Data Collecting and Research of Folk Medicine in Estonia During the Soviet Era

Folk medicine in Estonia has been studied more thoroughly within the last 30 years. Still, the respective data has always been on the folklorists’ work-list, when publishing questionnaires or going out on fieldwork. It has to be taken into consideration that the times were hard for folkloristics both during the Soviet occupation in 1940–1941 and the German occupation in 1941–1944. Also the new political situation had its demands on scholarly research throughout the second Soviet occupation in the years 1945–1991. Nevertheless, by far the biggest collection campaign of Estonian folk medicine took place in 1959. Focused interest of folklorists in this topic grew significantly in the 1970s and 1980s, the last decades of the Soviet era, when official access to folk healers was allowed and New Age phenomena spread. The article is an abridged version of a chapter in an upcoming doctoral dissertation analysing the collecting and research of folk medicine in Estonia in the 20th century

Intervjuu maailmakuulsa saksa folkloristi Rolf Brednichiga

Interview with Rolf Brednich summarizes his views and memories on his interest and career in folkloristics, participations in the ISFNR Congresses and an evaluation of the situation of folkloristics in Germany and abroad. By Ave Tupit

MD Voldemar Sumberg and the Folk Medicine Collection of the Estonian Museum of Hygiene from the 1920s and 1930s

Based on the documents preserved in several museums and archives in Tartu and Tallinn (the Estonian Health Care Museum, the Estonian State Archives, the Estonian Historical Archives, the Estonian Folklore Archives and the Estonian National Museum), the article will give an overview of the views of the director of the Estonian Museum of Hygiene, Voldemar Sumberg, on the relationship between folk medicine and modern medicine; the data on folk medicine collecting campaigns with Sumberg's involvement in the 1920s; and the fate of the folk medicine records and items collected by the Museum of Hygiene during the 1920s and 1930s, according to the documentation and archival material found so far

Müütides leidub ka kauneid motiive Intervjuu arheoloogiadoktor Juri Berezkiniga

Yuri Berezkin, who is married to an Estonian woman and speaks Estonian freely, is head of the American Department of the St. Petersburg Ethnographical Museum. He has conducted considerable fieldwork in Turkmen, and when travelling there became too complicated he turned to folklore studies and has been actively involved in compiling a digital database of myth motifs for years. The database contains only motifs of particularly wide spread. Interviewed by Ave Tupits

Šoti ballaadidest traditsioonilise kosmoloogia ja rituaalse aastani. Intervjuu Emily Lyle'iga.

Interview with Emily Lyle at the 14th Congress of the ISFNR, 27 July 2005, Tartu. Emily Lyle from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, speaks about two main lines in her research activities – editing 19th-century and early 20th-century Scottish ballads and songs and studying the element of the supernatural in fairy ballads, and how these evolved into the study of ritual year. Lyle introduces her two favourite fairy ballads categorised as the Child Ballads, speaks about scholarly influences on her work and current activities at the university and as the president of Traditional Cosmology Society and her fieldwork in Scotland and Australia. Interviewed by Ave Tupits