Some of the most recent articles from open access anthropology journals (beta)
In this article I explore the evolving relationship the Finnish poet and journalist Aarni Kouta had to the mythological character of Lucifer over his lifetime. Kouta was a prominent figure in the early-twentieth-century Finnish cultural sph…
In this article I examine how Elsa Heporauta (1883–1960) produced, interpreted and circulated esoteric knowledge in early-twentieth-century Finland, situating her work within a vibrant esoteric milieu. Drawing on archival notebooks, manuscr…
This is the editorial for the special issue ‘The Legacy of Lauri Honko: Contemporary Conversations’.
Lauri Honko (1932–2002), the Finnish professor of folkloristics and comparative religion was a prolific and multi-talented researcher, whose topics of research ranged from the study of folk beliefs, folk medicine and Ingrian laments to the …
Greed, or avarice, is one of the cardinal sins. Protestant Swedish Finn folklore demonstrates expressions of greed, even if the actual term is not mentioned. In folk religion Christian norms and values are combined with elements of folk bel…
The aim of this paper is to examine how the Albanian epic known as the ‘Cycle of the Frontier Warriors’ has been presented in Albanian folklore collections. I will examine seven written versions of the song ‘The Wedding of Ali Bajraktari’, …
The present paper examines interethnic and interreligious values in Turkish and Crimean folk legends. The folklore of both Crimea and Turkey has a multicultural background, which makes both corpuses of texts suitable for research. In the co…
This article examines lessons which can still be learned from Professor Lauri Honko’s research and writings, particularly for those working at the interstices of folklore and religious studies who appreciate the mutually enriching relations…
Vernacular religion connected with the clan was expected to adapt in the context of globalisation and the vanishing ideals of traditional (tribal) societies. But at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries a revival of European …
The article presents the object and results of a study which combines the psychology of religion and folkloristics in the form of a qualitative analysis of empirical ethnographic material compiled from sources in a local neo-charismatic con…
In this article some aspects of Tolkien’s work with regard to his relationship to folklore and nationalism are presented. It is also argued, contrary to Lauri Honko’s view of literary epics, that pre-literary sources constitute a problem fo…
This article aims at defining a privately-owned manuscript from the end of the eighteenth century; a notebook of charms, recipes and ritual prescriptions, presumed to be connected with known manuscripts of magic, that were kept secret and h…
In Ireland the creation of one of the world’s largest collections of oral traditions by the Irish Folklore Commission (1935−70) was intimately bound up with the declining fortunes of the Irish language as a spoken vernacular and the young i…
In this article the author briefly examines three cases that represent Lauri Honko’s views on the textualisation of oral epics. Furthermore, these examples offer an insight into the concept of the paradigm, which was a key concept for Lauri…
This article aims at tracing the roots of the theoretical concepts developed by Lauri Honko in his research on epic: what were his main sources in theoretical thinking, how did he apply and develop concepts formulated by authors such as Alb…