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The possibilities for using folklore in studying history are directly dependent on the raised problem. In memories about the distant past, reality and fiction are often mixed up, which is why historians may regard the reliability of such stories as low. Still, such folklore shows what was valued, which events were felt to be significant and important. For historians, problems have been posed by the reliability and difficulties in dating the lore. In connection with the emergence of microhistory, more and more attention is being paid to how and what people thought, and it is often very difficult to find answers to this question in written sources. This article observes the possibilities for using historical tradition in the studies of agrarian and settlement history and, more specifically, five narrow topics that concern border markers, the emergence of villages, land use in farms, inheritance matters, and beggars. Oral tradition about the founding of villages and farms and their first settlers is in most cases connected with the periods of war and the plague, immigration of people, or some other extraordinary event. Descriptions of everyday life, which are abundantly found in folk memory, usually speak about well known and familiar things. At the same time, they considerably help to broaden notions of the past and enable to find out the peasants’ attitudes towards and evaluations of one or another event or phenomenon. As a result of taking folklore into consideration, the picture of history becomes much more differentiated and colourful. The folklore that has been observed in this article is closely connected with the village society, and it primarily reveals notions connected with the farm people’s everyday life. Archive sources usually disclose them from quite a different point of view. As a result of the analysis, we have reached the conclusion that the best results are achieved when historical tradition is taken into account for relatively recent events, those that have happened since the second half of the 19th century, and under circumstances in which spatial relationships have not considerably changed. The use of earlier lore is more complicated, although it also enables us to see people’s attitudes, which gives a ‘soul’ to the discussed phenomena. The biggest difference is that archive materials, naturally, do not reflect the reasons hidden in the peasants’ mental world. Namely, this is why the use of folklore enables to provide important extra material for studying settlement and agrarian history, which supplements a rational picture about past events and processes, and enables to open up deeper backgrounds to what happened.

The aim of the paper is to analyse the collective expression of attitudes elicited by the doping scandal that concerned the esteemed Estonian cross-country skier and Olympic gold medal winner, Andrus Veer­palu. The paper provides an insight into the evolution of an athlete into a national hero on the Internet. The analysis is based on the material col­lected from Estonian online media during two years (from April 2011 to March 2013), when Andrus Veerpalu’s court case was actively followed by the Estonian sports circles and laymen alike. The data corpus includes the most relevant news texts published in the online news portal Delfi (www.delfi.ee), comments from the same online environment, posts from the Facebook fan sites, e.g., “We believe in Andrus Veerpalu”, etc. The doping accusation called forth a quasi-religious movement, which was built around the belief that the athlete was sacred and it was not allowed to attack or accuse him in any way. The main threads in the comments analysed within this study could be divided into two opposing, although intertwining categories: the serious and the ironic. Both categories included people who believed in Veerpalu’s innocence, and those who did not; in addition, there were those who displayed their superiority towards the entire discussion. The analysis addresses the transformation of an Olympic hero into a national hero, and points out narratives that treat the scandal within the present-day genres of urban legends, conspiracy theories, and Internet humour. The more or less genuine belief of people was reflected in sought-out explanations for the doping test result and counter-arguments (above all, via conspiracy stories, but also through social mobilisation in support of Veerpalu). In the post factum comments, the ma­jority expressed the feeling that their trust had been justified; they renewed their unremitting belief in the acquitted hero. But the rather complicated end to the long case was also a confusing one, and this allowed the ironic discourse to produce parodies, jokes and other critical comments. The questions central to the analysis are the following: (1) How does the audience interpret information provided by the media and which topics do the interpretations initiate in turn? (2) How does the notion of belief emerge in the discussion, which narratives and stereotypes are believed in, and how is the belief rationalised? (3) Which folkloric and other cultural (transmedial) texts have taken inspiration from this doping scandal?

Peer reviewed

Since the late 16th – early 17th century, tobacco smoking habit in Europe spread widely, which led to a new business branch – the production and sale of pipes. Due to the lack of historical data about when the habit of smoking tobacco emerged in eastern Baltic, it is imperative to pay attention to clay pipes that are considered to be a particularly suitable group of findings to specify the chronological limits. The article analyses in detail the chronologically earliest clay pipes found during archaeological research in Vilnius. Based on the typology of findings and known analogues, the author singles out the oldest pipes, names the possible places of their production, provides an interpretation of the appearance of pipes in the city. The article provides an overview of the development of smoking in Vilnius in the first half of the 17th century, as the text focuses not only on the analysis of findings, but also briefly introduces the historical, social and cultural contexts that led to the smoking of one or another type of tobacco pipe in Vilnius.

The paper aims to define the structure of the population of a relatively small East Lithuanian Barrow Cemeteries culture territory and the causes that could have predetermined the emergence of the rich inter-regional warrior elite graves and their rather abrupt disappearance.

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This article examines the influence of the Enlightenment on the liturgical life of the Livonian Lutheran Church in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when many clergymen set aside traditional liturgical forms and introduced new ones, based on Enlightenment humanistic principles. It surveys the extent to which the traditional Livonian agenda was still in use at this time and what neological liturgical handbooks were employed in its place. Since the Livonian Church consisted of German, Latvian, and Estonian ethnic groups, the article enquires whether new liturgical forms were also implemented in Latvian and Estonian congregations, which at that time had not yet been affected by the ideas of the Enlightenment.

The article gives an overview of the folk culture mechanisms that helped to cope with the pandemic situation in Belorussia during the first wave of COVID-19 (until midsummer 2020). The article is based on the qualitative analysis of interview texts related to the pandemic as well as the content of internet users' visual reactions (memes, poems, proverbs). In folk culture the mechanisms helping to overcome the crisis situation often have a ritual-magical nature. When describing the influence of the pandemic on some practices, the authors conclude that their performing in the crisis situation was especially important for the community. One of the ancient rituals activated for preventing the epidemic was the creation of a magic circle around the village by conducting a procession around the village with a ritual towel ('rushnik-abydzionnik'), which had to be made within one day. On March 28, this one-day-ritual was performed in Minsk with the greatest possible adherence to tradition. The initiators and participants of the practice were mainly representatives of the Students Ethnographic Society. Not all women present knew how to spin or weave, but some of the simplest operations were mastered. The towel was carried around Minsk and brought to a stone on the site of a pagan temple in the centre of Minsk at the sunset. The towel was tied around the stone, and the latter was also covered with threads spun on the same day. The ritual relieved the tension of the participants and fostered awareness of their solidarity, strengthening collective networks, and the feeling of empathy and unity. COVID-19 also affected the living traditions in Belarus. Some traditional practices were cancelled or postponed. The spread of the pandemic created a negative backdrop for living traditions. However, a number of rites and ceremonies were carried out despite the pandemic in accordance with their spatial and temporal reference. Due to the difficult epidemiological situation, the usual order of ceremonies was changed - their duration was reduced without changing the traditional rite structure. Only local residents participated in the rituals;although, formerly, many journalists and tourists had come to the villages from different parts of the country on the days of the ceremonies. For tradition bearers, such practices during a pandemic are a way to relieve stress and to share problems with people with similar interests. Traditions are one of the constants of their life;maintaining them in times of crises stabilizes the community. The coronavirus pandemic has caused a powerful explosion of folk art. The texts of various genres, both oral and written (graphic), are rapidly spreading on the Internet. A large number of them are based on the traditional worldview of Belarusians and are expressed in traditional forms (alterations, ditties, anecdotes, anti-sayings, paroemias, etc.). The role of humour has grown tremendously. Jokes and laughter in the face of an external threat are a compensatory mechanism that helps to overcome fear and uncertainty, and common laughter unites and helps to learn new rules of behaviour. Humour is not concerned with the threat of getting ill, but rather individual hygiene practices, the situation of quarantine, and circumstances of the new reality. Thus, humorous folklore becomes a way to adapt to new norms and to overcome fear and instability. © 2021 Eesti Keele InstituutAƒÂ‚A‚Â. All rights reserved.

Since the 1990s there has been a notable increase in family history research and genealogy in many countries. The development and popularity of information and social networking technology has substantially contributed to this boom in family history. Numerous associations, museums, archives, memorials, the media and online projects are actively participating in the collection of family history and migrant memories, to preserve this increasingly transnational heritage for future generations. It has also resulted in a growing interest to search one’s ancestral roots in “the old home country”, to search for family members who have migrated to other parts of the world, or to share one’s own memories of migration with others. In this article the author focuses on Finnish migrants in Australia and their family history activities. Australia as “a nation of migrants“ actively supports its people to engage in family history research and publicly share their experiences of migration with others in many ways as part of its multicultural policy.