Fibula, Fabula, Fact

Fibula, Fabula, Fact PDF Author: Joonas Ahola
Publisher: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura
ISBN: 9522227641
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
The chapters of Fibula, Fabula, Fact – The Viking Age in Finland are intended to provide essential foundations for approaching the important topic of the Viking Age in Finland. These chapters are oriented to provide introductions to the sources, methods and perspectives of diverse disciplines in a way that is accessible to specialists from other fields, specialists from outside Finland, and also to non-specialist readers and students who may be more generally interested in the topic. Rather than detailed case studies, the contributors have sought to negotiate definitions of the Viking Age as a historical period in the cultural areas associated with modern-day Finland, and in areas associated with Finns, Karelians and other North Finnic linguistic-cultural groups more generally. Within the incredible diversity of data and disciplines represented here, the Viking Age tends to be distinguished by differentiating it from earlier and later periods, while the geographical space is quite fluidly defined for this era, which was long before the construction of modern nations with their fenced and guarded borders. Most significantly, the contributions lay emphasis on contextualizing the Viking Age within the complexities of defining cultural identities in the past through traces of cultural, linguistic or genetic features. The volume opens with a general introduction to the topic that is intended to provide a frame of reference for discussion, paralleled by a closing afterward. The following chapters are organized according to three thematic sections which reflect the three aspects of any discussion of the Viking Age in Finland: Time, Space, and People – because any discussion of the ‘Viking Age’ in ‘Finland’ is necessarily concerned with individuals, societies and cultures.

Fibula, Fabula, Fact

Fibula, Fabula, Fact PDF Author: Joonas Ahola
Publisher: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura
ISBN: 9522227641
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 520

Get Book Here

Book Description
The chapters of Fibula, Fabula, Fact – The Viking Age in Finland are intended to provide essential foundations for approaching the important topic of the Viking Age in Finland. These chapters are oriented to provide introductions to the sources, methods and perspectives of diverse disciplines in a way that is accessible to specialists from other fields, specialists from outside Finland, and also to non-specialist readers and students who may be more generally interested in the topic. Rather than detailed case studies, the contributors have sought to negotiate definitions of the Viking Age as a historical period in the cultural areas associated with modern-day Finland, and in areas associated with Finns, Karelians and other North Finnic linguistic-cultural groups more generally. Within the incredible diversity of data and disciplines represented here, the Viking Age tends to be distinguished by differentiating it from earlier and later periods, while the geographical space is quite fluidly defined for this era, which was long before the construction of modern nations with their fenced and guarded borders. Most significantly, the contributions lay emphasis on contextualizing the Viking Age within the complexities of defining cultural identities in the past through traces of cultural, linguistic or genetic features. The volume opens with a general introduction to the topic that is intended to provide a frame of reference for discussion, paralleled by a closing afterward. The following chapters are organized according to three thematic sections which reflect the three aspects of any discussion of the Viking Age in Finland: Time, Space, and People – because any discussion of the ‘Viking Age’ in ‘Finland’ is necessarily concerned with individuals, societies and cultures.

Fibula, Fabula, Fact

Fibula, Fabula, Fact PDF Author: Clive Tolley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789522226228
Category : Archaeology
Languages : en
Pages : 519

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Book Description
The chapters of Fibula, Fabula, Fact - The Viking Age in Finland are intended to provide essential foundations for approaching the important topic of the Viking Age in Finland. These chapters are oriented to provide introductions to the sources, methods and perspectives of diverse disciplines in a way that is accessible to specialists from other fields, specialists from outside Finland, and also to non-specialist readers and students who may be more generally interested in the topic. Rather than detailed case studies, the contributors have sought to negotiate definitions of the Viking Age as a historical period in the cultural areas associated with modern-day Finland, and in areas associated with Finns, Karelians and other North Finnic linguistic-cultural groups more generally. Within the incredible diversity of data and disciplines represented here, the Viking Age tends to be distinguished by differentiating it from earlier and later periods, while the geographical space is quite fluidly defined for this era, which was long before the construction of modern nations with their fenced and guarded borders. Most significantly, the contributions lay emphasis on contextualizing the Viking Age within the complexities of defining cultural identities in the past through traces of cultural, linguistic or genetic features. The volume opens with a general introduction to the topic that is intended to provide a frame of reference for discussion, paralleled by a closing afterward. The following chapters are organized according to three thematic sections which reflect the three aspects of any discussion of the Viking Age in Finland: Time, Space, and People - because any discussion of the 'Viking Age' in 'Finland' is necessarily concerned with individuals, societies and cultures.

On the Legacy of Lutheranism in Finland

On the Legacy of Lutheranism in Finland PDF Author: Kaius Sinnemäki
Publisher: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura
ISBN: 9518581509
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
This volume analyses the societal legacy of Lutheranism in Finland in broad terms. It contributes to the recent renewed interest in the history of religion in Finland and the Nordic countries by bringing together researchers in history, political science, economics, social psychology, education, linguistics, media studies, and theology to examine the mutual relationship between Lutheranism and society in Finland. The two main foci are (i) the historical effects of the Reformation and its aftermath on societal structures and on national identity, values, linguistic culture, education, and the economy, and (ii) the adaptation of the church – and its theology – to changes in the geo-political and sociocultural context. Important sub-themes include nationalism and religion, the secularization and institutionalization of traditional values, multiple Protestant ethics, and long continuities in history. Overall the book argues that large changes in societies cannot be explained via ‘secular’ factors alone, such as economic development or urbanization, but that factors pertaining to religion provide substantial explanatory power for understanding societal change and the resulting societal structures.

Storied and Supernatural Places

Storied and Supernatural Places PDF Author: Ülo Valk
Publisher: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura
ISBN: 9522229946
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
This book addresses the narrative construction of places, the relationship between tradition communities and their environments, the supernatural dimensions of cultural landscapes and wilderness as they are manifested in European folklore and in early literary sources, such as the Old Norse sagas. The first section “Explorations in Place-Lore” discusses cursed and sacred places, churches, graveyards, haunted houses, cemeteries, grave mounds, hill forts, and other tradition dominants in the micro-geography of the Nordic and Baltic countries, both retrospectively and from synchronous perspectives. The supernaturalisation of places appears as a socially embedded set of practices that involves storytelling and ritual behaviour. Articles show, how places accumulate meanings as they are layered by stories and how this shared knowledge about environments can actualise in personal experiences. Articles in the second section “Regional Variation, Environment and Spatial Dimensions” address ecotypes, milieu-morphological adaptation in Nordic and Baltic-Finnic folklores, and the active role of tradition bearers in shaping beliefs about nature as well as attitudes towards the environment. The meaning of places and spatial distance as the marker of otherness and sacrality in Old Norse sagas is also discussed here. The third section of the book “Traditions and Histories Reconsidered” addresses major developments within the European social histories and mentalities. It scrutinizes the history of folkloristics, its geopolitical dimensions and its connection with nation building, as well as looking at constructions of the concepts Baltic, Nordic and Celtic. It also sheds light on the social base of folklore and examines vernacular views toward legendry and the supernatural.

Divine Rulers in a Secular State

Divine Rulers in a Secular State PDF Author: Timo Kallinen
Publisher: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura
ISBN: 9522227935
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
The divine kingship and chiefship of the Asante people of central Ghana have been undergoing a shift towards secularization since the start of the colonial era. Timo Kallinen maintains that a close examination of this transformation provides us with a better understanding of secularization processes in Ghana more broadly, and in other post-colonial societies whose historical development likewise differs from that of the modern West, and which have largely confronted secular modernity through encounters with European colonialism. Throughout the volume secularization is understood as a process in modern society whereby divinity is separated from the ways in which both human society is regulated and physical nature is understood to function. Divine Rulers in a Secular State has been divided into three thematic parts, each with a short theoretical introduction. In the first two, analysis is primarily inspired by the work of Louis Dumont, while in the third the theoretical ideas of Webb Keane and Bruno Latour are of central importance. The undifferentiated order of the pre-colonial Asante kingdom, in which the chiefly and priestly functions of the rulers were not separated, comprises the initial focus. Sacrifices and marriage exchanges, both of which were directed at establishing and perpetuating relations between the living and the spirits of the dead ancestors, are posited as the most important responsibilities of the chief. Also explored are perceptions that the founding of the kingdom and its authority structure are the results of sacrifices offered to various gods by the Asante king and his chiefs. The second part examines the dissolution of the traditional order since the onset of British colonial occupation. The secularization process was initiated by the aspirations of colonial administrators and missionary bodies who aimed to maintain Christian converts under the ‘political’ authority of their non-Christian chiefs, who were still important ritual leaders. Consequently, it was necessary to start dividing society along ‘political’ and ‘religious’ lines so that only the former was a mandatory concern for all. The kernel of modern citizenship was planted at the same time as the ‘religious’ conscience of individuals started to shape their rights and duties towards their ‘political’ rulers. Furthermore, theories about Asante as a state based on contract and representation were proposed and developed. In the post-colonial era chiefship has been put into the service of the independent nation state – both as an instrument of administration and a nationalistic symbol, while, most recently, chiefs have been depicted as leaders in civil society, even receiving support from global developmental organizations. Yet traditional chieftaincy is strongly criticized by certain Christian groups belonging to the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement, which still see it as integrally linked to traditional cosmologies. The third part of the book takes the discussion beyond the separation of the categories of religion and politics. Secularization has also has also entailed the dematerialization of religion, establishing it as something that ought to be understood primarily as mental or spiritual; in a secular society ‘things’ like deities, witchcraft, or sacrifices should not be recognized as proper agents and actions at the level of immanent relations. In Ghana such views are effectively contradicted by religious groups which see spiritual forces as the most powerful agents in social relations. The cases discussed deal with attempted state control of anti-witchcraft activities, the efficiency of protective magic during political upheavals, and Pentecostal notions of demonic influences in secular politics. The Conclusions section brings the themes of the book together by discussing the large-scale effects of the secular project in contemporary Ghanaian society. Research is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in Ghana in 2000–2001 and 2005–2006, data drawn from several archival sources located in Ghana and the United Kingdom, and the anthropological and historical literature on Ghana and the Asante.

Rhyme and Rhyming in Verbal Art, Language, and Song

Rhyme and Rhyming in Verbal Art, Language, and Song PDF Author: Venla Sykäri
Publisher: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura
ISBN: 951858589X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This collection of thirteen chapters answers new questions about rhyme, with views from folklore, ethnopoetics, the history of literature, literary criticism and music criticism, psychology and linguistics. The book examines rhyme as practiced or as understood in English, Old English and Old Norse, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Karelian, Estonian, Medieval Latin, Arabic, and the Central Australian language Kaytetye. Some authors examine written poetry, including modernist poetry, and others focus on various kinds of sung poetry, including rap, which now has a pioneering role in taking rhyme into new traditions. Some authors consider the relation of rhyme to other types of form, notably alliteration. An introductory chapter discusses approaches to rhyme, and ends with a list of languages whose literatures or song traditions are known to have rhyme.

Mythic Discourses

Mythic Discourses PDF Author: Frog
Publisher: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura
ISBN: 9522227633
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 487

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Book Description
Mythic discourses in the present day show how vernacular heritage continues to function and be valuable through emergent interpretations and revaluations. At the same time, continuities in mythic images, motifs, myths and genres reveal the longue durée of mythologies and their transformations. The eighteen articles of Mythic Discourses address the many facets of myth in Uralic cultures, from the Finnish and Karelian world-creation to Nenets shamans, offering multidisciplinary perspectives from twenty eastern and western scholars. The mythologies of Uralic peoples differ so considerably that mythology is approached here in a broad sense, including myths proper, religious beliefs and associated rituals. Traditions are addressed individually, typologically, and in historical perspective. The range and breadth of the articles, presenting diverse living mythologies, their histories and relationships to traditions of other cultures such as Germanic and Slavic, all come together to offer a far richer and more developed perspective on Uralic traditions than any one article could do alone.

Shadow Empires

Shadow Empires PDF Author: Thomas J. Barfield
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691253285
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
An original study of empire creation and its consequences, from ancient through early modern times The world’s first great empires established by the ancient Persians, Chinese, and Romans are well known, but not the empires that emerged on their margins in response to them over the course of 2,500 years. These counterempires or shadow empires, which changed the course of history, include the imperial nomad confederacies that arose in Mongolia and extorted resources from China rather than attempting to conquer it, as well as maritime empires such as ancient Athens that controlled trade without seeking territorial hegemony. In Shadow Empires, Thomas Barfield identifies seven kinds of counterempire and explores their rise, politics, economics, and longevity. What all these counterempires had in common was their interactions with existing empires that created the conditions for their development. When highly successful, these counterempires left the shadows to become the world’s largest empires—for example, those of the medieval Muslim Arabs and of the Mongol heirs of Chinggis Khan. Three former shadow empires—Manchu Qing China, Tsarist Russia, and British India—made this transformation in the late eighteenth century and came to rule most of Eurasia. However, the DNA of their origins endured in their unique ruling strategies. Indeed, world powers still use these strategies today, long after their roots in shadow empires have been forgotten. Looking afresh at the histories of important types of empires that are often ignored, Shadow Empires provides an original account of empire formation from the ancient world to the early modern period.

Literacy Skills as Local Intangible Capital

Literacy Skills as Local Intangible Capital PDF Author: Sofia Kotilainen
Publisher: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura
ISBN: 952222796X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This book studies the ”grey area” of the success story of rural lending libraries in the Nordic countries through the activities of people’s libraries in one area of Central Finland. The study explores the influence of social, cultural, geographical and economic phenomena, such as the spread of revivalist movements, on the reading habits of the local population and reveals interesting reasons why the establishment of elementary schools and popular libraries and the growth of functional literacy did not automatically increase the informational capital of the common people of remote regions or lead to their social advancement. This study represents a methodological experiment in describing the life history of a people’s library. The combination of collective biographical and transnational comparative methods with rarely utilized original sources in this study is innovative and has not been used before in Finnish historical research on functional literacy and popular libraries. The advantage of the comparison is that it reveals the attitudes to libraries that were characteristic of each of the cultures involved. For the people of the Finnish countryside in the late nineteenth century, libraries represented a way of acquiring new information that was still strange and unwelcome. The distribution of immaterial capital was extremely uneven with regard to age, gender and social rank. In the earlier Finnish research has not very often been analysed, how the communal status of the peasant reader and his or her personal networks in the local community affected the quality of his or her reading habits. This book shows, that the location of the library in its local community and on the other hand the status and position of its customers in their networks, had a great significance on the use of the library and thus to the improvement of reading skills.

Finnishness, Whiteness and Coloniality

Finnishness, Whiteness and Coloniality PDF Author: Josephine Hoegaerts
Publisher: Helsinki University Press
ISBN: 9523690736
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
This multidisciplinary volume reflects the shifting experiences and framings of Finnishness and its relation to race and coloniality. The authors centre their investigations on whiteness and unravel the cultural myth of a normative Finnish (white) ethnicity. Rather than presenting a unified definition for whiteness, the book gives space to the different understandings and analyses of its authors. This collection of case-studies illuminates how Indigenous and ethnic minorities have participated in defining notions of Finnishness, how historical and recent processes of migration have challenged the traditional conceptualisations of the nation-state and its population, and how imperial relationships have contributed to a complex set of discourses on Finnish compliance and identity. With an aim to question and problematise what may seem self-evident aspects of Finnish life and Finnishness, expert voices join together to offer (counter) perspectives on how Finnishness is constructed and perceived. Scholars from cultural studies, history, sociology, linguistics, genetics, among others, address four main topics: 1) Imaginations of Finnishness, including perceived physical characteristics of Finnish people; 2) Constructions of whiteness, entailing studies of those who do and do not pass as white; 3) Representations of belonging and exclusion, making up of accounts of perceptions of what it means to be ‘Finnish’; and 4) Imperialism and colonisation, including what might be considered uncomfortable or even surprising accounts of inclusion and exclusion in the Finnish context. This volume takes a first step in opening up a complex set of realities that define Finland’s changing role in the world and as a home to diverse populations.