices and experiences and sometimes supports or even provides alternatives not available in offline reality. Such groups are based on information sharing and narratives and play an important role in maintaining emotional stability

The Contemporary Museum as a Site for Displaying Values

Museums constitute an important cultural and social resource. The main objective of museums is making certain objects in the collection visible or, on the contrary, leaving them invisible. In contemporary society the institution serves many important roles, being a place for displaying historical and contemporary values, an institution for preserving and displaying personal and collective memory, cultural values, for collecting tangible and intangible values, an institution for creating identity and ethnic kudos, a work place, an educational environment, a framework for promoting ethnic handicraft and art, a place for integrating different folklore festivals, exhibitions, shows; they are connected to tourism patterns and museum business. The article reflects the changes in the development of museums in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, focusing on the main key words being multifunctional museum, the museum as an open classroom, presentation of tangible and intangible history, the relation and mergence of permanent and temporary exhibitions. The issues of digitalization and preservation and the role of the exhibition curator and the person represented on displays have increased in the museology of the past few decades. The museums’ tradition of self-replication and an increased interest in museological anthropology indicate that museums fulfil an important role in society

Slovaki (ja natuke läti) folkloristikast konverentsikülalise pilguga

On October 23.-26, 2002 the international conference Traditional Culture as a Part of Cultural heritage of Europe. Presence and perspective of Folklore and Folkloristics, was held in Bratislava, Slovakia. Interdisciplinary questions on folklore and folklorism brought together folklorists from Slovakia, Norway, Estonia, Hungary, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Chekhia, Austria, etc

The Theme of the Exodus in Russian Folklore: The “Pharaoh” Mythical Creatures, According to the Archive of the Estonian Literary Museum

In this article, we will consider the Russian folklore retellings of the Exodus, with special emphasis on the narratives about mythical creatures called “pharaohs”. The current analysis is based on a Russian collection of folklore. The data were collected in the 1920–‘40s in the territories of Estonia, Russia, and Latvia (Lutsi region, Estonian settlement) in the context of Slavic belief systems and legends about these characters. Currently, folklore materials are stored in the archive collection of the Estonian Literary Museum (ELM) (Tartu), and in the Skriptoorium. The article gives an overview of the most characteristic motifs, the origin, appearance, and habitat of these mythical creatures. The actions of the Pharaohs are described in more detail

Äksi nõid – nõukogude aja selgeltnägija

This article is about the constellations in which communities accept extraordinary personalities and the traditional clairvoyant/witchcraft narratives. The person under discussion is the witch of Äksi, Hermine Elisabeth Jürgens (1892–1976), one of the best known Estonian 20th-century clairvoyants. In Estonian, the word nõid (‘witch’) is still used by the general public (a witch is a person with extraordinary powers, a healer, a wise(wo)man). During the Soviet period and also later, the term nõid was construed as an important keeper and interpreter of national knowledge. The article focuses on the life of the witch of Äksi and the corpus of narratives that talk about her, discussing the most common subtopics of narratives and motifs that have led to the folklorisation or narrativisation of her life. The narratives are divided into oral biographies, patient or client narratives (among which stories of divination stand out), and a smaller corpus, which contains the occurrences of the narrativisation of a person. The witch of Äksi was a city-born urbanite, who adapted to country life and unfamiliar socio-political circumstances. The narratives reflect the traditional duties of a witch/clairvoyant: looking for missing family members; searching for criminals or missing people in co-operation with the authorities; looking for stolen goods and animals; helping with matters of love and family relations; predicting one’s future and fate; healing, and single political prophesies

Loitsud ja rahvaarstid Virumaal

On the basis of Virumaa material, the article discusses healing words as well as charms that were used to regulate communication between human beings and the world of spirits. Healing words richly varied in form made use of fragments of prayers, Bible texts, and hymnals, and were based on legend material, allusions, and mythic worldview. The article gives an overview of a) the relationship between oral and written lore in charm tradition, connections with fictional and real books of wisdom; b) exchange of language codes; c) regulations of word-magic behaviour; d) healing charms and charms regulating social relations, housekeeping, and humans’ relationship with nature. The second half of the article discusses changes in healers’ healing tradition. During the past century, folk medicine integrated knowledge from different schools, and the importance of alternative and complementary medicine, such as yoga, Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, and music therapy (most of these cosmopolitan), increased. So we can conclude that cosmopolitan folk medicine exists side by side with official medicine. Another significant trend rising to the fore highlights the importance of local folk medicine, which emphasises traditional values and creates novel cultural interpretations. To characterise the changes, the article introduces four healers, ranging from a half-mythic witch-herder to the healers-innovators of medical methods and local culture

The Treasure-bearer in East Slavic and Finno-Ugric Contexts

The goal of this article is to conduct comparative and structural-semantic research into belief narratives concerning flying serpents and treasure-bearers in East Slavic (Belarusian, Estonian Russian, other Slavic traditions) and Finno-Ugric (Estonian, Votic, Livonian, Finnish, Vepsian) regions related to Baltic and Scandinavian beliefs. The source material was collected between the 19th and 21st centuries. Based on the available materials, a character profile was created with respect to the following features while describing a flying serpent and a treasure-bringer: description of the origin (how and from whom the supernatural being originates), general forms of appearance, aspects of time and location, as well as the creature’s behaviour (active/passive; rituals) and genre affiliation (the process of storytelling, perception of the character).Namen tega članka je primerjalna in stukturalno-semantična raziskava narativov verovanja v leteče kače in zakladonoše na vzhodnoslovanskih (beloruskih, estonsko ruskih, drugih slovanskih) in ugrofinskih (estonskih, votskih, livonskih, finskih, vepskih) območjih ter povezanosti teh narativov z baltskimi in skandinavskimi verovanji. Gradivo je bilo zbrano med 19. in 21. stoletjem. Sodeč iz razpoložljivega gradiva, je bil lik ustvarjen z opisovanjem lastnosti leteče kače in zakladonoše: izvora (kako se je nadnaravno bitje rodilo in kdo ga je rodil), splošnih pojavnih oblik, časovnih in krajevnih vidikov, obnašanja (aktivno/pasivno; obredi) in žanrske pripadnosti (proces pripovedovanja zgodb, percepcija lika)

Saatekirjaga rahvaarsti juures

The article discusses one of the healing strategies used by Laine Roht, a well-known folk healer from southern Estonia, in the 1980s; namely, she demanded that the patients turning to her bring a referral letter from their doctor. This kind of behaviour was a response to the state’s prohibition of folk medicine methods, and aimed to promote the image that the healer worked in cooperation with professional physicians. These referral letters from medical doctors as well as other written documentation concerned with healing constitute interesting folkloric and psychological research material. The article gives an overview of the healing rituals applied to the patients, diagnoses with which they turned to the healer, the origin of both doctors and patients, and the role of printed materials in the 20th-century healer’s tradition and her healing ritual. The author also characterises contemporary media images of healers and the role of the media as basis for the healer’s fame

Druže Tito, Sveti Rilski. Sissevaateid tänapäevasesse palverännakute traditsiooni

Catholic abbeys destroyed during the 16th century reformation, as well as Orthodox abbeys abandoned in the 20th century, have recently become the centre of restoration movement in Estonia. Various institutions and people have contributed to the reviving of catholic-style pilgrimages, which are both organised institutionally and undertaken privately, sometimes differing from a sightseeing tour mainly in name. As the Estonian pilgrimage culture is re-arising, it is characterised by its oecumenical nature. In Estonia, the tradition of pilgrimages has been historically continuous only to the Orthodox abbeys of Kuremäe and Petseri (Pechory). Everything else is religion tourism. Both private and organised treks involve a geographically wide scope outside Estonia.The following pilgrimage destinations are compared: a) the Svete Gore sacral complex in Slovenia – a reanimated religious Catholic centre, b) key Orthodox centres in Bulgaria: the abbey and chapel of Rila Ivan, carrier of national identity, symbolic of religious continuity throughout the Middle Ages and modern times, and ancient cultural and religious sites of Momchilovtsi village chapels. The latter with its sacral architecture represent an expression of personal perception of religion, used as a building ground for tourism, specifically a village environment living off on religion tourism. The newest layer, the so-called secular pilgrimage sites, in which celebrations include many traits of festivals, is found in Kumrovec, where a monument was erected at the birthplace of Josip Broz Tito, the former president of Yugoslavia.The revival of pilgrimages shares many common traits in post-socialist countries. Of particular interest is the integration of existing and created natural and other sacred sites in the culture of new spiritual and religious movements

Estonian Teachers’ Day – October 5. From 1960s to Nowadays

Teachers’ Day is celebrated globally on various days of the year. The official celebration began either in 1965 or earlier. UNESCO established the World Teachers’ Day in 1994 to focus on work and achievements of teachers. Teachers’ Day has been celebrated at schools in Estonia since the 1960s. At that time, the best students became teachers, and lessons were given primarily to younger classes and at basic school. The newer rules in the 1990s became much more exciting, according to which teachers really changed roles with students (embodied as students), disguised themselves, and chose a certain style. Behavioural patterns and norms also become free: teachers live out by teasing: scattering paper planes, disturbing lessons, talking and being naughty, do not bother to answer. But students may also be shown what their teachers are like outside school: talented musicians, performers, experimenters, and so on. At the end of the day, they can return to the original rules: a coffee table made by students and flowers for teachers, a visit from the rural municipality, city government or education department, and congratulations. In addition, and above all, this is a day where teachers are excited because they are just great. We see many rapid role changes, changes in norms, parody and ridicule, black humour along with the implementation of various scripts