{"title":"Sacred Footwear: Latvian Perceptions in the 19th Century and Today","authors":"Ieva Pīgozne","doi":"10.7592/ybbs7.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ybbs7.08","url":null,"abstract":"This article sheds light on previously overlooked perceptions of Latvian traditional footwear and demonstrates how both the material of the footwear and the way of obtaining it determined whether shoes were considered sacred and pure or sinful and unlucky. An analysis of folklore texts and the results of a contemporary survey show that wooden shoes made of bast were looked upon as sacred and pure, as opposed to leather which was considered impure. Bast shoes are the cheapest to make, yet historical records from central Latvia show that they were worn for weddings. Peasants did this to ensure success for the couple, suggesting that the choice of footwear was determined by some mythological meaning and not only by practical or financial considerations. Though some new developments can be observed, many modern Latvians tend to sympathize with the perceptions documented a century ago. This allows for estimates of the significance of these perceptions in previous centuries.","PeriodicalId":36227,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of Balkan and Baltic Studies","volume":"1 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141846384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Plague shirt” and plague commemoration: mythological representations and ritual practices associated with the personification of the Plague among the Romanians of Oltenia and Timok Valley","authors":"N. Golant","doi":"10.7592/ybbs5.09","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ybbs5.09","url":null,"abstract":"The article considers mythological representations and ritual practices associated with the personification of the plague among the Romanians of Oltenia (Romania) and the Romanians (or Vlachs) of the Timok Valley (Serbia). It is based on materials from the author’s field research in southwestern Romania and eastern Serbia. The custom of organising the plague commemoration on different calendar dates is analysed. Along with it, the author consistently examines the ways of making a “plague shirt” (Rom. cămaşa ciumii), the spread of this ritual practice, and the contexts of its use as a protection against diseases (plague and cholera) and death during the war, as well as correlations between the practice of making a “plague shirt” and the custom of the plague commemoration.","PeriodicalId":36227,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of Balkan and Baltic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42826671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Managing the Menstrual Communication Taboo in Lithuania: Past and Present","authors":"Monika Balikienė, Jurgita Dečiunienė, V. Navickas","doi":"10.7592/ybbs5.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ybbs5.06","url":null,"abstract":"The paper is based on anonymous questionnaire surveys and interviews of women. One sample involved 423 young women (mean age: 21.04) surveyed by means of an anonymous questionnaire in 2016–2018. The survey produced a collection of 896 words and phrases used to denote menstruation. These lexical finds may be regarded as euphemisms/dysphemisms for taboo words representing an integral part of a secret language shared by women. Another sample involved 208 significantly older women (mean age: 73.66) interviewed individually in 2005–2012. The interviewing produced 117 lexical substituted for menstruation. This research is a part of a wider inquiry into the ways in which everyday practice, experience and knowledge affect the social and cultural constructions of menstruation. Seeking to record the widest possible range of popular knowledge and discourse about menstruation, including menstrual beliefs and practices, we shall try to interpret these data, focusing on how everyday experience, everyday knowledge, and encrypted language can shape behaviour, experience, and attitudes of contemporary people.","PeriodicalId":36227,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of Balkan and Baltic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45764773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘What Do You Mean by Calendar Holidays?’ – Towards the Nomenclature, Popularity and Research History of Annual Festivities in Lithuanian Ethnology","authors":"D. Senvaitytė","doi":"10.7592/ybbs5.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ybbs5.11","url":null,"abstract":"The historiographical paper focuses on the history of popular and academic research of calendar year holiday celebrations in Lithuania as well as on the classification and terminology used for defining them. Changes in relevant popular and academic interest, certain circumstances of the popularity of examining holidays and their customs are discussed, and scientific discourse is contrasted with public discourse. The cultural, social, and ideological circumstances of the development and dissemination of terminology related to the topic are explored. In addition, the influence of certain personalities and institutions that formed the terminology of calendar year celebrations will be reviewed. The paper is based on the analysis of academic and popular science literature, internet resources, as well as the public discourse of annual holidays.","PeriodicalId":36227,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of Balkan and Baltic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45413019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Eschatological Notions in Post-Socialist Bulgaria","authors":"Evgenia Troeva","doi":"10.7592/ybbs5.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ybbs5.05","url":null,"abstract":"The text presents the most popular ideas about the end of the world that spread in Bulgaria in the post-socialist period. In the years of transition after 1989, social and political changes, as well as an economic crisis, favoured apocalyptic expectations. In contrast to the past, when the religious explanation of the world’s end dominated, in contemporary times the apocalypse is more frequently related to cosmic and natural disasters or to the negative effects of human activity. A characteristic view of the end of the world is imagining it as a new beginning. In the present, there is also a transformation in the mechanism for shaping ideas about the end of the world. Modernization, globalization, and new technologies are changing both people’s daily lives and their ideas about the fate of the human world. After the boom of apocalyptic expectations in Bulgarian society at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, in recent years we have seen a rationalization of the eschatological notions and their close connection with ecological and political arguments.","PeriodicalId":36227,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of Balkan and Baltic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43469811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Estonian Teachers’ Day – October 5. From 1960s to Nowadays","authors":"M. Kõiva, A. Kuperjanov","doi":"10.7592/ybbs5.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ybbs5.12","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":36227,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of Balkan and Baltic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43776681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contested Memory: How Stalin is Framed by Contemporary Russia Media","authors":"I. Dushakova","doi":"10.7592/ybbs5.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ybbs5.03","url":null,"abstract":"The article discusses the ways the personality of Joseph Stalin was framed in the Russian media from February 2011 to February 2021. The data corpus was collected from the “Medialogia” media database using keyword searches. As a result of the framing analysis of the relevant media messages, four dominant types of Stalin’s personality framing were revealed: positive, negative, ambivalent, and corrective (devoted to the fight with myths about Stalin). Positive and negative ways of framing are used in the publications throughout the entire analysed period, while ambivalent and corrective appear in 2016–2017 only and show a slight shift toward more positive coverage of J. Stalin’s personality. Positive and negative framing are shown in a case study in a more detailed way. The case concerns the media coverage of the results of a public opinion poll conducted in 2019 by the Levada Center on the attitude of Russians towards Stalin. The analysis of this case shows that, despite the predetermined negative assessment of Stalin’s personality in the poll itself, media platforms can present positive framing to the audience. At the same time, the neutral transmission of information is used in some of the analysed texts, which shows avoiding evaluative framing in some publications. The article discusses framing devices used to achieve the necessary tone of the coverage.","PeriodicalId":36227,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of Balkan and Baltic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45863201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Meeting under the Plane Tree: Violation or Upholding of Tradition? The Ritual Year among the Himara Greeks","authors":"A. Novik","doi":"10.7592/ybbs5.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ybbs5.10","url":null,"abstract":"This study is dedicated to analysing the Himariot tradition of villagers meeting for coffee in the main square for the celebration of important feasts or family occasions. The cultural code of the population of Himara, which consists mostly of Orthodox Greeks and Orthodox and Muslim Albanians, has undergone major transformation in the twentieth century due to social and political reasons, including the persecution of religious institutions which reached its peak in the 1960s. Churches, formerly the main place for celebrating main feasts and family ceremonies as well as exchanging local news, were closed or destroyed. Instead, the café/kafenio/lokal in the center of the village (usually near the closed-down church) became the sacred meeting place for the villagers, while the barman/waiter/cook became the gatekeeper (according to the gatekeeping theory supported by the author), who allowed or refused to grant community members entrance to the inner circle (those who make the decision for the entire community). The transformations in the 1990s and 2000s gave a start to new or forgotten ritual practices and pastimes, as well as an entirely new organization of community life. The change of ritual practices was considerably influenced by: 1) the factor of prestige of the sacred locus in the people’s mind; 2) the revitalization of tradition starting in case of an intrusion in the people’s ritual sphere; 3) a conscious or unconscious wish of many of the communities to museify the past, in spite of the challenges of the present.","PeriodicalId":36227,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of Balkan and Baltic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48874589","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bulgarians in Morocco – Cultural Heritage and Sociocultural Interaction","authors":"Mariyanka Borisova Zhekova","doi":"10.7592/ybbs5.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ybbs5.02","url":null,"abstract":"The article focuses on migration and cultural heritage. It presents the processes of transmission and use of Bulgarian cultural heritage abroad. The study outlines the sociocultural interaction between the Bulgarian community in Morocco and the host society. The Bulgarian migrant community established in Morocco’s Kingdom mainly during the 1960s–1980s consisted mostly of professionals: hydro- and civil engineers, geologists, teachers, and architects. Their well-done work contributed to the excellent image of Bulgaria, and the Bulgarians in the receiving country are also present nowadays. At the same time, cases of Bulgarian immigration in Morocco due to mixed marriages could be observed. Although the Bulgarian community in this Maghreb country is not numerous (around 350–400 people), it is visible with a rich cultural calendar that includes sociocultural initiatives in the interaction with the host society. The Bulgarian migrants in Morocco do not have a formal organization. Meanwhile their community is proactive and consolidated around the Bulgarian Embassy. The Bulgarian school in various formats has been operating since 1986. A folk dance group was established in 2018. The paper attempts to answer why knowledge of Bulgarian traditions, folklore, history, and preservation of the Bulgarian language and cultural identity are important for the Bulgarian community in Morocco.","PeriodicalId":36227,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of Balkan and Baltic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44571407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Irina Sedakova, Mare Kõiva, Terry Gunnell, Žilvytis Šaknys, Laurent S. Fournier, Neill Martin
{"title":"Emily Lyle’s Jubilee","authors":"Irina Sedakova, Mare Kõiva, Terry Gunnell, Žilvytis Šaknys, Laurent S. Fournier, Neill Martin","doi":"10.7592/ybbs5.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ybbs5.14","url":null,"abstract":"On December 19, Dr Emily Lyle, Honorary Fellow at the Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies, in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh, celebrated her ninetieth birthday. Emily is a prominent folklorist, a researcher of ritual calendars, myths, astronomy, and cosmology, a semiotician and a typologist, a connoisseur of Scottish folklore and culture, just to mention a few of her fields of interest. To honour this outstanding scholar, who founded the SIEF (Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore) Ritual Year Working Group in 2004, the members of this academic community would like to share their reminiscences of Emily, along with a few words of homage and gratitude.","PeriodicalId":36227,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook of Balkan and Baltic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44129825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}