jefvolume 8 - journal of ethnology and folkloristics

JEF Volume 82014

Number 1

Jou r nal of E t h nolo g y a n d fol k lor i s t ic s

J o u r n a l o f E t h n o l o g y a n d f o l k l o r i s t i c sissn 1736-6518 (print) issn 2228-0987 (online)

The Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics is the joint publication of the Estonian literary Museum, the Estonian national Museum and the university of tartu.

Established in 2007. Published formerly as • Pro Ethnologia

Established in 1993issn 1406-9962

• Studies in Folklore and Popular ReligionEstablished in 1996issn 1406-1090

• Studies in Folk CultureEstablished in 2003issn 1736-1192

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Editor-in-chief Ergo-hart VästrikEditors risto Järv, indrek Jääts, art leete, aado lintrop, Pille runnel,

Ülo Valklanguage Editor

Editorial assistantdaniel Edward allenJudit kis-halas

advisory Board Pertti J. Anttonen, Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, Dace Bula, Tatiana Bulgakova, Anne-Victoire Charrin, Silke Göttsch, lauri harvilahti, Mihály hoppál, Bo lönnqvist, Margaret Mackay, Irena Regina Merkienė, Stefano Montes, kjell olsen, alexander Panchenko, éva Pócs, Peter P. Schweitzer, Victor Semenov, Anna-Leena Siikala, Timothy R. Tangherlini, Peeter Torop, Žarka Vujić, ulrika Wolf-knuts, ants Viires, Elle Vunder

Editorial address Estonian national MuseumVeski 3251014 tartu, EstoniaPhone: + 372 735 0421E-mail: [email protected]

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Printing Bookmill, tartu, Estonia

indexing anthropological index online, central and Eastern European online library (c.E.E.o.l.), Mla directory of Periodicals (EBsco), Mla international Bibliography (EBsco), open folklore Project

this issue is supported by the Estonian Ministry of Education and research (institutional research Projects iut2-43 and iut 22-4) and by the European union through the European regional development fund (centre of Excellence in cultural theory, cEct).

J o u r n a l o f E t h n o l o g y a n d f o l k l o r i s t i c sVolume 8 | Number 1 | 2014

c o n t E n t s

u l r i k a W o l f -k n u t s“Would I Have Been Better Off There?” Comparison, Need and Conduciveness in finnish Emigrant’s account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

t i i n a s E P PPilgrimage and Pilgrim hierarchies in Vernacular discourse: comparative notes from the camino de santiago and glastonbury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

a n d r E a s k a l k u nfasts and feasts in Estonians’ representations of the seto culture . . . . . . . . . . 53

M i c h E l E f i l i P P o f o n t E f r a n c E s c oof grape, feast and community: an Ethnographic note on the Making of the grape harvest festival in an italian town in Piedmont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

M a r i E c a s E nudmurt identity issues: core Moments from the Middle ages to the Present day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

n o t E s a n d r E V i E W s

udmurt animist ceremonies in Bashkortostan: fieldwork Ethnography . . . . . . 111the human sausage factory: a study of Post-War rumour in tartu. . . . . . . . . 121

notes for contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

© 2014 Estonian literary Museum, Estonian national Museum, university of tartuissn 1736-6518 (print), issn 2228-0987 (online)

Vol. 8 (1): 3–22

3

“W O u L D I H AV e B e e N B e T T e R O f f T H e R e ?” c o M Pa r i s o n , n E E d a n d c o n d u c i V E n E s s

i n a f i n n i s h E M i g r a n t ’s a c c o u n t

ulrika Wolf-knutsProfessor Emeritus of folkloristics

Åbo akademi university20100 Åbo, finlande-mail: [email protected]

aBstractProcesses of comparison are central when we make our decisive choices of ways of living. this article is based on an interview with an immigrant who negotiates with himself over why he went away from finland and why he stayed in south africa. his line of argument can be analysed using abraham Maslow’s theory of human motivation. conduciveness turns out to be his main motivation, and com-parison is, implicitly or explicitly, a tool for verbalising this conduciveness.

kEyWords: emigration • comparison • conduciveness • negotiation • south africa

i n t r o d u c t i o n

Processes of comparison are central when we make our decisive choices of ways of living (lehmann 2007: 181). We shape our lives according to – or in contrast to – other people’s lives. Patterns for how other people have chosen to ‘make’ their lives can be regarded as positive models that are worthy of imitation as much as possible, or, at least, as an ideal to strive for. however, they can also be negative models that function as warnings: “this is exactly the kind of life that i do not want to lead”. In the first case, analogy and identification help us to accept a specific way of living (see, for example, Dutton 2009: 21 on comparison and analogy). In the second case we revolt against it. Consequently, comparison can have both a positive and a negative effect upon people’s lives. in this process of making choices, place is a meaningful component. the under-lying questions are existential and could be something like: “can i feel that this is the right place for me?” Behind this question a lot of other questions hide, such as: “Do I find my outcome here?”, “Do I find a companion for my life here?”, “Can I fill my needs in different aspects here?”

Moreover, when we remember and tell other people about our life choices, we re-enact them when, mentally, we establish contact with ourselves as a different person, the doings and decisions of whom we regard from the ‘outside’. We evaluate these life choices and negotiate with ourselves in a process of assessment (Wolf-knuts 2000a: 129). We cope with our own decisions. Behind this process stand questions such as: “did i really make a wise choice when i made up my mind about this place, what would have happened if or if not…?” It is probably important that we are able to find some kind of significance in the ways in which we shape our lives. When people regard their lives in the driving-mirror of life, they cope with a design that, over a great number of years,

J o u r n a l o f E t h n o l o g y a n d f o l k l o r i s t i c s 8 (1)4

their lives got, or a design that they think they gave to it. generally, coping theories are rooted in crises or more or less sudden critical situations (cf. Pargament 1997). the theories try to explain how people overcome difficulties. However, in this case, when I interviewed an emigrant who settled well and told me about his decisions to go and to stay, the crisis is perhaps not sudden, not even obvious. The same need for significance and meaning can be seen as in a sudden critical situation for which coping is important. here i want to ponder upon how a finland-swedish emigrant negotiates with me, and perhaps above all, with himself about his decision to leave finland for south africa. What made him decide to stay in South Africa? What was the central concept in his account? What kept him from going back and forth between South Africa and finland, as so many other immigrants did?

M a r t i n

in my work i interviewed Martin,1 a person who was probably not used to formulat-ing his life story.2 i came to this conclusion because, during the interview, he was often searching for expressions that he could approve of. i was the one to ask him to tell me about his emigration. in that way, i forced him to formulate a consistent entity from his experiences. i was struck by his way of repeatedly3 correcting and modifying himself during the interview. studies about this kind of account based on interviews can be divided along two lines. on the one hand the student concentrates on the contents, he or she studies what the narrator finds important enough to tell during an interview. on the other hand the student shows an interest in the form of the account, in how the interviewee formulates him- or herself in order to demonstrate what he or she finds important (arvidsson 1998: 7). to me, a combination of these two perspectives is the best way to understand and interpret what Martin said.

Martin, born in 1943, comes from the swedish speaking part of ostrobothnia, along the central western coast of finland. he decided to leave his home country finland in 1960. he was then seventeen years old. after the second World War finland was a poor country, not able in every respect to satisfy people’s dreams of a good life. looking for work and a decent way of living Martin went to sweden, a country that did not experi-ence war in the same way that finland did. he stayed there for a year, then returned to finland and went to south africa in 1962. there he married a south african woman of partly finnish descent. in July 1967, he and his wife moved back to finland. he tried to find some work there, but he was not content with the given opportunities so in 1968, after seven to eight months, the couple went to sweden and Martin got a good job there. around two years later, his wife’s homesickness brought the couple back to south africa, where they stayed, raised three children and founded an undertaking. (if mgt 1998: 26; if mgt 1998: 27–28) Martin’s story about why and how he decided to leave finland for other countries is my main field of interest here. He is one of hundreds of thousands of Nordic citizens who emigrated from Denmark, finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden from the middle of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century.4

i interviewed Martin in January 1998 in his home in a south african town. the inter-view lasted a little more than an hour. We had met before, so we knew each other, and

Wolf-Knuts: Comparison, Need and Conduciveness in a Finnish Emigrant’s Account 5

Martin also knew that i was familiar with his swedish dialect, although he still wanted to speak English. this was quite a surprise to me since the other interviewees preferred swedish, even those who were small children when their parents took them to south africa. My presence did not inspire him to speak our common mother tongue, but he chose the language which, for the time being, he felt most convenient, that is, English, which was also the common language in his family and at work. only a few words were in swedish. i think it was of some help in establishing contact that Martin knew i was familiar with his home place in ostrobothnia, and also that i knew some of his relatives in finland and that i had conducted an interview with his wife some hours before. still, he was quite tense when we started. he had a problem with his throat. a cough annoyed him repeatedly. i do not know if he had ever before verbalised his thoughts about his emigration, which might explain his tenseness and sore throat. anyway, i had a vivid feeling that Martin was quite uncomfortable.5 aware of the fact that some people tend to become so eager when they talk about their lives that they forget the recorder, I offered him the opportunity to stay anonymous, which he accepted. Conse-quently, Martin is not the real name of my informant.

indeed, one single and relatively short interview does not tell very much about gen-eral ways of speaking about emigration or about general ways of negotiation. on the other hand, one interview makes it possible to go into detail that cannot be studied in a larger body of material. One interview can show that a person is able to make a specific place meaningful in different ways within a limited part of his life account. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that several interviews with one and the same interviewee do not change the kernel of narratives (cf. kaivola-Bregenhøj 1996; ukkonen 2000).6 i assume that this is true also for accounts. i want to investigate what reasons Martin gives me for his emigration. What did he find in South Africa that he did not find in finland? How did he explain this to me? Certainly, in an interview about emigration, place is a central concept.

t h E E M i g r a t i o n M o d E l

in finland at the end of the nineteenth, and during the twentieth, century, the general model for young people was to go, for a longer or shorter period, sometimes for the rest of their lives, to another country in order to earn money. sometimes they sent the money home to their parents, wife/husband and children, although they might also stay abroad for a long enough period to save money and bring a fortune back home. certainly, many of them never returned. Quite a large portion of ostrobothnian cul-ture and economic prosperity shows influences that the emigrants found in the united states of america, australia, or south africa, not to mention the sheer money brought home and turned into visible material wealth (see, for instance, rein 1895: 1; ruusu-vuori 2010: 29). in other words, there was a grand narrative about emigration and the earning of money somewhere else, which touched everyone in ostrobothnia, including Martin.7

in finland in the 1950s and 1960s, economic conditions were hardly good. after the war there was much to do to restore and develop the country; however, there was very


little money for this great task. Moreover, during this time, and even in the 1970s, the widely spread custom of migration is explained by the fact that the generation born after the war was numerous. all these people reached working age at the same time. the majority of them were born in the countryside, but the labour opportunities were poor among rural people who were not born as family members on a farm. the work-ing outcome did not meet with the young people’s expectations for a good living stand-ard. a large number of people left the countryside for the towns, where industrialisa-tion intensified (Pitkänen 1994: 50). Others emigrated. for instance, an emigrant from ostrobothnia working in construction told me about his will to work hard. however, it was weakened by the lack of working possibilities and by poor conditions. for instance, to him the cold winters were an impediment. he told me:

When one was working on a job in winter when it was cold and one’s hands were frozen and [carpenter’s] nails got stuck in one’s fingers, well, well, when one should remove the snow from the timber when working, the bricks were frozen so that one had to warm them up before building. […] It was life and distress, it was distress, to live, it was no joke. (if mgt 1998: 34–35)

this informant repeatedly mentioned that distress and need were overwhelming, and that this was not the kind of life he wanted for himself. therefore he emigrated. in other words, he acted according to the grand narrative about emigration and crossed it with another grand narrative, the narrative of a better life.

Martin also followed these two narratives when he left. in his account he related phase after phase of decisions that he made in order either to emigrate or to return, and he tried to convince himself and me that his decisions were correct. certainly, geo-graphical places and the quality of them were central factors in his story, but there were also other ingredients worthy of my attention when I tried to answer questions con-cerning by which means and strategies a person justified the form of his life, or how he negotiated his decision to shift dwelling places repeatedly, or what factors were most important when at last he stayed and how this place was related to the most important components in his life.

t h E o r E t i c a l P E r s P E c t i V E s a n d M E t h o d

according to abraham Maslow’s now classic 1940s theory of human motivation, we should count five layers of need that may bring human beings to activity. They are the physiological drives, safety needs, the need for belongingness and love, esteem needs, and the need for self-actualization (see Maslow 1970: 35–58). Although Maslow has been criticized for, among other things, having created an armchair model difficult to apply empirically to a person’s life narrative (see, for example, sjöberg 1999), i have found his thoughts highly useful in the analysis of emigrants’ lives.

Maslow states that physiological needs are crucial for man’s wellbeing. as an exam-ple he says: “utopia can be defined simply as a place where there is plenty of food” (Maslow 1970: 37). Meeting physiological needs is crucial, for if this is not done various other needs will be supressed. i interpret Maslow in this case as saying that physiologi-cal needs point towards corporeal needs. according to Maslow, safety needs consist of


the need for, for instance, security and protection, freedom from fear and chaos, and the need for law and order (ibid.: 39). according to my understanding, safety needs are con-nected with work and income, knowledge and insight, or justice and equality. insight can certainly be connected with knowledge of a practical kind, such as doing a metier, but insight also has a spiritual perspective: “insight is usually a bright, happy, emo-tional spot in any person’s life” Maslow states (ibid.: 50). The needs for belongingness and love are easily understood, but we have to take into consideration that the oppo-site means rejection, friendlessness and rootlessness (ibid.: 43), which often lie behind emigration and immigration. immigration can demonstrate how lonely a person really is in his or her new surroundings. Esteem needs are connected with self-esteem and the esteem of others. Maslow divides these needs into two categories: firstly, the desire to achieve something, the desire for competence, for the feeling of being useful, and, secondly, the “desire for reputation or prestige” (ibid.: 45). The feeling of being useful is opposed to the feelings of being useless or helpless. Lastly, and as the fifth layer of needs, Maslow mentions the need for self-actualization. Thereby he hints at the impor-tance for people to do exactly what they are suited for, to fulfil their ideal. I interpret his thought of self-actualization as meaning that people cannot feel content unless they know that they are in every respect in the right place.

need is a central concept in Maslow’s theoretical construction. My central analyti-cal tool is made up of words that relate to need, or other expressions that represent the meaning of something a person longs for to a greater or lesser extent. its counterpart is satisfaction. When a need is fulfilled the person can feel satisfaction. However, satisfac-tion is not enough if one regards satisfaction as just fulfilling a need or removing the lack of something (cf. dundes who, in 1964, introduced the concept of liquidated lack). There are differences in satisfaction: one can be more or less satisfied. A meal is fine if one is really hungry, shelter from rain might satisfy a person momentarily, and so forth. But for a lasting satisfaction the remedy should contain greater values: it should be conducive. it should even be conducive in the long run. according to the cham-bers dictionary conducive means, “leading, contributing or tending, favourable to or helping towards something”, and conducive to means “helping towards, promoting or encouraging” (The Chambers Dictionary 2003: 317). the oxford thesaurus of Eng-lish mentions “good for, helpful to, instrumental in, calculated to produce, produc-tive of, useful for; favorable, beneficial, valuable, advantageous, opportune, propitious, encouraging, promising, convenient; (be conducive to) contribute to, lead to, tend to promote, make for, facilitate, favor, aid, assist, help, benefit, encourage” (Waite 2006: 160). Without doubt, conducive is a concept with positive connotations. however, the path to conduciveness can be difficult and filled with obstacles and tribulations. Not until the person who walks that path is able to interpret his or her experience in a manner that gives significance and meaning can this path be regarded as conducive. a person regards this path as conducive with the help of his or her entire frame of refer-ence and with a specific goal in view.

The feeling of conduciveness is the result of comparison. It takes comparison to find out whether or not a satisfaction is conducive. comparison is a research method very well known in the humanities, and also in folkloristics. for a long time it played a very sophisticated role. Comparison as a method of research is still scrutinized by philoso-phers of social sciences (see, for example, gentner 1982; Wolf-knuts 2000b; arvidsson


2008: 59–64; Dutton 2009: 55–56). However, in this article I will not make use of com-parison as a scholarly device to analyse folklore. instead, i want to underline that the ways in which our co-operators in an interview, the interviewees, conduct comparison is less studied. consequently, i want to see how an informant made use of comparison when he told about his choice of a conducive dwelling place abroad. My main ques-tions are then: What needs did Martin experience, how did he decide what places were conducive for him when he tried to find a suitable living place?

I will analyse my interview along the lines of how Martin presented the different phases of his emigration. My starting point is that Martin chose his goals for emigration according to their tentative value in aspects of physiological needs, safety needs, needs for belongingness and love, esteem needs, and the need for self-actualization, and that he compared places in a way that was most significant and conducive to him in these aspects. With the help of a method based on close reading (nordbäck 2009: 28–39) i want to conduct my analysis with the help of the concepts of comparison, need and conduciveness as my analytical tools.

t h E i n t E r V i E W

the interview with Martin took place in his home. it was quite a big, solid building sur-rounded by a well-tended garden. the whole atmosphere was calm, harmonious, and there was evidence of wellbeing, prosperity and a good life without being ostentatious. nobody else was there. nobody listened to his account except me. nobody disturbed us. Martin sat on the sofa and i sat opposite him on a chair near the sofa table, on which the recorder sat. the interview was conducted in his living room, windows opened to the warm fresh air from the indian ocean some miles away. certainly, an interview is a situation in which the folklorist asks questions and the interviewee answers them. today, an interview is regarded as co-operation between two equal partners, rather than a situation of questions and answers. But an interview is not only a ‘closed’ event that takes place at a special time in a special place. certainly, physically it is so, but mentally an interview is open ended almost to infinity, so to say. When we were sitting there speaking about Martin’s emigration, he selected what he wanted to speak about, he remembered places and events, he furnished them mentally with a landscape, with people, with sensations and emotions, with hope and grief. to some extent he used his imagination to make the images of his account vivid. i understood what he told me, but i hardly really understand what he was telling me, for i have not had his experiences (Dutton 2009: 21). When telling me about his moves around the world he re-shaped his life in front of me. he used his voice, words and gestures; i listened, and, to some extent, i saw his world with my inner eye. he re-entered his places through his memory and his language, he re-shaped them for me (casey 2000: 186; Brockmeyer 2008: 21) and he invited me to go there, too, by every now and then leaving the narrative about his emi-gration and turning his attention back to me in his evaluations and negotiations. In this way i was not merely a listener, but also a person to whom he tried to explain himself and his deeds, a person whom he tried to convince, and who was a kind of a sounding board. When he told me about his emigration and his thoughts about the whole process he trusted me. i received his image of the move from finland to south africa as a gift


(nynäs 2008: 165). according to henri lefebvre in my understanding, Martin spoke about his perceived places and i turned them into conceived places when i listened to his description, while both of us sat in a lived space, his sitting room (Lefebvre 1991: 38f; Österlund-Pötzsch 2010: 198).

M a r t i n ’s d E c i s i o n t o l E aV E f i n l a n d

the interview started with Martin’s decision to leave finland. he referred to his keen-ness to go away, because his brother had already left for america. the model of his brother was important to him. his father had also emigrated, and he stated: “like they used to do in those days, he would go away for a couple of years and come back, earn money, and come back to finland” (If mgt 1998: 26). To his father, lack of income was perhaps one of the reasons to leave finland. at least, money was what he brought home. another factor that made Martin think of emigration was his background in a home that did not encourage education. in this way Martin expressed an ideal of a home with support and encouragement, factors that he did not have. a third factor is implicit: times were bad in finland; life there was poor.

the mechanism behind his decision to leave was a series of comparisons: between himself and his father and brother; between his family, uninterested in education and encouragement, and other families better off in this regard; between poor and rich countries. By comparison he valued his life in finland in a way that he stated:

i suppose i also had, and as times were, with the background and the home i came from, i think it was conducive to leaving, and not having the encouragement, i think, which i suppose most homes would have, i never did have it to further my education, and i found it easiest to, not easiest, wanted so the big role, i suppose. (if mgt 1998: 26)

Connecting this part of the analysis to Maslow’s theory of needs, we find that Martin did not speak about physiological needs. indeed, finland was poor, but in the 1950s there was food enough. Most people had somewhere to live and clothes to protect them from cold weather. All these needs were mainly fulfilled at a basic level. We can draw the conclusion that the memory of corporeal needs did not create the strategy when Martin told me why he emigrated. i think that safety needs had driven him to make his decision. Maslow maintains that the safety needs category covers the need for security and order. i interpret Martin’s mention of his family not supporting him in education as a critical standpoint towards his own position in the family. obviously he wanted more than his family could offer. Perhaps he felt different from other members because he had higher ambitions than they did.8 this interpretation leads me to think that the need for esteem also played a role in his decision to go away. Many different kinds of deficiency in finland, in combination with a comparison with other, better-off places, made him think of emigration to another, better place and also of realising this plan.

it is even questionable if his home surroundings could be regarded a place, after all. edward S. Casey maintains a difference between site and place. According to him, a site has width, depth and breadth, but it is empty: “A site possesses no points of attachment onto which to hang our memories, much less to retrieve them” (Casey 2000: 186). A


place, he maintains, is filled with memories and helps us remember. Certainly, Martin remembers his home in ostrobothnia, and does so in an emotionally negative way. his experience of being left without the support of his family made him see that he could have better conditions (see, also, Byrne 2003: 34). He did attach memories to his home, although negative. and he did retrieve his critical memories in our conversation. how-ever, casey also says when describing place that, “to be in a place is to be sheltered and sustained by its containing boundary” (Casey 2000: 186). Certainly, Martin did not feel sheltered and sustained at home. it was precisely because of his comparison between his real life and his dream of another life that he left ostrobothnia.

there was a reason for why Martin picked south africa, and this reason was a woman who visited his neighbourhood together with her father, who had also emi-grated from finland. his new home country was south africa. the woman’s name was Anne. Somewhat surprised, Martin told me that he wanted to emigrate “even before” he met Anne. from this statement I can see that her influence upon Martin was impor-tant, but that he would probably have emigrated somewhere, anyhow. obviously the two fell in love, and when she went back home with her father, Martin followed them. he intended to stay for a few years. so he did, and returned to finland with anne, who was now his wife, and their first and then only son. In this passage we can see that not only did real factors play a role in Martin’s wish to change his life, but that emotions were also important. in this case love facilitated his decision about which country he wanted to visit. according to Maslow, love is one of the most important needs for a human being. however, in the interview love did not play a very strong part in Martin’s way of recounting his decision to emigrate. love was an obvious factor neither in the reasons he gave for staying in south africa, nor in the reasons why south africa became his country. at the time of the interview it was clear that anne is important in Martin’s life. Perhaps after decades of marriage, Martin regarded love as a self-evident explana-tion, not worthy of any discussion, for why he lived in south africa. When it comes to love I cannot find any clear utterance about need or conduciveness in the interview.

I asked Martin what he thought was the thing most difficult to leave behind. He told me that his sisters had lives of their own to maintain and that his brother was in the united states of america, but also that his mother was old and in poor health. he said: “I did find that a burden”. I was impressed by his frank way of stating this real feeling. in making his decision to leave he had to compare two emotions: his love for anne and the bond to his mother. in the interview he did not mention which one was the strong-est one, but in any case he did follow anne when she returned to her home in south africa. in the interview the unspoken conduciveness of love beat feelings of duty and responsibility towards his ill mother.

however, afterwards this decision was not easy to accept, for even when the inter-view was made nearly forty years later, Martin admitted: “still today I have almost got a bit of a guilt feeling for leaving her, although she’s dead now for many years” (If mgt 1998: 26). again we can see how his place in south africa is not completely harmoni-ous. There is a fly in the ointment. I had the feeling that Martin was excusing himself to me: it was more acceptable to him to have left his old mother if he admitted his bad conscience. He also told me that it was difficult to leave friends and other people, but that he did not miss finland. he said that he wanted to go out into the world and look forward, so leaving his home country did not really worry him. in other words, he


expected to find more of what he was looking for in terms of work and ‘a life’ in a place other than at home.

M a r t i n ’s E x P E c t a t i o n s a n d i M P r E s s i o n s

obviously Martin did not have any expectations about south africa. at least he did not mention them to me. the only thing that he said was that his future sister-in-law had visited the country, but that she was not very happy there. during the interview he remembered that his first impression of Cape Town was that it was beautiful and hot:

The first impression, I came on a boat, which took four weeks from Göteborg [Gothenburg] in Sweden. We landed in Cape Town, I thought it was a stunning country, beautiful country, very hot, very hot, I think it was the first impression. (if mgt 1998: 26)

When I asked Martin for his expectations he told me that the country was hazy to him, for he was so young, just twenty one years old. Everything was just too big. But he also stated frankly and repeatedly that he did not expect anything. he just wanted to work. lack of work at home was one of the reasons why he left, he told me.

lack of work might seem a rather trivial reason to leave one’s home country. how-ever, if we regard work as one of the most important values in a person’s life, or in society, it is easier to understand how a shortage of work can influence people to make such a life-changing decision. the ostrobothnian view of work has been obvious since the 19th century. in Boken om vårt land (the Book of our country) (1876) Zacharias topelius mentioned the swedish-speaking ostrobothnians as having both a good and a bad reputation. he regarded them partly as skilful craftsmen, especially within the realm of construction, and partly as ill tempered, especially if they had drunk too much (Rein 1895: 1; Topelius 1993 [1930]: 204–205). This book had an extremely significant impact for it was widely read in both swedish schools in finland and in finnish schools. indeed, this image of the skilful craftsman from ostrobothnia survived for a long time.9 We have to combine it with the fact that the swedish parts of ostrobothnia were heavily influenced by Protestant revivalist movements, according to which work and diligence are sought-after and appreciated virtues. Proverbs such as Den som inte vill arbeta han skall heller inte äta (he who will not work shall not eat) (cf. 2 thess. 3: 10), or Lättjan är alla lasters moder (Laziness is the mother of all vices) were accepted as ideals. John lindow has demonstrated that the relationship between eating and work was crucial in nordic peasant society. he maintained that seriously ill children who would eat and grow without producing food were regarded as changelings from the other world (lindow 2008: 222–223). “Quiet, i.e., gentleness, thrift, moderateness, diligence, drive, domesticity, and orderliness” (Wolf-Knuts 1991: 63) were ideals for a good inhabitant, and diligence in combination with entrepreneurship often resulted in economic success (Villstrand 2002: 47). knowing this background it is easier to understand why Martin was not content with his life in finland for he could not get the education he longed for. neither could he have the work challenge that he desired. he dreamt of a conceived place to substitute for the one he perceived at home.

Martin also had to learn English. Being without knowledge of the general language of the place in which he lived would not have been conducive. to him, English was


so important that he said, “i just wanted to come and work, just work, and obviously the big thing was to learn the language and try and get into a life here”. This state-ment gives the impression that Martin did not regard his time in finland as a “life”. If this is true, we can say that he emigrated in order to find a place where he could find a life according to his ideals. in Maslow’s terminology, i see Martin’s formulation as an expression of the need for esteem. at home, he thought that he did not have a life, that he was useless. he went away in order to achieve something, to get a life. But at the same time he stated: “i don’t think i expected anything, i was, i was so green, i was so green and young” (If mgt 1998: 26). During the interview, we see that Martin had a clear sense of himself. his need for esteem in combination with the lack of expectation and with the conceived place of which he dreamt as a place where his life might take quite a different, conducive, form compared to what he was used to, can be regarded in a positive way as facilitating adjustment to a new environment.

t h E f i r s t i M P r E s s i o n o f s o u t h a f r i c a

in his story about his emigration journey Martin mentioned the boat, but he left out all kinds of detail. i had the feeling that the boat and the journey itself did not mean very much to him. Perhaps in the terminology of casey, we might say that Martin just passed a lot of sites. His first impression of Cape Town, where he landed, was that it was hot. the explanation for this came in the following sentence: “we came just before christ-mas, and of course coming from finland, Sweden then, it was, it was a shock to me” (if mgt 1998: 26). and certainly, it must have been stunning to come from the complete december darkness in sweden and finland to the light of an african summer day, and from the cold and wet finnish flat land of Ostrobothnia to the warm, moist and hilly coast of southern africa. in his story he did not elaborate on his comparison in detail, but the way he expressed himself allows me to interpret what he said in this way. the first impression of Africa was positive.

however, right after this sentence, Martin continued: “although the race relations was a bit confusing to me. It was upsetting at times, I didn’t understand it” (If mgt 1998: 26). lack of understanding could have ended in a negative opinion about african society as not acceptable or sustainable from the perspective of conduciveness, includ-ing a return to sweden or finland, but Martin stated:

i didn’t understand it, the black and white relationship, but funny enough, being white one gets used to it very quickly, and because you are on the advantage side and you, should i say, you get used to it very quickly and you, you quite enjoy it (if mgt 1998: 26).

Martin experienced a lack of understanding, or as a matter of fact a lack of regular rules about right and wrong, or even a lack of meaning in a traditional sense. in his account, this lack turned into an acceptance of circumstances that gave Martin a kind of advan-tage that was impossible to find in finland. In the interview Martin explained to me what happened to him. an incomprehensible fact in his new country turned into an accepted and enjoyed ingredient of life. Martin was extremely honest when he admitted his mental change.


applying Maslow’s theory we have to regard the need for safety. Martin did not mention that, at that time of apartheid, the south african society was fairly safe and secure – for the white inhabitants. But another interviewee refers to this fact by stating that, during the time of apartheid, she could walk outdoors in the darkness without being afraid, whereas in 1998 when i interviewed her, she stayed indoors for she did not know what might happen. on the tape she even imitated a barking dog in order to dem-onstrate how she used to frighten uninvited guests from her house (if mgt 1998: 36–37). it is possible that one of the reasons for Martin leaving finland was a conceived lack of safety and security at home, although i do not believe it. a subcategory of the need for safety is the need for freedom from fear and chaos, and, at that time, this was reality for white people, at least from an official perspective. However, above all, I think that the need for esteem was again one of the reasons why Martin stayed in south africa. the system of the society gave him prestige. this was a place where, in contrast to finland, he felt that he could achieve a status high enough for his ideals, even at the cost of what he thought was just and fair.

Martin found that the relationship between the black and the white africans was problematic. he told me that he could not accept it. it worried him. this was obvious in the way that he repeated how wrong it was. the reasons for his opinion were his religion and his upbringing:

it wasn’t right, it wasn’t right, i felt, ah, from any kind of religious background or upbringing you had, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t right. i must say it wasn’t comfortable many times. (if mgt 1998: 26)

his sense of himself as a white man did not conform to the role he had to play in south africa. during the interview Martin implicitly compared finnish and south african ways of treating people. although he understood how wrong the system was, he still accepted south africa as his place. i maintain that a place is not always only a comfort-able surrounding. A place can also be filled with characteristics that are disturbing, yet a person may stick to it. in that case people may negotiate with themselves in order to accept it. Or, alternatively, as a newcomer Martin did not reflect on the relationship between blacks and whites. Perhaps his viewpoints in the interview are rationalizations that he formulated in his conversation with me, well aware that today it is not politi-cally correct to express positive feelings about this issue. here we can also see that he argues in a way that actualises conduciveness, be it through comparison as a white man making use of the blacks’ weak position, or through his knowledge of what is politically correct at the end of the 1990s.

h o M E s i c k n E s s

until now, Martin and i mainly discussed perceived geographical places, for example finland, sweden, south africa. however, when i asked if he had ever been homesick he changed his perspective to a conceived place. the passage between the perceived and the conceived was not immediate. Martin told me how real things from the perceived places caused homesickness in him, such as newspapers from finland with information about people he knew. When reading them, he stated:


I really dream myself back into the situation. […] I think, I would go into a quiet [not understandable] and Anne would pick it up very quickly, and she, she’s been a great help to me always, she will get me out of it. (if mgt 1998: 26)

We see how Martin used spatial prepositions, such as back, into, out. he did not verbal-ise how this “quiet” was structured or what it looked like, but from his way of speaking i interpreted him as going into conceived places of dream and depression. comparison was an ingredient in this process when Martin remembered what he lost when he left finland.

homesickness is a feeling that can paralyse a person. Martin told me that he quite often had this feeling, and i could understand that those moments were moments of depression. obviously, they were not creative and did not trigger anything, for he did not mention that homesickness would drive him to any activity. on the contrary, he told me that he would go into a silence, and that his wife had to help to get him out of it. the preposition ‘out’ demonstrated to me that he saw these periods as spent in a (mentally) different place from which his wife could fetch him.

When i asked Martin about his homesickness he stated that he could still feel how he might move back to finland. But then rationality struck him, for he could see that he had changed a lot since he lived there. in his thoughts he conducted a comparison with himself as a south african and as a finn: “last time we went to finland now i realised seeing my friends and what have you, i found i had changed a lot, not that i am better than them, no, I’m just different” (If mgt 1998: 26). In the interview Martin demonstrated that his ‘self’ had developed into something other than during his time in finland. The feeling of being different is the result of a process of comparison in self-analysis. Maslow speaks about the need for belongingness and love. Probably Martin no longer felt at home, he no longer felt belongingness, in finland. in the interview he demonstrated how he almost had said too much, when he denied that he was better than the finns, but then corrected himself with a more neutral concept, that is “dif-ferent”. Maslow’s need for esteem, or, more exactly, self-esteem, came to the fore. In finland, Martin thought that he was not accepted, not esteemed in a way that he would wish for. he felt that in south africa this lack of self-esteem was corrected.

although Martin regarded south africa as his place, he still maintained finnish citi-zenship through his finnish passport. The family also celebrated Christmas in the finn-ish way separately from the south african customs. Martin expressed positive feelings towards finnish culture when he compared and described how his family in south africa used to stick to finnish customs in their way of celebrating birthdays. however, it turned out that he preferred to swear, count and pray in English. swearing and pray-ing are deeply connected to emotions. consequently, i expected him to stick to swedish in these situations. however, Martin had become a south african to such a degree that the language he used in automatic and intimate situations had changed. the fact that Martin used English during the interview, although our common mother tongue was swedish, demonstrates how rooted he was in south africa. his mental experiences of anger and belief took place there, and, consequently, his language for those matters was the language of the place in which the incidence occurred. Martin had even left his mother tongue to such a degree that he had to read my written agreement concerning the use of the interview twice, saying “I read it twice before it sinks in”. Obviously, he did not deny the shift of language to this intensive knowledge of English. he did not


miss his swedish. When it came to the need to express his innermost emotions he no longer had any needs to fulfil, his intensely striven-for english was enough.

T H e R e O R H e R e ?

now the interview came close to its end, and, at the same time, Martin presented me with his definitive formulation for why he felt that South Africa was the right place for him. i asked if his decision to leave was an important decision and he answered: “ja,10 it has, it has been an important decision”. But then he asked himself: “Would I have been better off there. Or have I been bet[ter off here]?” (If mgt 1998: 26) He found two answers to this question. firstly, he established that he had developed as a person. he maintained that he became a better person for he had seen the world. We see that com-parison is the prerequisite of his answer. lack of character as a developed person, and lack of experience of seeing the world were remedied by emigration and thanks to his widened experience of the world he maintained that his recent place was better. How-ever, there was also another factor that made him positively evaluate his expansion of place through emigration. he formulated it in the following way:

[I]f nothing else I’ve learnt to know God since I came here, not that I haven’t, might not have done it [in] finland, I might have done the same thing, but I certainly have got to know god as i do know him and Jesus christ so to me it has been a great adventure (if mgt 1998: 26).

this was obviously the peak experience in Martin’s account about his life as an emi-grant. he did not elucidate what it meant to him in detail or how it had transformed him, but to him meeting god was something overwhelming. Even in this answer he compared finland and South Africa. The latter was the better, for he met God, but a quick, almost not verbalised comparison made Martin say, by way of an excuse and very politely, that he could have known god in finland, too. it was in south africa that Martin got to know god, therefore south africa is the place in which Martin’s life was furnished with a new, important and existential dimension. in south africa he under-went a spiritual experience that he had not had before. the experience of his relation-ship with god had given him such an inner consolidation that he felt south africa was where he wanted to stay. god’s interference in Martin’s life acted as evidence for Mar-tin’s feeling that south africa was the right place for him. from a spiritual perspective he regarded this place as a perceived place with one more dimension than other places. his personal geography and even his life had a new dimension that was important for him, both when he judged his relationship to the black population and the recent situ-ation in south africa:

[S]ometimes I wonder as times are going in this country, I suppose, you know negative [unclear]: “Maybe I shouldn’t have done it”, but even so, even so. Ja, i’m glad i’ve done it. (if mgt 1998: 26)

summing up his standpoint on emigration, he coped in a positive way, thanks to his act of believing. Despite it being a difficult decision – he left because of the lack of support from his family, he had to leave his ill mother and friends, he experienced all


sorts of problems with language and social order – he still found emigration a good thing because it developed his character and he underwent an inner transformation that introduced him to a kind of Christian faith that influenced the rest of his life. God became a vehicle that helped him interpret the stages of his life so that the stages he spent in south africa were the best (nynäs 2008: 159–162). this experience was over-whelming and it gave significance to him and his decision to emigrate. His emigration had been conducive.

geographically Martin took me all over the world, mentioning nearly all the con-tinents. he introduced me to his conceived places, to his place of homesickness and depression, and, finally, to his spiritual world. The place where he met God was to Martin his real place.

n E g o t i a t i o n

typical for Martin’s way of relating his emigration was, as we have already seen repeat-edly, his negotiation with himself – or with me. he was very careful when he selected his words. for example, when Martin told me that he had no expectations at all about south africa, he took an excusing role, as he had several times before. i had the feel-ing that he wanted to excuse himself in front of me for not being reflexive enough and, perhaps, even a bit naïve. the way in which he explained this was by relating it to his youth and lack of experience.

the complicated and problematic relationship between black and white south afri-cans made Martin reflect on his own moral role. He was aware of the distorted state of matters, he was aware of the colour of his own skin in relation to the colour of most of the inhabitants of south africa. the new place had pointed out his otherness. he underlined how wrong it was. He admitted honestly that he got used to it. But in the same sequence of the interview he ended his reflections on this topic by saying, “not that I would have liked to live with any blacks, no, no, because we’re different, but the way they were treated, I think it was upsetting” (If mgt 1998: 26). Again he negotiated with himself: he knew it was wrong, but then he withdrew from this position with his statement of comparison about the difference between the two groups within the population.

With me coming straight from finland Martin obviously had the feeling that he had to be polite. When he told me that he left his mother and missed his friends, but not finland, he immediately started to explain that finland certainly had its beauties, but that this was not enough for him to stay: he wanted to go out into the world. he compared finland to something else, something bigger. he conducted a comparison between needs (what he lacked) and assets.

to my surprise Martin prayed in English. he also gave a description of the circum-stances surrounding his prayers. his sister visited him in south africa and became upset when she found out that he said his prayers in English. his answer, and defence, was: “i’m sorry, i’ve got to pray in English because that, that’s the way i’ve been intro-duced to Christianity” (If mgt 1998: 26). Obviously, he had no functional Swedish for religious activity. he was born as a lutheran, certainly, but as he stated, “it didn’t mean anything to me at that time”. It was not until Christianity meant something to him and


he needed to practise it that he found a language for this sort of activity. his language of prayer was closely connected to his new place. in the interview i can, again, hear how Martin excused himself to me, although in this situation he did it indirectly by referring to his experience with his annoyed sister.

in connection with my question about the language in which Martin swore, he reflected on his habit of swearing. Generally speaking he did not swear, but if a strong word came, it was in english. After that statement, he seemed to be a little surprised himself, for he started to explain to me how peculiar it was that, during the first couple of years in his new country, he almost blotted out his language. He did not even write letters to his family in finland:

[B]ecause you want to get on with your life, and you, you don’t want to sit with a leg on both sides, you want to be out there, so, subconsciously, you, sort of pulled out of it, and i know a lot of my family were very upset with me, it’s “Why don’t you write?” (If mgt 1998: 26)

in fact, his sister is still alive. Perhaps there were other reasons for not writing to fin-land, such as the feeling of being inadequately educated. in this case we can see how Martin shaped both his place and his life by creating a lack. By eradicating his language he showed in a very strong way his willingness to become a South African, to fit into his new place. so not only does the existing lack of something result in the shaping of place, but one can also intervene in the process by the fabrication of a deficiency. On the other hand, obviously, conduciveness played a role in this process, for otherwise life in the new place would not have gone on in the proper, and wished-for, way.

One can say that Martin negotiated with himself after his statement about ‘pulling out’ as a newcomer. in a way he felt guilty, because he said:

[B]ut then you get to a stage, now I also almost want to go back to it again, I want that my ties with the people there, i want them back, now more than before, maybe something to do with my age or so (if mgt 1998: 26).

This reflective sentence was disarming, and it demonstrated how Martin would like to enlarge his place. i guess, when he said so, several memories and images of the past were on his mind. again need played a role in his place making: the lack of bonds back in time and the lack of social relationships.

When he used to visit finland Martin had compared the two countries. he stated that he was not longing to go back, but he weighed it up as follows:

[N]ot with a great, ah … ånger [repentance] that you should have been back there, you should, no, not really, one sort of thinks, ja, you sort of in your mind you think: “Should you have done this or should you have done that?” (If mgt 1998: 26)

from this sentence i see that the world was still open to Martin in his mind, his place in south africa was not completely closed, he still maintained a process of comparison, for he had an idea of a conceived other place that might also have given him a conducive life. and his spiritual experience of knowing god, of well-being, of feeling that south africa was a lieu intime (casey 2000: 191) had come to convince him that he did the right thing in emigrating.


c o n c l u s i o n

for the sake of conduciveness, Martin emigrated and shaped a new life for himself in a new place, south africa. from a life in finland without the qualities he wished for, emigration helped him structure better conditions with more dimensions. With the help of abraham Maslow’s theories about needs for action, i can demonstrate that Martin’s new place was shaped with the help of his needs for safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation. Physiological needs, however, were not clearly mentioned. in his account, embodiment did not play a great role at all. only once did he refer to his experience of south africa as big and beautiful. one might also state that homesickness, which he described to some extent, and love, which he does not mention expressly, but which i can divine from his way of speaking about his wife, are bodily grounded, although he did not centre on corporeal experiences when he told his story. his new place was constructed by comparisons between finland and south africa. needs found here were disguised in assets there.

the interview was a scene of remembering (casey 2000: 183). however, Martin hesi-tated a lot in his account. i interpreted his hesitation as a kind of negotiation. he wanted to find the exact and correct expression for what he wanted to say. This, I conclude, was a sign that he re-shaped his life at these moments when he pondered over his language. the interview was also a time when Martin structured the parts of his life that were touched by his emigration. Martin spoke about a perceived place where he lived and worked every day. He also uttered thoughts about a conceived place in his dreams and expectations of Africa and in his attacks of depressive homesickness, although, at the same time, he admitted that he had obliterated much of what he had in finland. As a very young man he saw that south africa was his right and secure place. therefore he stayed, and during the interview, being a man in his sixties, he felt that the country had shaped him into who he felt he was today. he was also able to state which place was most important to him, i.e., the place in which he met god. to Martin, earthly goods were not enough for a place. a spiritual dimension was needed.

How, then, was Martin’s place making shaped in the interview? The portrayal of his life, when he remembered, re-shaped and told me about it, was not simple or incon-trovertible. neither was it a complete success story. he could have boasted about deep love, a long happy marriage, a successful family, much money, a beautiful house, or whatever. he could equally have expressed envy of those who stayed at home and had even more successful lives there. he did not do so. By carefully selecting his words he gave me the opportunity to notice his feelings of need and shortcomings that he com-pared to an image of a better way of living according to his ideals of conduciveness. Martin was very careful in not emphasising his personal achievements as easily made. he built his story explicitly or implicitly on an evaluation of his life in finland through a comparison with his life in south africa, always negotiating with himself and me dur-ing the interview, trying to find the right expression. Perhaps he did this so carefully as a consequence of his christian belief, according to which boasting is discouraged. it was obvious that Martin could define needs that he could fulfil through his emigration account. In the negotiation, he strived to find the right wordings when trying to create a meaningful and significant image of himself as an emigrant. During the interview it came clear that Martin’s main philosophy of life seemed to be conduciveness. however,


to Martin conduciveness did not mean material success only. south africa was the place where his memories, bad and good, and his expectations, which he denied concerned the country as such but that he still had in relation to what he saw as a good life, combined into his account of events, real and spiritual. all these components merged into a significant whole through the on-going process of negotiation that he presented. according to Peter nynäs, “places are shaped by memories, expectations and by stories of real and imagined events” (2008: 171). The analysis of Martin’s way of shaping his south african place consists also of negotiation, some of which explain what happened and why it happened, whereas others excuse. My analysis demonstrates that still, more than thirty years after his emigration, Martin negotiated with himself about the right or wrong of leaving finland, family and friends and adjusting to south africa and the circumstances there. Mentally, his emigration seems to be an on-going process.

n o t E s

1 My interest in emigration from finland to south africa started in the mid-1990s when i real-ised that young male finnish descendants often kept their finnish citizenship, and, consequently, had to do military service in finland. some of them stayed afterwards, which fascinated me. Mar-tin belongs to the circle around one of those young men. In 1998 I therefore conducted fieldwork among swedish finn emigrants in south africa. these people had moved voluntarily some time in the 1960s, not as representatives of any enterprise. i was looking for narratives about home-sickness. Most, but not all, of the interviewees presented success stories (cf. Wolf-knuts 2000a).

2 The concept of life story is not unproblematic. In 1980, Jeff Todd Titon devoted an article to the character of this ‘new’ genre in folkloristics. According to him, the difference between a life story and a life history is that the former consists of an oral narrative that is told or created during an interview or a conversation, while the latter is a written text emerging from oral speech (Titon 1980: 278; Svensson 2001: 39, who interprets the difference in a different way). In this interview there are no real stories with given beginnings and obvious endings. consequently, i prefer to call the interview an account. investigations with emigrants have often been based on interviews (cf. Dégh 1975; Wolf-Knuts 2000; Österlund-Pötzsch 2003).

3 annikki kaivola-Bregenhøj (2011: 35) mentions repetition as a narrative device. however, in this interview repetition was not a narrative device, but a sign of hesitance (see, also, Byrne 2003: 40).

4 see, for example, kero 1996: 55, who counts the number of emigrants from finland, norway, and sweden in the 1821–1929 period as 2,250,000. for more information about finnish migration to south africa, see kupiainen 1991, especially the tables on pp. 377–380, 403, 408–409, 412–413. see also olin 2000.

5 It is a well-known fact that men and women tell their emigrant stories in different ways. Gender differences also matter in the cooperation between interviewer and interviewee. (See, for example, Hagström 2002; Byrne 2003: 35; Bönisch-Brednich 2008). This specific field of research is not dealt with here.

6 ukkonen based her study about female metal workers on an extremely small number of interviews.

7 see, for example, kummel 1980, who gives a detailed overview of ostrobothnian emigra-tion; see herberts 1977 and herberts, andberg 1979 on reasons for emigration from ostrobothnia to sweden.

8 however, in fact Martin did not tell me anything about what kind of an education he received in south africa.


9 twenty editions of Boken om vårt land were published in swedish between 1875 and 1940, and its finnish translation Maamme kirja came in 58 editions until 1981. Even in 1993 a facsimile edition in finnish was published.

10 Ja is affirmation in Afrikaans and Swedish, and means ‘yes’.

s o u r c E s

the cultura cultural research archive at the Åbo akademi universityif mgt 1998: 26if mgt 1998: 27–28if mgt 1998: 34–35if mgt 1998: 36–37

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kupiainen, Eero 1991. An African Alternative: Nordic Migration to South Africa 1815–1914. Studia Historica 40. Migration Studies 10. helsinki: finnish historical society; turku: institute of Migration.

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Maslow, abraham h. 1970. Motivation and Personality. new york; london: Evanston; harper and row Publishers.

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mann, tore sager (eds.). The Ethics of Mobilities. Rethinking Place, Exclusion, Freedom and Envi-ronment. aldershot; Burlington, Vt: ashgate.

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telin, irma-leena notkola, Veijo notkola, kari Pitkänen, Marika Jalovaara, Elina Mäenpää, anna ruokkalainen, Markku ryynänen, ismo söderling (eds.). Suomen väestö 1. helsinki: gaudeamus, 19–63.

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6–16.Svensson, Birgitta 2001. Livstid: Metodiska reflexioner över biografiskt särskiljande och modern

identitetsformering. – gunnar alsmark (ed.). Skjorta eller själ? Kulturella identiteter i tid och rum. Lund: Studentlitteratur, 42–61.

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Vol. 8 (1): 23–52

23

P i l g r i M a g E a n d P i l g r i M h i E r a r c h i E s i n V E r n a c u l a r d i s c o u r s E :

c o M Pa r a t i V E n o t E s f r o M t h E c a M i n o d E s a n t i a g o a n d g l a s t o n B u r y

tiina sEPPPhd, research fellow

department of Estonian and comparative folkloreinstitute for cultural research and fine arts

university of tartuÜlikooli 18, 50090 tartu, Estonia

e-mail: [email protected]

aBstractThis article is based on my fieldwork conducted in two important destinations in the spiritual landscape of European vernacular religion – the camino de santiago (pilgrimage route to santiago de compostela) in northern spain, and glastonbury in southwest England. in this comparison between modern expressions of pilgrim-age, i look into the power relationships that exist on the pilgrimage, describe how hierarchies of pilgrims are created and maintained, and reflect on the meaning of the words pilgrim and pilgrimage. The co-existence of the different belief systems of Christianity and New Age and the conflicts and tension between them will be explored. i will also examine discourse around competing male and female energies.

kEyWords: camino de santiago • glastonbury • pilgrimage • pilgrim hierarchy • energy

l o c a t i n g t h E c a M i n o d E s a n t i a g o a n d g l a s t o n B u r y : f i E l d W o r k M E t h o d o l o g y

this article* is based on my fieldwork conducted in two important destinations in the spiritual landscape of European vernacular religion – the camino de santiago (the pil-grimage route to santiago de compostela) in northern spain and glastonbury in south-west England.

the camino de santiago, also known as the Way of st James, is one of the most important modern-day pilgrimage routes in the Western world and the largest chris-tian pilgrimage in Europe. for over a thousand years there has been pilgrimage to the

* this research was supported by the European social fund’s doctoral studies and interna-tionalisation Program dora and by the kristjan Jaak national scholarship Program (carried out by the archimedes foundation in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and research), the European union through the European regional development fund (centre of Excellence in cultural theory) and the Ministry of Education and research (institutional research Project iut2-43). i am deeply grateful to Marion Bowman for her help and inspiration. My heartfelt thanks also go to Morgana West and Barry taylor at the glastonbury Pilgrim reception centre.


city of santiago de compostela in the northwest corner of spain, where the remains of martyred apostle st James the greater are believed to rest. although the santiago pilgrimage has a religious foundation based in catholic doctrine, it is not walked for only religious motives; travelling the camino can be a vacation, a physical adventure, therapy and much more. santiago de compostela has become an immensely popular goal for religious as well as non-religious people from all over the world. Many people walk the camino in search of inner meaning and hope for transformation and personal growth. the route is marked with yellow arrows and scallop shells. By walking, cycling or riding along the ancient pilgrimage route, people are replicating an ancient ritual; almost everybody carries their backpack, scallop shell1 and pilgrim’s passport. (see, for example, Coffey et al. 1996; frey 1998; Dunn, Davidson 2000.)

When writing about the twentieth-century revival of the camino, nancy frey noted that the pilgrimage has not become reanimated as a strictly religious journey but has been interpreted as an ideal way to enjoy “leisure with meaning” (frey 1998: 254). Because hundreds of thousands of people from more than sixty different countries2 walk it every year, the camino de santiago has sometimes been called the Calle Mayor de Europa (Main Street of europe). Ten years ago, when I was preparing for my first camino, few Estonians had heard of it. now the camino de santiago seems to be in vogue in Estonia, as well. there is a facebook community, Eesti Jaakobitee palverändurid (Estonian santiago Pilgrims), which unites former and would-be pilgrims. that group was started by Epp sokk and Jane Vain, who belong to the Pärnu-Jaagupi congregation. Every summer they organise a 3-day pilgrimage in Estonia, starting on the weekend closest to July 25, st James’s day. filmmaker andres sööt made a documentary (2011) about his journey on the camino; Maarika traat’s journey on foot from tartu to san-tiago de compostela in May–december 2012 received plenty of media coverage; and there are now even organised tours to the camino.

In order to add a comparative perspective to my research, I started doing fieldwork in glastonbury – a town of c. 9,000 inhabitants situated in the south west of England. Marion Bowman has observed that whatever the prevailing myth or worldview, glas-tonbury somehow claims a central place in it (Bowman 2007: 295).

Many people think of glastonbury as the legendary isle of avalon where king arthur is said to be buried. glastonbury tor – the hill believed by many to be imbued with sacred properties – is often described as the door to the underworld. some argue that glastonbury was venerated as a sacred place in Britain before christianity and was the site of the first Christian community, reputedly founded by Joseph of Arimathea.3 On his arrival in Glastonbury, Joseph is said to have thrust his staff into the ground on what is now known as Wearyall Hill, and according to legend this staff blossomed into a thorn tree. there are also legends about Jesus himself visiting glastonbury as a child; some people claim that he was also buried there (Mannaz 2007). Glastonbury was an important pilgrimage destination in the Middle ages but this ceased with the brutal destruction of the abbey at the dissolution in 1539. the abbot richard Whiting, a frail old man, was dragged to the top of the tor together with two monks, where they were hanged. for many people glastonbury is an ancient cultic centre of goddess worship and a druidic centre of learning; glastonbury is considered to be the heart chakra of the world and a place with special energies (see Prince, riches 2000; Bowman 2008).

Sepp: Pilgrimage and Pilgrim Hierarchies in Vernacular Discourse 25

Photo 1. Glastonbury Tor, December 2011. Photo by Tiina Sepp.

Today, Glastonbury attracts huge numbers of spiritual seekers. According to Adam stout (2012: 266), they may disagree on every other aspect of belief, but they all agree that Glastonbury is in some way different. Stout suggests that Glastonbury’s biggest miracle is that it has managed to stay special to such contradictory creeds since the reformation (ibid.).

i have heard from many people that in glastonbury the veil between this world and the other world is very thin, and that glastonbury has some very strong energies.4 on my first arrival in Glastonbury in June 2011, some people suggested that I should take a break from glastonbury as often as possible, preferably every week. they said it would be good for me because otherwise glastonbury might become too intense.

apparently, people from all faiths and denominations can go on a pilgrimage to both santiago de compostela and glastonbury. on the homepage of glastonbury Pil-grim reception centre (Prc)5 the following is written: “Open to all people on all paths providing support and information on your journey.” Part of the pilgrim’s blessing read every night at the mass in roncesvalles, the most popular starting-point of the camino de santiago, reads: “the door is open to all, sick or well. not only catholics, but Pagans also. To Jews, heretics, idlers, the vain. And, as I shall briefly note, the good and the worldly, too.”6

People on varied spiritual paths narrate how they feel “drawn” or “called” to Glas-tonbury (see Bowman 1993; 2007; Prince, riches 2000; howard-gordon 2010). Many


people believe that there is a numinous presence in glastonbury that has called people for centuries (cousins 2009: 3). according to Barry taylor, the co-founder of glaston-bury Prc and author of A Pilgrim in Glastonbury (2010), there are 9,000 people in glas-tonbury, and 3,500 of them have been called there. i have heard the same from some Santiago pilgrims – the Camino de Santiago was ‘calling’ them.

Based on my fieldwork I suggest that the main reason for the growing popularity of both glastonbury and the camino de santiago is the fact that they mean so many dif-ferent things to different people. This is best expressed by the observation made by John Eade and Michael sallnow:

the power of a shrine, therefore, derives in large part from its character almost as a religious void, a ritual space capable of accommodating diverse meanings and practices – though of course the shrine staff might attempt, with varying degrees of success, to impose a single, official discourse. This, in the final analysis, is what confers upon a major shrine its essential, universalistic character: its capacity to absorb and reflect a multiplicity of religious discourses, to be able to offer a variety of clients what each of them desires. the sacred centre, then, in this perspective, appears as a vessel into which pilgrims devoutly pour their hopes, prayers and aspirations. (Eade, sallnow 2000: 15)

Both glastonbury and the camino have links to the celtic past, and several people go there because they want to connect to their pre-christian roots. Marion Bowman (2012: 328–348) has written how beliefs about Arthur and Bridget, two significant figures con-nected with celtic myth, have been revived, recycled and manipulated in glastonbury. nearly all the people i interviewed in glastonbury pointed out the importance of glas-tonbury as a former centre of the celts. there is evidence of celtic occupation through-out galicia (the region where santiago de compostela is situated). nancy frey has writ-ten about the people who extend their camino from santiago to finisterre:

Pilgrims oriented toward this search for Celtic influences imagine what would have appealed to celts in the past and drawn them to this jut of rock: the position of the sun, the proximity to water […]. Linking of heaven and earth via the ocean leads pilgrims to envision a celtic past living in harmony with nature and being part of a holistic system. (frey 1998: 175–176)

frey quotes a pilgrim:

i arrived yesterday in time to watch the sun falling into the sea and to marvel at the whole system of things as the ancient celts must have when they too undertook this road under the Milky Way, which actually does go over this place (ibid.).

Dion fortune, one of the Avalonians and author of one of the most influential books about glastonbury (Glastonbury: Avalon of the Heart) has said that there are two avalons, christian and Pagan (fortune 2000: 59). this is a sentiment echoed by others, for exam-ple by stout (2007). several people have told me that the question “Who owns glaston-bury?” has been asked at least since Dion fortune was there.

The definition of pilgrimage has been hotly disputed by several scholars (see, for example, Margry 2008). in the call for Papers for the symposium Pilgrimages Today, held on 19–21 August 2010 in Turku, pilgrimage was defined as “a journey undertaken


by individuals or a group to a place, which for the single individual or the individuals in the group is of great importance because of something they have learnt and experi-enced in the culture and religion which they have grown up within” (Ahlbäck 2010: 5). Peter Jan Margry argues that the term pilgrimage is in need of re-evaluation and in spite of the decades-long academic research, there still is not “a fully crystallized academic picture of the pilgrimage phenomenon” (Margry 2008: 13).

hugh Mcleod brings out the three essential aspects of pilgrimage: a concept of the sacred; a belief that the sacred is to be encountered most readily in certain places, often the place of birth, death or burial of exemplary individuals; and the journey to these places (Mcleod 2012: 188). he distinguishes between pilgrimages where the destina-tion is all-important and the journey and modes of travel are of minor significance and those where this order of priorities is reversed (ibid.). of the places where i have con-ducted fieldwork, the Camino de Santiago is an example par excellence of the latter – an overwhelming majority of santiago pilgrims say that the journey is more important than the arrival, and Glastonbury qualifies as the former. It does not matter in the least how one travels there, all that counts for most people is experiencing the powerful energy of the place. Another difference between the Camino de Santiago and Glaston-bury is that in Glastonbury people are moving in a myriad of different directions, on the camino everybody (except for the very few pilgrims who are walking back home) is moving in the same direction. santiago pilgrims usually have a clear focus and well-defined destination, in Glastonbury the focus may be either the Abbey, Tor or a number of other sites.

I would like to point out that the 10-year process of my fieldwork and research directly (and unintentionally) reflects the history of pilgrimage studies (see, for example, Hermkens, Jansen, Notermans 2009). When I started doing fieldwork on the Camino, one of the first things that caught my attention was communitas. i had not read Victor turner (1974, 1989) or Victor and Edith turner (1978) yet and was not aware of their approach to pilgrimage as the liminal phase during which communitas may occur (the turners were drawing on arnold van gennep’s threefold structure of rites of passage). even without knowing the theory, these were the things that I first noticed and at the beginning of my research i was focussed on the communitas and liminality of a pilgrim: i noticed in others and experienced myself an intense sense of intimacy and equality with others; I saw people from different levels of society and walks of life form strong bonds. About two or three years later I started to pay more attention to the power rela-tionships and pilgrim hierarchy: i started to see pilgrimage as a “realm of competing discourses” as suggested by John eade and Michael Sallnow (2000: 5).

according to Eade and sallnow, social distinctions are in fact reinforced in the pil-grimage. however, the notion of pilgrimage is debated not only in scholarly writing but in vernacular discourse, too. i have heard many heated discussions over the meaning of the words pilgrim and pilgrimage on the camino de santiago as well as in glaston-bury – people often like to analyse what it is that they are doing.

I have been doing fieldwork on the Camino de Santiago since 2003 and in Glaston-bury since 2011. i have walked the camino de santiago (either entirely or partially) in June–July 2003, november–december 2004, May 2005, november 2007, april–May 2008, and april 2010. in october 2008 and March 2012 i worked as hospitalera7 in the pilgrims’ refuges. i got the idea to extend my research from the camino to glastonbury


from Marion Bowman, a distinguished scholar of the new spirituality movement from the uK, who has conducted fieldwork in Glastonbury on a variety of phenomena since the early 1990s (Bowman 1993; 2000). she told me about the newly opened glastonbury Pilgrim Reception Centre and suggested that a field trip to Glastonbury could help me contextualise my previous pilgrimage scholarship and expose me to new nuances of pilgrimage studies and discourse. During my four field trips to Glastonbury between the years 2011 and 2014 i interviewed the people working or volunteering at the Prc and also several other local people and asked them about different aspects of Glaston-bury pilgrimage. i found the contemporary religious pluralism in glastonbury very intriguing and unlike anything i had experienced before.

My fieldwork methodology involves participant observation and conducting open-ended interviews. I have found that just ‘hanging out’ in Glastonbury Pilgrim Recep-tion centre was very useful because it was an ideal place for not only interviewing the staff and volunteers but also for meeting pilgrims and visitors and talking to them. The same can be said for pilgrims’ refuges on the camino de santiago, where i have spent innumerable hours as a pilgrim as well as an hospitalera.

My research has been carried out in the broad framework of vernacular religion. Ver-nacular religion is a term introduced by leonard norman Primiano (1995) who sug-gested this instead of folk religion. Primiano defines vernacular religion as “religion as it is lived: as human beings encounter, understand, interpret and practice it” (Primiano 1995: 44). What makes vernacular religion conceptually valuable, is that it “highlights the power of the individual and communities of individuals to create and re-create their own religion” (Primiano 2012: 383). The focus of study is people, not ‘religion’ or ‘belief’ as abstrac tions (ibid.: 384). According to this approach, it is wrong to perpetuate the judgmental idea that there is real religion and then there is what people do, in other words, people getting the official religion wrong. Scholars of vernacular religion are interested in the phenomena that result from belief, regarding them with equal weight, whether institutionally ‘authorised’ beliefs like the Resurrection and Immaculate Con-ception, or personal interpretations of institutional views.

I find the concept of vernacular religion very suitable for my research. It has always been difficult for me to understand why for many people church dogmas are on a higher level than the expressions of religion by ‘simple folk’. I like to study religion as it is lived and prefer not to think in the categories of high (official) and low (folk) reli-gion. for me the beliefs of priests are on the same level with those of the other people i have interviewed on the camino and in glastonbury. none of them carry more weight or should be taken more seriously than others – they are all expressions of vernacular religion and of equal importance for my research. Primiano (2012: 390) has pointed out ambiguity, power and creativity as the qualities that are very important to lived religion and these three seem to be central in my research, as well.

d o E s t h E c a M i n o d E s a n t i a g o B E l o n g T O T H e C A T H O L I C S O N L Y ?

at the beginning of the daily pilgrims’ mass in the cathedral of santiago de compostela, the priest welcomes all those who have arrived on that day, reads out the pilgrims’


countries of origin and points of departure, and then stresses that they all have walked the camino de santiago in one spirit and with one goal – to venerate st James. When i attended that mass after completing my first Camino in 2003, I thought that the priest must be rather out of touch, as many of my fellow pilgrims had definitely not walked the camino with that goal.

On the Camino de Santiago one is occasionally made aware of the conflict between Catholicism and New Age. People from both ‘camps’ sometimes show suspicion of each other. Already on my first Camino I heard people talk about the via de las estrellas (the road of the stars – also known as the Via lactea, the Milky Way), which is said to parallel the physical, terrestrial camino in the night sky. for example, nancy frey has pointed out that some pilgrims believe that the Milky Way is a celestial reflection of the earthly path taken by medieval pilgrims which later became the Way of st James: “the stars of the Milky Way can also be interpreted as a path of dead souls; the light they produce helps the lost wandering soul to find its way to paradise once believed to exist off the land of the earth” (frey 1998: 35).

i have heard from several people that it is not st James whose remains are kept in the silver embossed casket in the crypt below the main altar of the cathedral of san-tiago de compostela. on hearing that i was researching the pilgrimage, quite a few of my fellow pilgrims suggested that i should focus on Priscillian. these people claim that the remains attributed to St James in fact belong to Priscillian, the charismatic bishop of avila, who was accused of witchcraft and heresy and tortured and beheaded in 385, thus being the first person in the history of Christianity to be executed for her-esy. since henry chadwick suggested in Priscillian of Avila: The Occult and the Charis-matic of the Early Church (1976) that it may have been Priscillian whose body is kept in the cathedral of santiago, there has been extensive academic research on this subject (ferreiro 2000; Sánchez Dragó 2004). This subject has also given material to fiction, like Pilgrimage to Heresy by tracy saunders (2007), for example. it is interesting to note that both Priscillian and st James were decapitated. People who have told me about Priscil-lian’s remains in the cathedral have sometimes lowered their voice before breaking the news.8 it is also not uncommon to encounter a certain degree of gloating. for example, a young pilgrim told me: “Just imagine that millions of people have walked the camino to venerate saint James, and in fact they have knelt in front of the man whom the church had beheaded for heresy.” Pilgrims sometimes speak disapprovingly of the Church: “They think they own the Camino”.9

Similarly, some people find ‘New Age zealots’ annoying. New Age is undeniably very popular among many santiago pilgrims and several people decide to walk the camino after reading esoteric camino books, for example The Camino: A Journey of the Spirit by shirley Maclaine (2000) or The Pilgrimage by Paulo coelho (1987). i came across the following text in the camino de santiago forum, posted by user kerrysean on 30th July 2009; the thread was titled ‘New Age’ bores on the Camino:

Did anyone else find like me, that whilst the camino was a wonderful and hugely rewarding spiritual experience, that it was marred at times by having to listen to an emerging ‘new age’ orthodoxy on the camino… Was anyone else bored rigid by people who felt it their obligation to bang on about their ‘past lives’, stone placing, ley lines, shamanism, seeing symbolism in anything at all we came across, ‘the


nature’, ‘the universe’, and a plethora of esoteric quasi-religious beliefs that one was obliged to indulge whilst on the camino. (camino de santiago forum 2009)

On my field trips to the Camino I have met several people who have made it clear that they are definitely not on a religious pilgrimage. Some have recounted how difficult it was for them to convince their friends and family that even though they were going to walk to santiago de compostela, they had by no means suddenly been converted. nevertheless, both religious and non-religious peregrinos (pilgrims) usually want to take part in the following activities and facilities on the Camino that are offered by the Catholic Church: attending the pilgrims’ mass (misa del peregrino), enjoying church hospitality and obtaining a credencial (so-called pilgrim’s passport) and a compostela (a document certifying the completion of the pilgrimage).

first, many (regardless of motivation) attend the pilgrims’ mass, especially the even-ing mass given in roncesvalles – the most popular starting-point of the camino – where all pilgrims receive blessing for their journey, and the midday mass in santiago de compostela, where pilgrims are greeted and welcomed. in both of these masses, pil-

Photo 2. The author’s pilgrim’s credential of her journey to Santiago de Compostela in November 2004.


grims’ countries of origin are mentioned, and this tends to make people quite emo-tional. apart from roncesvalles and santiago, there are numerous bigger and smaller churches on the camino that celebrate pilgrims’ mass; in nearly all pilgrims’ refuges you can see notices with the place and time of the mass and hospitaleros often point it out to arriving pilgrims. Priests sometimes emphasize that all pilgrims, their confession notwithstanding, are welcome to go and receive a blessing. one Estonian pilgrim, who is not religious, told me that she enjoyed going to the pilgrim masses and receiving the blessing. “i feel good when the priest blesses me and wishes me a good camino. in car-rion de los condes the priest wished us not only good camino de santiago but good Camino of Life. I liked it very much.”

secondly, many pilgrims’ refuges are run by the church.10 this goes back to the Mid-dle ages – the church’s hospitality was particularly important for travellers when her-mitages or monasteries were built in areas where there were no other habitations (ohler 2010: 82). Benedict of nursia founded a monastery at Monte cassion in 530, whose rule 816 was applied to all monasteries in the frankish kingdom, and thus norms were set for hospitality in the centuries which followed (ibid.). Benedict gave the monasteries the mission to receive the poor and pilgrims as they were receiving christ himself – to honour christ in every stranger. according to section 53 of the rule of Benedict 816:

all guests, who come, must be received as if they were christ; for he will say: “I was a stranger, and you took me in”. […] Show especial and particular care in the welcome given to the poor and to pilgrims, for in them you receive christ in the truest sense: for the imperious bearing of the rich compels respect of its own accord. (ibid.)

the most popular refuges on the camino de santiago seem to be those that are run by the church. for example, the refuge of granyon in la rioja is situated in the same build-ing as the parish church. Pilgrims can stay over, have dinner and breakfast for a dona-tion and on the donation box that is always open there is written in several languages: “Leave what you can or take what you need”. Before communal dinner a prayer is (usu-ally) said, and there is a voluntary evening prayer. granyon is in many ways a religious place. yet i have never heard anyone criticise it, not even those people who accuse the catholic church of owning the camino. on the contrary, it is legendary, probably the most popular refuge on the whole camino. Quite a few refuges have been set up in the buildings of monasteries, for example Samos, Leon, Santo Domingo de la Calzada.

thirdly, before starting the camino, people need to obtain a credencial, which is issued either by the church or associations authorised by the church. this document is stamped daily and gives the right to stay in pilgrims’ refuges. on completing the camino, pilgrims are awarded a Compostela issued by the Pilgrims’ Office of the San-tiago cathedral. however, they only get it if they have walked at least 100 kilometres (or cycled 200 kilometres) and if they say they did the camino for religious or spiritual motives.

interestingly, many local people who live along the camino, especially in smaller places, seem to assume that every peregrino is on a catholic pilgrimage. they sometimes ask pilgrims to pray for them in Santiago or ‘give Santiago a hug for them’, as they are too old or unwell to go themselves. While walking the camino, one is constantly aware of st James. there are many churches and chapels dedicated to the saint, and many


statues depicting him; you will hear about him at mass and read about him in pilgrim guides. as there are crosses, cruzeiros, churches and chapels everywhere on the camino; the visual effect of being on a Christian pilgrimage is very strong. Many non-religious people who walk the camino take part in all the above-mentioned activities. Pilgrimage is an ancient ritual; its heyday was in the Middle ages. While walking the camino, pilgrims perform this ancient ritual and many of them thus accept everything that comes with it, including catholicism. for many people it is like going back in time to the Middle ages – this is how some pilgrims have solved the dilemma of being either agnostic or atheist outside the Camino and yet attending a pilgrims’ mass and sleeping in a church while on the Camino. One informant offered an alternative approach to the ‘Camino-time versus ordinary life’ discussion where one of the aims is to reconcile one’s conscience about being anti-Church in ‘real life’ and enjoying the ben-efits offered by the Church while doing the Camino. He suggested that instead of think-

Photo 3. The Compostela awarded to the author after completing the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in June 2010.


ing about camino-time as medieval times we can think of it as eternal time. While in the liminal stage of pilgrimage (as opposed to the profanity of everyday life) we become one with the eternity. Inma Tamayo, a co-ordinator of the Pilgrim’s Office in Santiago de compostela, told me that while walking the camino people can “allow themselves to believe in God – allow themselves to be who they want to be”. She said that the Camino helps people to believe whereas when off the Camino being religious may seem to be something unusual, even ridiculous. Journalist Jessica reed, who walked the camino de Santiago and experienced “a small betrayal of almost all her atheist principles”, sug-gests that walking pilgrimages or any endurance feats take such a physical and mental toll on the participant that “when bizarre thoughts start popping up in their heads, they tend to take them very seriously” (Reed 2012).

While writing this, I realise how complex my own attitude towards the Camino catholicism is. i am not religious and i do not approve of several aspects of the catho-lic (or indeed any) church, and yet i am immensely grateful for what the church has been doing for pilgrims. Anna fedele (2013) has described the sense of attraction and repulsion towards christianity felt by Mary Magdalene pilgrims visiting holy shrines in france, with respect to the tension between their attraction towards the power related to christian churches and their rejection of some basic principles of christian doctrine. it seems to me that many santiago pilgrims share similar ambivalent feelings.

Nancy frey has noted that even though the Church has made it clear that ‘esoterics’ and ‘gnostics’ are not pilgrims, it hesitates to put strict limits on the pilgrimage: “A spe-cific goal of the Church is to use the current popularity of the Camino to evangelize and convert european youth” (frey 1998: 127). On 22–24 April 2013, the first international conference dedicated to christian welcome and new evangelisation on the camino de santiago was held in santiago de compostela. among the speakers there were scholars as well as clergymen, pilgrims and hospitaleros. in a paper given at this conference, fran-cisco Javier luengo asks where else we have a phenomenon like this, where thousands of people voluntarily travel on a typically religious route: “aren’t we sighing for more young people in our parishes, movements and associations? Well, here we have them in hundreds.” (Luengo 2013: 239–240) He adds that not only are there huge numbers of people, but that these people are also involved in the search for something and there-fore this is good ground for evangelisation.

to conclude, even though many of the santiago pilgrims are not (practicing) catho-lics or even Christians, the ‘official’ religion of the Camino is still Catholicism. In the words of one camino sceptic, the camino belongs to the catholics because it was them who “created the trademark and most of the clients are still Catholic”.

G L A S T O N B u R Y – P I L G R I M S W I T H O u T P I L G R I M A G e ?

according to Marion Bowman, glastonbury is one of the most popular and multivalent pilgrimage sites in the uk; it is an example par excellence of a contemporary pilgrimage centre (Bowman 2008: 241; 2012: 12, 21). she writes:

Because a variety of people come to glastonbury with assorted in terests, aims and expectations, a spectrum of pilgrimage activity can be seen here, from more traditional Western christian models, through interfaith pilgrimage, goddess pil-


grimage, Celtic calendar-related activity, conference/symposium attendance, earth energy-inspired jour neying, one-off instances of spiritually significant co-presence (which may or may not be considered pilgrimage), and virtual pilgrimage (Bow-man 2008: 241).

i went to glastonbury with the same aim with which i had gone to the camino de santiago: to interview people about the meaning of pilgrimage and their supernatu-ral experiences. During my fieldtrips to Glastonbury, the focus and main site of my research was the Glastonbury PRC, so in a way my ‘quest’ for the Glastonbury pilgrim-age can be viewed as a case study of the Prc. located very centrally in high street, this was the place where i conducted many interviews, and the founders of the centre, Barry taylor and Morgana West were my key informants. i asked my interviewees the same questions that i had asked the santiago pilgrims – that is what the words pilgrim and pilgrimage meant to them and what their motives for pilgrimage were.11 contrary to my expectations, it was not easy to find pilgrimage in Glastonbury. Instead, several people pointed out to me that Glastonbury no longer has a well-defined pilgrimage. I was not disappointed because I thought that a ‘non-existing pilgrimage’ could offer as good food for thought and material for research as an existing one. a similar thing hap-pened to my expectation of hearing pilgrims’ stories about their encounters with the supernatural – they did not have much to tell me because, according to Barry taylor, they do not use the word supernatural in glastonbury, they prefer the word spiritual.12

like santiago de compostela, glastonbury was a major pilgrimage centre in the Middle ages (see, for example, carley 1988; Bowman 2004; 2014; hopkinson-Ball 2012), and fell into oblivion after the reformation. however, while the camino began to be rediscovered in the 1980s – and it is now walked by increasing numbers of pilgrims every year –, glastonbury pilgrimage per se has not enjoyed the same popularity. one of the reasons for this can be found in the completely different historical context: in England, traditional catholic pilgrimage activity ceased with the reformation.

in 2011, Barry taylor told me that their mission is to define pilgrimage in Glaston-bury. he said that when the santiago pilgrims reach their destination, most of them perform rituals that mark the end of their pilgrimage – they attend the Pilgrims’ Mass in the cathedral of santiago de compostela and give a hug to the statue of st James; in glastonbury, however, no such ritual or ceremony is recognised as completing a pilgrimage. in the light of Barry taylor’s words it is interesting to note that since 1924 there have been annual anglican pilgrimages to glastonbury. for various reasons i have not been able to attend an Anglican Pilgrimage to Glastonbury. During my first field trip in the summer of 2011, I could not attend the Anglican Pilgrimage because it was cancelled. A pilgrimage that can be cancelled must have a totally different meaning than for instance the camino de santiago, which is walked or cycled during all seasons even by people who are unwell or have the most modest means.13 i did some research into why the Anglican pilgrimage had been cancelled and got three different answers. according to the most widespread version it was cancelled due to the high cost of pet-rol. The second version was that it was cancelled because of the conflict between the two wings in the church of England over the ordination of women – the organisers of the pilgrimage were against it. i was told that the local church of st John no longer offered hospitality to the pilgrimage for that reason. According to the third version, the pilgrimage had in fact not been cancelled but merged with another pilgrimage – that of


our lady of Walsingham which took place in Exeter at that time. one man told me that it was decided that instead of going to glastonbury and Exeter, they just went to Exeter. the members of st John’s congregation told me that glastonbury people feel that the christian pilgrimage is not part of the town. one woman told me that at one point town people no longer felt they were part of the pilgrimage: “glastonbury is just used as a site for it”. She said that about twenty years ago the High Street was full of people during the anglican pilgrimage; they were singing hymns and joining the procession. “Now you hardly notice there’s a pilgrimage”, she told me. She also said that the main reason why st John’s congregation had pulled out of the pilgrimage was that anglican pilgrimage organisers do not let ordained women in.14

i got the impression that the anglican pilgrimage is like a foreign body in glas-tonbury – even the local christian community is not interested, let alone the alterna-tive community. some of my interviewees with a christian background warned me against using the christian pilgrimages as an indicator of the state of christianity in glastonbury. one man said: “you shouldn’t think to yourself, oh there is this anglican pilgrimage, and only sixty people turned up to walk on high street, this means that the Church is in bad condition”. He pointed out that the Anglican pilgrimage has always been politically charged within the church and the state of the anglican pilgrimage does not in any way reflect the state of Christianity in Glastonbury. for several years anglican and catholic pilgrim ages to glastonbury abbey took place on one and the

Photo 4. Morgana West in front of the Glastonbury Pilgrim Reception Centre, February 2013. Photo by Tiina Sepp.


same weekend – the anglican pilgrimage on saturday and catholic on sunday, thus creating a christian pilgrimage weekend. this has apparently been changed – in 2013 the anglican pilgrimage took place on the 15th of June and roman catholic pilgrim-age on the 7th of July. interestingly, as pointed out by Marion Bowman (2004), both the anglican Pilgrimage and the catholic Pilgrimage refer to themselves as “the glaston-bury Pilgrimage” (Bowman 2004: 279).

i was wondering if people working for the glastonbury Pilgrim reception centre tell their visitors about Christian pilgrimage. Are there hand-outs and leaflets about those? I found out that there are no leaflets to be distributed about these pilgrimages because, according to Morgana West, the co-founder and manager of the Prc, christian pilgrimages do not produce any publicity. add to this the fact that pilgrimage is not a natural part of Protestantism (pilgrimage was banned during the reformation) and that the anglican church still has ambivalent feelings about the abbey (ashe 1976), and the low-key nature of the glastonbury anglican pilgrimage becomes quite understand-able. one man told me that catholic pilgrimage has grown and anglican pilgrimage has become smaller mainly because many anglicans have become catholics. he said that nowadays catholic glastonbury pilgrimage gets thousands of people; anglican pilgrimage is a much lower-key event with a maximum of two hundred people. the catholic church in glastonbury is designated a shrine and sees itself as the rightful successor to and continuation of the medieval pilgrimage. the people at the roman catholic church maintain the shrine (with its tapestry of the glastonbury martyrs) as successors of the abbey and its Marian devotion (see Bowman 2004; 2014). Pilgrimage is a live concept for some.

the glastonbury Pilgrim reception centre was founded in 2007, and on their door there is a sign saying: “We are a non-denominational centre open to all people on all paths”. Volunteers at the Glastonbury PRC told me that one of their aims is to give sup-port and spiritual guidance to those who have become lost. initially the Prc was meant for people going through a spiritual crisis. if necessary, these people were advised to see a psychologist, christian priest, Wiccan or some other person considered suitable to help in a particular situation. Many people are attracted to Glastonbury for its healing (see, for example, Prince, riches 2000: 92–98; Bowman 2008). analysing new forms of pilgrimage, hugh Mcleod (2012: 201) points out healing is something that has remained constant: pilgrimage is centrally concerned with healing, but the healing that is sought, is now more often psychological than physical. This observation has been confirmed numerous times during my fieldwork on the Camino: I have met many pilgrims who set out in order to find alleviation to the pain and suffering caused by the loss of some-one close through death, divorce, etc. for example, one young woman who had been recently abandoned by her husband walked the camino carrying her wedding dress in her backpack. When she arrived in finisterre, she burnt the dress in the hope of leaving the past behind and moving on with her life.

In Glastonbury, the word pilgrim is perceived differently than on the Camino. On the Camino, everybody wants to be called a pilgrim, no matter if they call themselves religious, spiritual or neither. the minute one starts the camino, one becomes a pilgrim (see frey 1998; sepp 2012a). in glastonbury, however, this is far from clear and there is an on-going debate about these words. according to Barry taylor, pilgrims are “any visitors who come to glastonbury for what they see as the special spiritual energies of


the place. these pilgrims are of every faith, denomination and belief. the term may also be used for pilgrims15 who have settled in the town.” (Taylor 2010: 18) However, some Prc volunteers told me that people in glastonbury often do not want to admit that they are pilgrims. Morgana West said that 75 per cent of the people are not aware that they are pilgrims. in 2011, talking about the negative sides of that term, she pointed out its ambiguity, and said that some people feel uncertain about the Prc: “Pagans think we are Christian, Christians think we are pagan”. Some of my informants told me that they did not like the name of the Prc because in their opinion the words pilgrim and pilgrimage had overly strong christian associations. they said they thought of them-selves as spiritual seekers rather than pilgrims and would prefer the name of the Prc to be changed accordingly. Here we can see the difference between self-identifying as pilgrims, and others designating people as pilgrims. Marion Bowman (1993) has writ-ten about the different types of Glastonbury pilgrims, for example perpetual pilgrims and conscious and unconscious pilgrims.

Barry taylor has nothing against the use of the words pilgrim and pilgrimage, and during our interview in December 2011 he gave me this definition: “everyone who goes to glastonbury is on a pilgrimage, except for those who go on the pilgrimage to glas-tonbury”. By “those who go on the pilgrim age” Barry meant people who attend Chris-tian pilgrimage in glastonbury. he said that the alternative community do not count anglican or catholic pilgrimages as a genuine spiritual pilgrimage mainly because they

Photo 5. Glastonbury Abbey, February 2014. Photo by Tiina Sepp.


do not honour others. he said: “the anglican church will not accept women as priests. We all have our spiritual paths, but we honour all others.” When I interviewed Barry two years later, he used the words pull and push to describe the attitudes of the people

who go on pilgrimage to glastonbury. he said: “christians go because they’re being pushed, we are being pulled”. In his book A Pilgrim in Glastonbury (2010) as well as in his interviews, Barry has emphasised the need to define the pilgrimage in Glastonbury. I must admit i am very curious to see what the well-defined Glastonbury pilgrimage will be like.

glastonbury resident Jon cousins, whom i met at the Prc, has proposed a very inter-esting form of pilgrimage. he is the author of The Glastonbury Docu ments, in which he writes about richard Whiting (the last abbot of glaston bury), and the two monks who were ritually killed in 1539. cousins’ research has led him to conclude that the key to glastonbury’s “perpetual chaotic dismemberment” (“it is a town divided”) is exactly that ritual murder of the glaston-bury three (cousins 2007: 5; 2009). cous-ins emphasises the need for a large non-denominational service of remembrance for richard Whiting, held at glastonbury abbey. the service would begin with the synchronised arrival of four Pilgrimages – one from Bath, one from Wells, one from ilchester, one from Bridgwater – symboli-

cally bringing the separate parts of richard Whiting back together (cousins 2007: 25). (after being hanged, Whiting’s body had been quartered and displayed in Bath, Wells, ilchester and Bridgwater.)

glastonbury pilgrimage seems to be rather heavily contested. Pilgrimage is a very ambiguous term to begin with. there are some pilgrimage-like activities in glaston-bury apart from the anglican and catholic pilgrimages. the most conspicuous of those would be the goddess conference, which takes place every summer. according to Marion Bowman, the Goddess Movement “contributes to some of the most high-profile pilgrimage activity in contemporary Glastonbury” (Bowman 2008: 257). She writes:

[...] the Goddess community is fighting patriarchy with pageantry, self-consciously using the procession as a means of repossessing glaston bury for the goddess, re-asserting ‘Her’ presence in the town. In pro ducing practically a mirror image of the christian pilgrimage proces sions, with images of the goddess, goddess banners, processions, chanting and ritual, the goddess community is physically encompass-

Photo 6. The book cover of a Pilgrim in glas-tonbury by Barry Taylor (2010).


ing christian glastonbury and spiritually reclaiming aspects of the christian tra-dition there, such as devotion to the Virgin and st. Bridget. it is undoubtedly the form of pilgrimage in which contestation for and of glastonbury is most marked. (Bowman 2008: 258)

When i told a man, who is training to be a goddess priest, that i do research on glas-tonbury pilgrimage, he said that attending the Goddess Conference could be viewed as going on a pilgrimage, but he added that for him it is more of a calling than pilgrim-age. My other informants pointed out that the relatively high participation fees of the conference distract from its likeness to a pilgrimage: “You can’t join it unless you pay”. they also pointed out that it is called a conference (that has a procession as a part of it), not a pilgrimage. it seems that a few years ago the element of pilgrimage in the god-dess conference was much more emphasised than it is now. i suggest that the virtual abandonment of the concept of pilgrimage from the goddess Movement is connected with the decline of the importance and high profile nature of the Anglican and Roman Catholic pilgrimages in Glastonbury: there is no longer a need for a ‘counter-pilgrim-age’. however, considering that the trappings and the route of the goddess proces-sion are directly influenced by the Christian pilgrimages, the undeniable influence and inspiration cannot be downplayed; just because contemporary attendees are not aware of it does not mean it was not important and part of a larger ‘pilgrimage picture’ in glastonbury (see Bowman 2008).

The ruins of the former Benedictine Abbey are sacred to people of different spir-itualities. since 1924 there have been annual anglican pilgrimages to glastonbury; the first post-Reformation Roman Catholic pilgrimage took place in 1895. The processions of the annual anglican and catholic pilgrimages end in the abbey with celebration of a mass. Marion Bowman (Bowman 2004: 279) has referred to the processions of the glastonbury christian pilgrimages as “a means of christianity reasserting its claim on Glastonbury”. It is believed by many that the Mary and Michael lines run along the abbey church. in 2011, i noticed a sign in the abbey museum saying that dowsing on the abbey grounds is only allowed with permission. to me this implies that the angli-can church wants to maintain control over what is happening on its premises but at the same time they are willing to make a concession, perhaps fearing that banning dows-ing might lead to unwanted problems. The Abbey’s present status seems to be a little unclear: although the abbey grounds are set up as a heritage site rather than a religious site (it is only on certain occasions that the abbey grounds are set up for a mass, the rest of the time the abbey is administered as historic site), in its deeds is a clause stating that nothing injurious to anglican religion can occur there, which is why non-christian ritu-als are not allowed. this has occasionally led to confrontation. one man who used to work for the Abbey museum, told me that some of his ex-colleagues were ‘anti-weirdos’ and felt they had the moral authority to dictate visitors behaviour. he told me about the clash of ideology within the Abbey staff and asked: “Who has the authority to forbid people from dowsing on the Abbey grounds?” The documentary Chenrezig (2013) made by Glastonbury filmmakers tim knock and kevin redpath, follows the visit of eight tibetan Buddhist monks from india to glastonbury and the step by step creation of a sand mandala dedicated to Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion. The film features a scene about the monks paying a visit to the abbey. at the reception they are told that they are welcome as long as they do not pray.


as Marion Bowman has noted, things move fast in glastonbury, so “one can see things develop, change or disappear” (Bowman 2009: 4). Based on my (time-wise rather limited) fieldwork I suggest that even though some people in Glastonbury do think of themselves as pilgrims who were called and stayed, thinking of glastonbury as a site of pilgrimage is not very common among glastonbury residents at the moment – the word pilgrimage does not seem to be in vogue. During my field trip to Glastonbury in february 2014, i heard that the glastonbury Pilgrim reception centre was being restructured and was about to reopen as the glastonbury reception centre. they were going to keep their motto “Inspiring unity through Diversity”. That new Centre will also house a sanctuary, because, according to Morgana West:

Whilst many of Glastonbury’s indoor sacred spaces afford an open door policy towards people from differing beliefs, they all have their roots in their own faith or spiritual practice. Our plans to offer ‘a sanctuary’ in which all beliefs can come together within their own framework, is unique in that we will be offering a sacred space from a starting place that is not from any one set of religious beliefs. this place of origin is not to suggest we feel all faiths and paths are the same, nor that they ‘should be’, but that each and every one has a valuable place in modern-day society. We also offer our acknowledgement that spiritual beliefs and practices can present complex and difficult challenges between different groups creating gaps that are sometimes difficult to bridge. However, rather than focus on differences and discord, our intention is to create a space in the heart of the town where toler-ance, understanding and co-existence can be found demonstrating how together, we can live well in Glastonbury, whilst remaining different.

i asked Morgana why they had dropped the word Pilgrim form their name. this is what she said:

over the years, the title Pilgrim has been hotly debated. Whilst there are those comfortably identifying with it, a higher proportion of those visiting glastonbury follow a contemporary spiritual path and feel it is something they are unable to connect with, perceiving it as being associated only with christianity. the idea of secular pilgrimage is unknown to them and if stretched, their only other means of identification might be with the Muslim Hajj. On the opposite side of the coin, many of those of the christian faith perceive our centre as being of the new age and by default, Pagan. as a consequence of these perceptions, encouraging peo-ple to come to a wider awareness of pilgrim and pilgrimage has been challenging indeed and our new identity gives us a welcome opportunity to appeal to a wider sector of those on a spiritual journey. however, the processes within pilgrimage are such that almost all spiritual seekers to Glastonbury find themselves encoun-tering and we shall continue to openly acknowledge and highlight the stages and experiences of this ancient way, reflective of our historical past in a congruent man-ner appropriately mirroring glastonbury of the 21st century.


c r E a t i n g a n d M a i n t a i n i n g P i l g r i M h i E r a r c h i E s

Nancy frey has pointed out that discontinuities in definitions of pilgrims and pil-grims’ behaviour among participants reveal a “level of unresolved tension regarding the changing nature of pilgrimage and leisure activities in Western european society” (frey 1998: 69).

the hierarchy of pilgrims in vernacular discourses is a complicated subject that has been studied rather thoroughly (for example, frey 1998; Mendel 2010). The first division is between human and motor-powered travel – motorised pilgrimage is not regarded as pilgrimage by those who walk or cycle to santiago. for many people real pilgrims are only those who go to santiago under their own power. those who go by bus, even if religiously motivated, are inauthentic, that is, tourists (frey 1998: 18). there is a further distinction in the group of foot or cycle pilgrims that exists at both official and unofficial level. On the official level, in several pilgrims’ hostels foot pilgrims are allowed to check in from 2 or 3 p.m., cyclists only from 7 p.m. the logic behind this is that cyclists move faster and are supposed to find a new bed more easily if the hostels fill up. By the unof-ficial distinction I mean that foot pilgrims tend to look down on cycle pilgrims; nearly all foot pilgrims that i interviewed told me that cycle pilgrims (often called bicigrinos) are not proper pilgrims.

Tommy Mendel (2010), who has written a comparative article about foot pilgrims to santiago and backpackers, refers to the validity of turner’s communitas theory for his own research. He brings out two points: first, it is very easy for pilgrims to meet, re-meet and spend several days or weeks on the road with fellow travellers, and secondly,

[...] during the experience of this liminal and unconventional time of the journey a particular identity among like-minded people can develop, overlapping social strata and nationalities. [...] [O]ne of the core factors making this kind of journeying so exceptional are the mutual feelings of solidarity, togetherness, security as well as the community spirit. (Mendel 2010: 294)

Hierarchical distinctions may occur (ibid.: 294) but they manifest on a different level to everyday life, for example in the foot-pilgrim’s or backpacker’s “road status” (ibid.: 307). Mendel writes:

road status is multifaceted, consisting of the number of the journeys already undertaken, the duration of the trip, the distance of the route, the speed at which the distance is covered, the hardship and the difficulty of the routing and the opti-mizing of a minimal budget (ibid.: 307).

When I started doing fieldwork on the Camino, some pilgrims suggested that I should only interview ‘real’ pilgrims – those who started walking alone from home. Pilgrims with road experience are deeply respected. in 2004 i met a lithuanian pilgrim who had already walked to rome and Jerusalem, and was about to complete his third pilgrimage to santiago. his fellow pilgrims obviously looked up to him. however, the line between people like the lithua nian pilgrim and vagabonds seems to be very thin and therefore someone who is regarded as a pilgrim par excellence by some people may be held in suspicion by some others. i have sometimes encountered marginalised pilgrims – those who are often seen as ‘wrong-uns’. They do things that are not expected from the San-


tiago pilgrims, for example they do not leave the pilgrimage destination as soon after the arrival as possible. those pilgrims who walk back home rather than using public transport are sometimes held in suspicion as well. they are apparently too close to vagabonds for the liking of some others.

People, whether they think of themselves as pilgrims or not, undertake the camino for various reasons, religious and non-religious. in the Middle ages, the reasons for undertaking the pilgrimage varied wildly, just as they do now. already in the Middle ages one of the common motives for pilgrimage was the wish to travel and see the world, as well as the opportunity to escape from the grey mundane world of everyday life and the duties therein. Pilgrimages have sometimes been called medieval tourism – they offered the chance to get away, meet new people, experience new cultures and witness places that previously they had only ever heard about. Pilgrimage has always been viewed by the church with some ambivalence.

Pilgrimage was given a major boost in 1095, when urban ii introduced the practice of indulgence. Affective piety, with its focus on the humanity of Christ, fostered the desire to see the places associated with his life; and by the fourteenth century, pilgrimage to the three major sites of christendom – Jerusalem, rome and santiago de compostela – had become a virtual package tour industry. (Voaden 2004: 181)

it is widely believed that although many pilgrims were devout, many more were seduced by a desire to see the world, and pilgrimage became increasingly secularised, epitomised by the dubious piety of most of chaucer’s canterbury pilgrims (ibid.). therefore, anxiety that pilgrimage might be undertaken by the “wrong people and for the wrong reasons” was felt from early times (Webb 2002: 72). Pilgrimage provided an excuse for travel for a wide variety of people, from monks and nuns who should have stayed in the cloister to fugitive serfs, beggars and vagabonds (ibid.).

apparently, not much has changed in this respect and people are told to be aware of bogus pilgrims nowadays, as well. in a book issued by the diocese of the cathedral of santiago de compostela, three categories of bogus pilgrims are highlighted: the hik-ers, whose aim is to promote walking for exercise and to get to know the country; the initiatory groups who use the camino as a means of initiation interpreting it according to the ideas of the different sects which are basically gnostic, esoteric etc.; and those who aim to live off the pilgrimage and seek to make use of the Christian hospitality of the Camino at no cost to themselves or as a cheap form of tourism. (Garcia Rodriguez 1999: 74)

on a number of occasions, both as a pilgrim and an hospitalera, i have been warned against people who pretend to be pilgrims but in fact only want to use the pilgrims’ ref-uges and sometimes also steal from good pilgrims. When i was working as a voluntary hospitalera in a pilgrims’ refuge in granyon, we sometimes had pilgrims stay with us whom the local people warned us against. one was said to be a fake pilgrim who was in fact a homeless drunk trying to get free beds in refuges. a man who called himself Michel arrived in the morning and said that he was not going to stay; he just wanted to heal his blisters. after a while he said that the blisters were too bad and he would stay overnight. he told me that he had started to walk from Belgium in memory of his father, who had always wanted to do the camino. Michel also mentioned that it was his birthday. together with the other hospitalero we decided to buy a cake for him and have


his name written on it. Later that day, we heard from the village people that our Michel was not a proper pilgrim – he was a vagrant taking advantages of pilgrims’ refuges and had already been to that particular refuge a few times before, every time under a dif-ferent name. one of the men, who was renovating the parish church, told us to keep an eye on this ‘birthday boy’, for fear that he stole something from the pilgrims. Another time, a ‘suspicious’ pilgrim was described as a criminal by one local person who ran in to warn me and the other hospitalero. he told us to tell the pilgrims to keep an eye on their purses, and that we should watch the wine bottles.

i suppose that even though everyone who has walked the camino has probably met at least one pilgrim-vagabond, they are still relatively rare. this cannot be said about the other subgroup of pilgrims, turigrinos, who are apparently abundant and seem to form an integral part of the camino. that spanish word, which refers to someone who is the opposite of a real pilgrim, is formed from two words, turista (tourist) and peregrino (pilgrim). Turigrinos are accused of being demanding and superficial, and taking advan-tage of the camino infrastructures for cheap holiday-making; instead of walking they use a support car or take the bus.16 “We can never get rid of turigrinos”, is a sentence that is said over and over again. some say that compared to the present-day turigrinos, past turigrinos seem almost like real pilgrims. however, using the support vehicle is not the only ‘sin’ that is attributed to turigrinos. sometimes they wake up too early for the lik-ing of ‘real’ pilgrims – at 4 or 5 a.m. – allegedly with the aim of reaching the next refuge in time to get a bed. i suppose it is safe to say that turigrinos are those who do certain things differently from those regarded as ‘real’ pilgrims, and the list of these things is endless and constantly changing.

The question of what an ‘authentic pilgrim’ is inevitably leads to the next question: who has the power and authority to determine who is a real pilgrim? Interestingly, during my first field trips between 2003 and 2005 when I con ducted tens of interviews no one challenged my questions (Do you consider yourself to be a pilgrim? What dis-tinguishes a pilgrim from a tourist?) in any way. It was not until October 2008, when I was working as an hospitalera in granyon, that that problem was rather clearly brought home to me. i was talking to one catalan man about my research (not interviewing him) and he pointed out quite passionately that no one has the right to judge him and decide whether a poor drunk like himself is a real pilgrim or not. he said that he would rather be called a penegrino (from pene ‘penis’ and peregrino ‘pilgrim’).

As shown above, on the Camino de Santiago there exist different kinds of hierar-chies – a technical one in several pilgrim hostels distinguishing between cyclists and foot pilgrims; a hierarchy created by pilgrims and hospitaleros themselves, who judge each other based on various factors – road experience, behaviour (for example, a real pilgrim is expected to be humble and live by the motto “The tourist demands, the pil-grim appreciates”); and finally, a hierarchy imposed by outsiders from ‘above’, accord-ing to which proper Catholics have better informed, more valid, superior knowledge. We can say that there are two kinds of rhetoric here – the one from above and the one from below. the one imposed and the one developed out of what you see around you and why or how you view it in a particular way. it is useful to look at how they are linked and at what drives both. I will now describe the hierarchy imposed from ‘above’.

When doing fieldwork in Santiago de Compostela in spring 2010, I once got into trouble with the municipal police because, according to them, I was in “undesirable”


company (sepp 2012b: 42–46). the police strongly recommended that i found myself better and more appropriate subjects than “those drunkards and fake pilgrims” I was conducting interviews with. one of the people that the santiago police told me to keep away from was José, a catalan painter who started the pilgrimage from Barcelona in order to pray for his terminally ill mother. When he reached santiago de compostela, he decided to stay there for a while before starting to walk back to Barcelona, and earn his living as a street artist, painting the cathedral (ibid.). among other things, José told me about the function of the botafumeiro (the incense burner) that is swung during the mass at the cathedral of santiago. according to him, it is important that they use botafumeiro in the cathedral: “thanks to the botafumeiro they haven’t blocked the cross in the cathedral. Botafumeiro saves the cross.” He explained that thanks to using the botafumeiro they keep the cross-part of the cathedral unblocked, whereas in many other churches they have destroyed the cross by putting an organ or chairs in that part, thus making it possible for the devil to come in (ibid.: 45).

When i discussed this belief with my contact from the university of santiago, he said that José sounded as if he was mentally disturbed, most probably an alcoholic and therefore an unreliable interviewee. an interesting side topic of this approach is the medicalisation of people who have unconven tional beliefs. Ülo Valk (2012: 363) has noted that medical discourse represents the authority of science and offers strong argu-ments against a supernaturalist worldview. in the case i am discussing, not only was a psychiatric interpretation of my informant’s beliefs offered, but also a critique of that person’s non-catholic views: my spanish contact emphasised that José’s beliefs do not generally reflect the Catholic belief system, thus José was not an appropriate person for me to talk to and advised me to interview ‘proper Catholic pilgrims’. even if I had tried to take his advice to interview only proper catholic pilgrims, i would probably have had difficulty finding them. Where could I have met a ‘real Catholic’ – pure, untainted, not influenced by any vernacular beliefs or personal interpretations of institutional views? As I said, José’s communication with the divine was criticised by a Catholic scholar with theological education. at the same time, José was a practicing catholic who had started his long pilgrimage from Barcelona to pray for his mother. Many peo-ple would say that, because of starting the pilgrimage from his home and having a religious motivation, José was an authentic pilgrim par excellence.

so far i have had my choice of interviewees criticised by two scholars. i already men-tioned the first incident that happened in Santiago de Compostela when my Spanish contact did not approve of some of my informants’ beliefs and rituals because accord-ing to him they were not characteristic of proper catholicism. By recommending that i speak to proper pilgrims instead of the likes of José, my contact was creating a hierarchy of pilgrims, differentiating between proper pilgrims and others. My fieldwork in Glas-tonbury, especially my choice of interviewees, has also received some criticism. accord-ing to one historian, the people i have interviewed in glastonbury – among them the founders and volunteers of the glastonbury Pilgrim reception centre – “can’t under-stand the term ‘pilgrimage’, probably for a lack of religious formation: it seems that many of them are really pagans”. This implies that in his opinion only Christians with religious education can have a valid opinion on the topic of pilgrimage.

leaving aside the question of whether the above-mentioned people spoke as schol-ars or representatives of the church, these incidents have led me (again) to ask who has


the right to decide who is and who is not a proper pilgrim; who can understand the term pilgrimage; and from where have they received that knowledge? Is it only Christians who hold the key to matters concerning pilgrimage?

rené gothóni (2010: 60–61) notes that our preconceptions determine our interpreta-tion and understanding of the subject matter. He writes:

The word ‘pilgrim’ from Latin peregrinus (per ager) denotes ‘walking’ and within the Roman Catholic theology identification with the sufferings of Christ (imitatio Christi) through physical hardship. hence our – i.e. the Westerner’s – preconcep-tion of the word ‘pilgrimage’ is that a pilgrimage is about walking, which means that the pilgrimage is conceived of from a limited horizon of understanding. (ibid.: 61)

gothóni insists on calling the proskynima to Mount athos a pilgrimage simply because he is not prepared to “give a monopoly to the Western scholarly and roman catholic interpretation of what pilgrimage is or should be all about, both as a category and a word” (ibid.: 68).

E n E r g y

the concept of energy is widely used in new age discourse (see, for example, Prince and Riches 2000; Kivari 2012). I have heard several discussions about it on my field trips to glastonbury and the camino de santiago.

One of the most significant sacred sites of Glastonbury, the Chalice Well with its red waters (which some associate with the grail and the blood of christ and others with the menstrual blood of the goddess), is situated at the foot of the tor. opposite the chalice Well is the White spring with its white and supposedly healing waters. Marion Bowman (2007: 306) has noted that for some people the proximity of the red and white waters indicates the balance of male and female energies (red representing blood, white semen) associated with the Michael and Mary ley lines which are believed to intertwine at the tor.

several people are convinced that glastonbury is the greatest British centre of ley lines – mysterious lines of force, which can somehow be tapped into, yielding great powers for good or evil. for many people, glastonbury is an “extremely deeply spir-itual place full of tangible powerful energy” (Cousins 2007: 1). Jon Cousins writes:

there is an energy at work here that is extremely powerful, tangible, and present. deserving both grave respect and constant awareness. if it touches you, it cannot be ignored. It shakes, and pulls, and reveals. It truly affects people in profoundly challenging, sometimes shockingly damaging ways. the oddest thing is that this energy particularly seems to affect those that are called here, while it seems to have little or no affect whatsoever on many of the long-time locals. (Cousins 2007: 6)

the camino de santiago is believed to have preserved the energy of all the people who have ever walked it. It has been called a “power walk”. I have seen pilgrims refuse to stay at certain refuges because of the “dark energy” of those places. A Catalan pilgrim told me:


the energy that came from the Estella church – an energy of darkness, where many people had been attacked. I could feel the fear. I decided I couldn’t stay there. I don’t want to sleep in this area, I don’t like this energy. […] Of all the places on the camino, the wine fountain17 is here.

another place on the camino that is believed by some to be full of negative energies is the final destination – the city of Santiago de Compostela itself. I have heard from sev-eral people about the oppressive feeling that they get in santiago, and one pilgrim also offered an explanation:

When people arrive in Santiago they are filled with their troubles and worries; on finishing the pilgrimage and leaving the city they also leave their burden behind, thus adding to the city’s accumulation of negative energy.

the camino (el Camino) is a masculine word in spanish, and several pilgrims have com-pared the camino with a man – friend, lover. to illustrate this, i will quote a few lines from a poem written by a Brazilian pilgrim Antonella Zara:

i love you!With your welcome and generosity i entered your forests, yourValleys, your fields and your long long trails.And, little by little, I began feeling the sensitivity and the artWith which you entered my veins, my bones, my blood, and theMagical recesses of my very being.today you and i are lovers, and our love is forever, as all truelove must be.

however, one Belgian woman said she could not think of the camino as having male energy because of the connection with the earth, which is very feminine.

Already on my first trip to Glastonbury I was told that places can have male or female energy. during my interview with Barry taylor at the Prc, he came to the con-clusion that the camino as a catholic pilgrimage has strong male energy, glastonbury has strong female energy and it would be wonderful if these energies could be united. he suggested that i should be the bridge-builder and unite these two energies. how-ever, Barry pointed out that in glastonbury there is one site with strong male energy – the ruins of the Benedictine abbey.

Many people believe that Glastonbury was once a significant site of Goddess wor-ship and is now first and foremost a centre of Goddess spirituality. According to nearly all of my informants, glastonbury has a strong female energy; there is a strong empha-sis on the divine female. James, who has been to glastonbury several times, told me about energy as a “gender based identity”. He said:

glastonbury is very strong and dominantly female. it has long been the pagan area for witches, female healers, etc. and they still dominate. all around glasto you will find ‘earth mothers’ – healers, herbalists, wise women. Glastonbury draws women of all ages to herself as this is a spiritual ‘womb’ for matriarchal society.

the Belgian woman, whom i mentioned earlier, said that what makes glastonbury fem-inine is the fact that anna, the mother of Mary, has been buried in the green tomb near the tor. some glastonbury residents have expressed concern about the unbalance of


energy in glastonbury – the male energy is supposedly very weak. Brian, a resident pil-grim with a shamanic background, said that after arriving in glastonbury a few years ago, random people approached him in the street and told him that he had to settle the unbalance of glastonbury’s male-female energy.

a young spanish pilgrim said that the reason why the camino has a strong male energy is because the catholic church has always supressed women. the discussion about energies seems to reflect the competition between different spiritualities. Several people have told me that the divine female and the presence of strong female energy in glastonbury is a natural reaction to the centuries-long male domination and oppression of women by the church.

c o n c l u s i o n

the notion of pilgrimage is debated not only in scholarly writing but in vernacular dis-course, too. i have heard many heated discussions over the meaning of the words pil-grim and pilgrimage on the camino de santiago as well as in glastonbury. in European vernacular religion the terms pilgrim and pilgrimage are rather ambiguous and it seems unlikely that a definition will be coined that everybody will agree with. The usage of the words pilgrim and pilgrimage sometimes reveals the tension between different dis-courses and religious systems. in this article, i have tried to analyse these concepts and explore the contradictions and complexities that they involve. some people would go as far as say, that any significant journey can be described as pilgrimage; some others claim that pilgrimage made by (for example) Pagans is not a pilgrimage. i have observed how in statements like “These people are not real pilgrims” and “Their pilgrimage is not a true pilgrimage” the words pilgrim and pilgrimage are used to establish authority and create hierarchies of people and activities. due to the ambivalent nature of these terms, they can be used as a means to convey very different messages. I have observed the use of the words pilgrim and pilgrimage on two levels – scholarly and vernacular. occasionally these two levels overlap, as was the case with the catholic scholars giving me advice on whom to interview – implying that only catholics are proper pilgrims.

While santiago de compostela is much more than a catholic shrine, the spirit of catholicism is very strongly present on the camino. it prevails not only on the pilgrim-age route but every now and then finds its way to the academic world, as well. The fact that many people find it necessary to emphasise that in spite of doing the Camino they are by no means religious, shows how strong the influence of the Catholic Church on the camino is. the catholic church uses the popularity of the camino to carry out the work of evangelisation.

I have also looked at different, competing narratives about pilgrimage in Glaston-bury. Based on my (time-wise rather limited) fieldwork I suggest that thinking of Glas-tonbury as a site of pilgrimage is not very common among the residents at the moment. it seems to me that just recently the word pilgrimage had a wider scope of meaning than now. it is possible that with the dwindling impact of the christian pilgrimage there is no longer a need for an ‘alternative pilgrimage’ or counter pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is a contested category to begin with, and it seems to me that glastonbury pilgrimage has been so heavily contested that at a certain point it got lost in the process. When analys-


ing the terms pilgrim and pilgrimage, Morgana West pointed out their ambiguity and the uncertainty that some people feel about the Prc. i think i can say the same about my ‘quest’ for Glastonbury pilgrimage: whenever I said I researched pilgrimage, people invariably asked me which pilgrimage. Many (including several Christians and ‘New agers’) added that they do not think of glastonbury as a place of pilgrimage. certainly some would argue that the unifying thing is simply people being drawn to glastonbury but even then some of them added that the term seeker might be more appropriate. in glastonbury some visitors self-identify as pilgrims, some residents self-identify as pil-grims, and some designate all who come to glastonbury as seekers or (in some cases) pilgrims. This debate is further com pli cated by the different levels of designation – self-designation, designation by others, designation according to different theological posi-tioning, designation according to different scholarly models, etc. (see Bowman 1993).

as there are topical legends and topical jokes – narratives that appear immediately after some event and disappear when the event has lost its significance – I suggest we can also talk about the topicality of pilgrimage. When anglican pilgrimage was popu-lar and well-attended, the Goddess Conference organisers started the Goddess Proces-sion, which could be seen as a counter-pilgrimage (see Bowman 2004). now that the anglican pilgrimage is on the decline, the goddess conference no longer emphasises its resemblance to a pilgrimage. We can say that people in glastonbury use pilgrimage as a vernacular tool when they need it and leave it when it becomes superfluous. The fact that the Glastonbury PRC has dropped the P from their name, further reflects the confusion created by the word pilgrim, and also its irrelevance in contemporary glas-tonbury. it seems that the existence of the annual christian pilgrimages to glastonbury challenges people’s perception of pilgrimage in its broader, non-christian meaning.

The discussion about energy seems to reflect the competition between different spir-itualities – talking about energy can be seen as another means of establishing power. several people have told me that the divine female and the presence of strong female energy in glastonbury is a natural reaction to the centuries-long male domination and oppression of women by the church. strong female energy in glastonbury seems to refer to the ending of male domination and the ‘revival’ of Glastonbury’s pre-Christian nature.

‘Question everything’ seems a good approach to me, and hierarchies, including the hierarchy of beliefs are something that i think need to be challenged. for me, the beliefs of priests and scholars are on the same level as those of the street artists and ex-pilgrims that i met in santiago de compostela. none of them carry more weight or should be taken more seriously than the others – they are all expressions of vernacular religion. However, my own attitude to these two ‘sides’ can vary. I would never ridicule or speak sarcastically about the beliefs or stories of any of my interviewees. at the same time, I sometimes feel the need to challenge the condescending attitude shown by those in power, those representing what used to be called high, institutional religion.


n o t E s

1 according to legend, one of st James’s miracles was saving a drowning horseman who then resurfaced covered in shells. the scallop shell is worn to identify one’s status as a pilgrim and as such is a good marker of continuity from the medieval pilgrim tradition. it is worth noting that a medieval pilgrim usually received the shell on arriving in santiago; contemporary pilgrims acquire it at the beginning of their journey.

2 for statistics, see Walker 2014. 3 Joseph of Arimathea is the man who provided a tomb for Jesus after crucifixion. According

to another version of the glastonbury legend, Joseph brought with him the chalice used at the last supper.

4 When no specific reference is given for a quotation, it comes from my fieldwork notes or recordings.

5 in april 2014, the glastonbury Pilgrim reception centre changed its name to the glaston-bury reception centre.

6 this blessing is based on a poem in latin composed at the end of the 12th century, praising the refuge in roncesvalles.

7 a voluntary host at pilgrims’ hostels. depending on the place, the hospitalero’s task may include checking the pilgrims in, cleaning, cooking, and helping to organise prayers.

8 The subject of the Camino and heresy was dealt with in the Luis Bunuel’s (1969) film The Milky Way (La Voie Lactée).

9 Whenever I use ‘Church’ I mean the Catholic Church.10 several hostels are run by municipalities and confraternities of st James, but there are also

many private hostels. they all charge a small fee or ask for donation. as a rule, only pilgrims who have the credencial (pilgrim’s passport) have the right to stay there.

11 as important destinations on the spiritual landscape of European vernacular religion, both the Camino de Santiago and Glastonbury have attracted considerable academic attention and naturally every researcher comes with his or her own background and expectations. i would like to emphasise that before going to Glastonbury I had been conducting fieldwork on the Camino for eight years, so it was there that my ideas about pilgrims and pilgrimage were first formed.

12 interestingly, as if to make up for the lack of pilgrims’ stories about their encounters with the supernatural, i had that encounter myself (see sepp 2012b).

13 st James’s day (25 July) is a special pilgrimage time for santiago, and many pilgrims try to arrive in the city on that day. however, the overwhelming majority of pilgrims do not arrive on that day; the santiago pilgrimage can be started and completed at any day of the year.

14 This was particularly significant for the period when St John’s had a woman priest.15 Bowman (1993; 2008) has written about the belief among some in town in unconscious

pilgrims, and the terminological difficulty of a pilgrim who stays.16 Researchers of tourism (Buzzard 2001; Bendix 2002) offer several examples of the traveller

who tries to distinguish him/herself from the tourist, even though they are involved in the same activity.

17 about two kilometres from Estella is the former monastery of irache, on the wall of which a wine fountain was built in 1991. the fountain delivers free red wine to everyone who passes by.


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53

fa s t s a n d f E a s t s i n E s t o n i a n s ’ r E P r E s E n t a t i o n s o f t h E s E t o c u l t u r E

andrEas kalkunPhd, researcher

Estonian folklore archives Estonian literary Museum

Vanemuise 42, 51003 tartu, Estonia e-mail: [email protected]

aBstractDescriptions of Seto culture written at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries mentioned both exhausting orthodox fasts and heavy drinking on church calendar holidays remarkably often. the incorporation of the seto areas into the Republic of estonia, established in 1918, soon revealed some conflict due to cultural differences. The religious rituals of the Seto came to be regarded with a fresh eye: traditional fasting was associated with the discourse of health care, food sacrifice with economy and religious feasts with criminal activities and alco-holism. estonians measured the economic profit and loss of religious practices and their effects on health, but failed to understand that for the religious Seto, the observance of traditional ritual practices was the only possible conduct, and such practical considerations were irrelevant. fasts and feasts were stigmatised in both popular and academic representations of seto culture. seto religious piety and feasts were regarded in the young Republic of estonia as an attack on a common national identity, something that subverted the ideals of abstemious and secular nationalism.

kEyWords: religious fasting • village feasts • seto culture • vernacular orthodoxy • historical representation • Estonianisation of the seto

in the following article* i will present an overview of what Estonians wrote about the seto celebration of religious holidays at the beginning of the 20th century, focusing on eating, drinking and fasting. relying on folklore and reports on vernacular religious practices, gathered in the Estonian folklore archives, i will demonstrate the role of reli-gious feasts and fasting in seto self-representation on the one hand, and study the role of fasting, binge drinking and eating in the early external representations of the seto, especially in connection with Estonianisation discourse, on the other. i will show how modern Estonian society, which emphasises secularity, temperance, and nationalism, has stigmatised the most conspicuous differences related to religion and the ‘archaic’ way of life.

* research for this article was supported by institutional research Project iut22-4, folklore in the Process of cultural communication: ideologies and communities, funded by the Esto-nian Ministry of Education and research, and the academy of finland’s project, Embodied reli-gion: changing Meanings of Body and gender in contemporary forms of religious identity in finland.


the seto are an orthodox finno-ugric group who live in the present-day border area between the republic of Estonia and the russian federation. the seto population, registered in a census for the first time in the second half of the 19th century, has never been large, reaching roughly 20,000 in the first decades of the 20th century. The histori-cally documented area of seto habitation covers roughly 1,500 square kilometres to the southwest of lake Pskov (kuutma 2006: 56–57). the seto territory has been under the Russian, and thus Orthodox, domain of authority and influence. The estonian national awakening did not transgress the governorate borders and it has been claimed that the ancient lifestyle, typical of medieval times, was preserved in the seto region until the intense Estonianisation activities launched in the 1920s (Valk 2005: 128–129; kuutma 2006: 60–61). even in the first half of the 20th century, religion strictly separated the linguistically similar lutherans from the orthodox seto in southern Estonia. the line between seto and russians has been similarly unyielding. regardless of the fact that Seto and Russians shared a church, the Russians called them “half-believers” and mixed marriages were uncommon owing to the language barrier (hurt 1904a: 190–191; Paas 1927).

When the seto region became part of the newly independent republic of Estonia in 1918, their integration and the elimination of the educational and economic back-wardness of the area became the country’s official policy (see Lõuna 2003; Jääts 1998). after the giving of family names in 1921, the establishment of a network of Estonian-language schools, the separation of seto and russian church congregations, and various other intensive integration activities, the seto region underwent radical modernisation and a shift into the Estonian cultural sphere (see kuutma 2006: 209–210). While, at the beginning of the 20th century, the autonomy of the seto was taken for granted and the more ‘enlightened’ scholars went to considerable lengths to explain to ‘regular estoni-ans’ that the seto were their kinsfolk (hurt 1989: 147); from then on the seto became, little by little, estonians with double identities (Jääts 1998: 126). fearing that the Seto would be completely assimilated into the Estonian population, the seto representative body declared that they were a separate ethnic group at the end of the 20th century.1

t h E s E t o a s o t h E r s : i s s u E s o f r E P r E s E n t a t i o n

the marginality of the seto region and people has made them the perfect other in Esto-nian culture. In light of the fact that the Seto gained access to written culture as late as in the first decades of the 20th century, those who wrote about them have assumed the position of a “ventriloquist”2 (see ritchie 1993), mediating the voice of the silent seto, who have no control over representations of themselves. Ethnographic descriptions and other representations by Estonians carried colonialist ideology and often emphasised that the Seto were of primitive and inchoate nature, with folklore collectors flagrantly claiming that the Seto are either a hundred (Põldmäe 1938: 3) or two hundred years (hurt 1989: 42) behind Estonia. the rhetoric of the seto as a backward and conserva-tive group is often associated with Orthodoxy and Russian influence. Their religious practices have often been described in highly grotesque terms, emphasising this small nation’s irrational and savage disposition.

Kalkun: Fasts and Feasts in Estonians’ Representations of the Seto Culture 55

Descriptions of Seto culture written at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries mention both exhausting fasting and drinking binges remarkably often. lutherans regarded the three days of fasting every week and the four longer fasts throughout the year held by the orthodox seto as an irrational and unhealthy prac-tice, and apart from the general ‘filthiness’ of Seto, the anthropological and health-care related descriptions also emphasise the physical problems caused by malnutrition dur-ing fasting. Earlier descriptions of seto culture criticise the multitude of orthodox cal-endar holidays and excessive consumption of alcohol and, especially, of ether.3 in the early 20th century, the so-called gulyanyes, ‘wild’ and ‘irrational’ feasts at which people ate, drank and had fun to the point where blood was shed, become the topos of repre-sentations about the seto.

the Estonian pastor Jakob hurt4 carried out fieldwork in the Seto region as a sti-pendiary of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society and wrote a highly influential cultural description (hurt 1904a).5 According to Hurt, the most typical diseases affect-ing Setos are not related to the climate but to their “culturally backward lifestyle” and are mainly caused by their “unkemptness and malnutrition during fasting” (ibid.: 187–188). at the same time he explains how the plague of alcoholism had infected the homes “of our little Setos” and describes a wedding celebration at which six wedding guests died and many were badly burnt in an ether explosion (ibid.: 205).

The Seto identified themselves through religion and thus Orthodox fasts and church calendar holidays were important elements of being a seto. the fasting and the mys-tery of the eucharist, and also food sacrifice, almsgiving and stressing the importance of commemoration feasts, all characteristic of orthodox piety, played an important role in the popular orthodox interpretations of the seto. Preparing food, sharing it and abstaining from it was particularly important for seto women. a belief that the food given to the poor could influence the welfare of the departed or the giver of the food shaped the food-related practices and customs of seto women (see kalkun 2008). Beliefs connected to eating and fasting were clearly part of women’s lore, much as preparing food was exclusively a women’s chore in seto culture.

to provide some context, i will introduce the unique characteristics of seto religious practices at the beginning of the 20th century and offer an overview of how impor-tant seto religious feasts and fasts were perceived and interpreted by Estonians. i will analyse the ethnographic descriptions and accounts of the seto tradition published in newspapers, but also in academic literature. By contrast, in order to balance the external representations and perceptions I have attempted to find the Setos’ own voice from the texts held in the Estonian folklore archives.6

S e T O R e L I G I O u S L I f e : f O R M A L T R A D I T I O N O R D e e P f A I T H ?

regardless of the fact that the christian mission and christianisation had already arrived in the Seto area of settlement centuries before,7 the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century representations of the seto emphasise their religious ignorance and orthodox practices as formal rituals that have not managed to destroy their pre-chris-tian beliefs. in his chrestomathic article, Jakob hurt (1904a: 192–193) refers to the form of Orthodoxy practiced by the Seto as one “of external nature”, a set of ritual ceremo-


nies and customs the meaning of which is beyond question. according to hurt, the seto ardently observed church traditions (for example, they fasted and made pilgrimages) but a church service was for the seto like a play, the meaning of which, as well as the actual content of the scripture, remained locked with seven seals for them. a lutheran pastor expressed his despair over the rare knowledge of the ten commandments and the lord’s Prayer, as well as true belief from one’s heart among the seto.8

throughout the 20th century, the same motifs keep recurring in the texts of those who write about seto religious life – stressing how the setos’ faith has remained super-ficial because of the language barrier, and that a rich pre-Christian belief system is still very much alive under the poorly adopted christianity.9 indeed, in the early 20th cen-tury, setos could hardly read or speak russian; therefore, studying the scriptures at home, as Protestants did, was out of the question. then again, the situation was not even as straightforward as that: clearly, the priests and the seto who lived in the same village had to communicate with each other one way or another, and some managed to acquire either the seto or the russian language. the rules for confession translated into the seto language in 1776 by anikita yakovlev, the priest for Värska (laur 1928), indicates that communication in the church and religious education may have been carried out entirely in the seto mother tongue. in 1885, there was reportedly only one priest who could communicate in the seto language (tammekann et al. 1928: 89). in addition, in 1919, before the russian and Estonian congregations were separated, there were estonian-speaking priest in two congregations (Lõuna 2003: 43).

At the end of the 19th century there were very few Seto who had attended a Russian-language school, and a few who had received some religious education. according to the 1885 census, 80 setos (of about 13,000) were registered as literate (tammekann et al. 1928: 92). some wealthier setos could send their sons to schools to give them a chance at a social career by learning russian (see Jääts 1998: 32). at the same time, several rus-sian-language church schools were established and the number of children attending school in the Pechory (Petseri) region reached 150 (tammekann et al. 1928: 92). russian-language education may have meant assimilation in some cases, but there were also setos who never forgot their ethnic seto identity despite a career in russian-language society. for instance, father arkadi, the seto-born head of the Velikiye luki (later also Pskovo-Pechersky) monastery, collected seto folk songs and sent them to Jakob hurt (hurt 1904b: xi).

f a s t i n g a M o n g t h E s E t o : M e D I C A L O R R e L I G I O u S S I G N I f I C A N C e ?

Preparing food, eating and abstaining from it have all functioned as powerful cultural metaphors in seto culture. it is possible that restrictions connected with food have served to strengthen the Christian identity for the Seto (see also Grumett, Muers 2010: 35), and clearly have isolated the fasting us from the non-fasting others.10 the texts stored in the Estonian folklore archives in which setos contemplate their traditional fasting reveal that even in the 20th century, fasting was an important part of being a seto. the sources emphasise the traditionality of fasting, claiming that it has been practiced from time immemorial and that the ancestors of the seto have always upheld


this tradition. setos contrast themselves, either explicitly or implicitly, with Protestant Estonians, who do not fast. according to a traditional tale, only the endless mercy of Jesus christ has saved non-fasting Estonians from doom.

in the olden days, god wished that there were no Estonians, because they don’t fast. But Jesus christ said that there are also so many of them, so let them be for now.11

for the seto, eating or abstaining from food has been marked as an ethical and moral choice. fasting as a desirable, although physically and mentally demanding state, has been weekly practiced by many religious setos.

the descriptions of seto culture made by Estonians mention fasting as a curiosity or an unhealthy and baffling practice. Jakob Hurt viewed fasting as a medical rather than a religious phenomenon, and the orthodox priest of Estonian origin karl usstav (1908: 7–8), in his ethnographic account of Estonians in the Pskov region, as well as the left-wing intellectual Willem Buck (1909: 12) in his book on Estonians in Pechory, agree with Hurt on this matter. While clearly relying on Hurt, both mention that the poor diet caused by fasting has had a devastating effect on Seto health. early twentieth-century secularised Estonian academic literature (in which science or medicine are opposed to religion) repeats the same idea. a report on healthcare in the Pechory region neutrally states that because of fasting, the “consumption of meat products is rather small com-pared to the population of other counties” (Rammul 1935: 50), while a description of the situation of healthcare in the county even mentions frequent malnutrition:

Their food diet consists mainly of potatoes, fish and cucumber. Long fasts restrict the consumption of even these foods properly, which often results in malnutrition. alcohol and ether is consumed in abundance. (tammekann et al. 1928: 107)

the orthodox seto observed their fasting on Monday, Wednesday and friday every week, to celebrate the nativity, betrayal and death of Jesus christ.12 in addition, meals were not taken before the sunday church ceremony. the four major yearly periods of fasting were lent (lasting for seven weeks before Easter), nativity (six weeks before christmas), dormition of the theotokos (two weeks before the feast of dormition) and the apostels’ fast (two weeks before the solemnity of st. Peter).13 in addition, there were one-day total fasts on the eves of major church holidays: the Eves of Epiphany (viiristmine), nativity (talsipühi) and holy saturday (lihavõõdõ’).14 some households even fasted on the eve of St. John’s Day, the feast of the Transfiguration (paasapäiv), the Exaltation of the cross (vissenja) or the Beheading of st. John the forerunner (ivanasko-rona). some villages also observed regional fast-days – either in honour of st. nikander from the Pskov region (a week-long fast)15 or of the archangel Michael (lasting for two weeks).16

People who did not have the endurance to keep the weekly fast-days and the four longer yearly fasts changed their eating habits at least for great lent. those who failed to keep the fast abstained from food during the first, middle and last weeks.17 apart from avoiding meat, dairy products and alcohol, fasting also meant the observance of several other restrictions. setos considered all secular pastimes, such as singing and dancing, but also sex, telling fairy tales,18 adding sugar to tea, washing their hair with soap,19 etc., as sinful. restrictions during fasts also prohibited talking about meat and


milk at the table.20 thus, the issue of fasting was not only about nutrition for the seto but also symbolised a situation and state of mind that was radically different from daily life.

the large number of cautionary tales stored in the Estonian folklore archives, in which people express their fear of violating the fast and the consequences, show that fasting taboos were taken seriously.21 in the following story the informant Evdokia Palo speaks about violating a fast (singing, drinking beer), which immediately resulted in serious consequences.

My brother’s son enlisted in the army. it was the time of strict fast, the middle week of great lent, the Passion Week. they brewed beer and prepared for a feast. i was so sad! i thought that when they started partying and singing, i wouldn’t know where to run. I definitely don’t want to hear any partying during the fast. My sister-in-law went to feed the horse—the horse kicked her leg; god forbid, the bone remained intact. and there was no party anymore; nobody was in the mood for fun. thank god, her leg healed.22

the setos who fast, hold up as an example legends about the saints and reclusive fast-ers (Loorits 1959: 32; Grumett, Muers 2010: 4–8) who lived in the woods and ate only plants or prosphora.23 such stories were also told about several local holy men. folk-lore about the Venerable st. onuphry and Matvey the Blessed, who are associated with the Mõla church, and also the hagiographies of St. Nikander, include these particular motifs. there are also explications of fasting that identify it as imitatio Christi, an imita-tion of christ’s life and passion (Bynum 1987: 255–259). according to a seto legend, the child Jesus refused to feed from Mary’s breast on Wednesdays and fridays,24 while the Lenten fast represented Christ’s temptation in the Judean desert and his crucifixion.

the Wednesday and friday fasting can be traced back to the christ child who refused the breast on Wednesday and friday. great lent comes from christ-god fasting for six weeks in the wilderness before his crucifixion, and the seventh week is the week of his execution. other fasts, such as the apostels’ and dormition fasts and the nativity fast have been passed on to us to commemorate the saints. how else can we properly prepare ourselves for those days? for we have no books. Nor can we read. Wouldn’t it be nice if they took the saints and fasting from us! then we would be blind heathens. fasting is from god, as the saints are from god, and from holy men. st. Elijah, st. nicholas and all the other saints have fasted – but what about us? Mustn’t we fast?25

Explanations about fasting found in the Estonian folklore archives demonstrate the interaction between orthodox seto and lutheran folklore collectors. the informants often speak about fasting as if trying to justify themselves, as if fearing that the inter-locutor may disprove of or forbid the practice. in the example given above, and in the one that follows, the Setos emphasise their “lack of education” and that fasting is one accessible way for them to serve god. in both texts, an orthodox seto tactfully discusses fasting with a member of another church who does not observe it. Many texts about fasting recorded from setos juxtapose the priests who violate the fast and the setos who honestly observe the fast,26 as if stressing the strength of Setos’ “simple” faith.

People used to say that one must observe the great fast, it is forbidden to drink milk and eat meat, one must suffer as Christ suffered for us and allowed himself to


be tormented. This is why we must fast and suffer and torment our physical body for the burden of christ. We don’t know any other way to pray to god than by fast-ing and suffering. The fathers of the fathers of our Seto people have said that one must fast. We cannot and should not look down on those who do not fast or refuse to fast. God wouldn’t go and hit anyone on the head because he gluttons and steals and kills and robs or burns – he lets people do all that. But you will answer to god for that in the other world.27

in the early 20th century, the seto region began to lose the strong reliance on religion, but women, often isolated from the outside world in a conservative and patriarchal seto village, passed on the disappearing traditions, including fasting.28 the fact that women fasted while men did not, does not mean that seto women stopped preparing food during their fasting period. Women kept their dishes and cutlery separate from those of men, so as not to taint these with animal products,29 and continued to prepare and serve food.30 Women also made sure that children kept the fasts; the Estonian folklore archives stores a number of cautionary tales for children, the aim of which was to pre-vent them from violating fasts.31

for seto women, fasting may also have been an explicit sign of establishing con-trol over the body. as is the case with medieval female saints (Bynum 1992: 140) or contemporary anorexia nervosa patients (Bordo 2003), the absence of the menstrual cycle caused by fasting or hard physical labour may have been considered a form of triumph over the irrational body (cf. kalkun 2008).32 seto women used to believe that the menstrual cycle is imposed on women as a punishment (kalkun 2007: 7), and that a temporary relief from this potentially embarrassing and uncomfortable occurrence was definitely an encouragement to keep the fast.

R I T u A L O f f e R I N G O R A WA S T e O f f O O D ?

there were several other food-related religious practices that authors writing about setos found interesting. like fasting, which remained largely incomprehensible for the Protestant and increasingly secular Estonians, housekeeping and general dietary habits of Seto were not understood. Outsiders were baffled by the hospitality and economic impracticality of the seto in light of their general poverty. censor georg (yuri) truus-mann presented a comparison in his ethnographic report, claiming that, “while Esto-nians in the Baltic area appear stingy, the Seto are far from being economical” (Truus-mann 1890: 32). When the finnish ethnologist ilmari Manninen, the then head of the estonian National Museum, carried out fieldwork among Seto in 1924, he also wrote in connection with food culture that the Seto have a “primitive culture”, they are sloppy and unable to think even a day ahead (Manninen 1924: 40). Manninen writes that he has never seen greater wasting of food than among the seto in the summer. Visiting the seto region in winter (probably during a fasting period), he was shocked to witness the overall food shortage and hunger.

When i visited the seto region in summer, i was left with the impression of abun-dance. There’s probably no need to mention that guests were offered everywhere the best and the finest food. The hosts themselves mercilessly wasted the most


expensive foodstuff. It was funny to see them eating butter with a large spoon. Often even a large heap of cottage cheese in the middle of the platter was covered with an excessively thick layer of butter. Wasting butter was what stood out the most. Sometimes fat was fried with eggs. […] But what about winter? Then a trav-eller wandering in the Seto region would probably go hungry. […] The shortage was unexpected, unreasonable. cows were not giving milk, hens were not laying eggs, all meat had been eaten, cottage cheese had been used up, butter churned in summer had been used up long ago; there was no fish, no sugar, even no tea. even in large farms a guest was offered nothing but rye bread. The contrast with what was seen in summer was extreme. (Manninen 1924: 41)

In addition to the differences in everyday diet and in managing households, Seto reli-gious practices involved various rituals that were unaccustomed and astonishing for the Lutheran estonians. The Seto custom of taking food offerings to icons and chap-els was viewed by those writing about them as a remnant of paganism that related to an archaic developmental phase (loorits 1959: 5; hagu 1999: 87–88). at the end of the 19th century, several authors described the veneration of the sculpture of st. nicholas of Mozhaysk in the Pskovo-Pechersky monastery (see Bome 2006). In addition to the traditional touching or kissing of the sculpture, kneeling or bowing before it on st. nicholas’ day in spring (May 22), setos reportedly smeared the sculpture’s lips with butter, fat, blood and honey, and apart from ordinary candles and paper flowers sacri-ficed so much pastry, butter and cottage cheese at the sculpture that it could be barely be seen underneath. In addition, next to the widely practiced egg sacrifice during easter and Whitsuntide (Loorits 1959: 25), Setos ‘fed’ the icon of St. Anna with mutton on her feast day (June 25) in the Pelsi, Sulbi and Väiko-Rõsna village chapels (Tammekann et al. 1928: 90; Mägiste 1977: 168–170; saarlo 1996: 116). While in some village groups people brought lamb heads and wool to the icons of St. Anna, in others Setos sacrificed a pig head to st. anthony in the village chapel on January 17 (Piho 2011: 39). georg truusmann claims that on church calendar holidays setos traditionally brought various farming and agricultural produce to the churches. on trinity sunday villagers report-edly brought eggs, butter and cottage cheese, and on the Solemnity of St. Peter (July 12) some cheese to the church of Pankyavitsa. The offerings were placed in front of the icons and heads were bowed in prayer (truusmann 1890: 39–40; loorits 1959: 32). on the feast day of St. John the forerunner (July 7) butter, curd cheese and cottage cheese were taken to the st. John’s chapels in the treski and Miikse villages, and because of that these chapels came to be called dairy chapels (Valk 2011: 85). Butter was delivered as a sacrifice at St. Paraskeva church in Saatse (on a friday after St. eliyah’s Day, June 20) and after the ceremony it was left for the beggars (loorits 1959: 27).

food offerings at icons or chapels were, in turn, associated with almsgiving to priests, the monastery, poorhouses, widows and the crippled. The offering of food to the poor has been a tradition related to the commemoration of the dead, religious feasts and sacred places for seto women and has also had a clear religious, as well as practi-cal, significance. In the early 20th century, cripples and beggars gathered near churches and cemeteries in large numbers, and seto women gave them food and alms because they knew that their good deeds would be rewarded in the next world (kallas 1898: 181; Manninen 1924: 17; kirss 1998: 114). in some parts of the seto region it was customary to donate food to almshouses in order to atone for sins before the only communion of the


year. interestingly, when the Pskovo-Pechersky monastery was incorporated into the Estonian apostolic orthodox church in the 1930s and reforms were carried out to make it ‘more estonian’, the monks were no longer allowed to give food to the poor (Lõuna 1999: 64; 2003: 82). The estonian written press of the time began to show beggars loiter-ing near the Pskovo-Pechersky monastery as comical, showing them as improvident and disorderly (see, for example, Petseri 1937).

In the case of a close relative’s death, the Seto attached significance to the offerings given to widows, the poor and the crippled, and believed that their prayers for the dead were heard before others. When someone died, food or clothes were taken to the alms-house in Pechory to prevent the dead appearing hungry or naked in a dream.33 People also believed that alms and donations made within forty days of death may improve the position of the deceased in the next world34 and popular legends tell of a wealthy but avaricious man who had only three bread crusts or a muddy loaf of bread on the table of his soul – which is all that he had given to the poor during his life35 (loorits 1959: 43). an important part of seto funerary tradition was feeding the guests. upon someone’s death, a farm animal (sheep, calf, or rooster) had to be slaughtered in the dead person’s name. funerals were not held without slaughtering an animal, which guaranteed continued herding luck.36 the pragmatism of this ritual action ensured the survival of traces of this ancient sacrificial rite even up to the mid-twentieth century.

Photo 1. Ritual feasting on graves on St. Paraskeva’s day. Satserinna village, July 16, 1937. Photo by V. Egorov. ERA, Foto 746.


a belief in the direct connection between giving food away, thus taking care of the less fortunate, and a person’s status in the next world was very much alive in seto families in the middle of the 20th century. for example, in 1976 Matriona suuvere, the daughter of the famous seto singer anne Vabarna, lamented at her mother’s grave37 how she was shown in a dream that her mother had been welcomed in heaven, where she was fed by Jesus and Mary as a reward for her god-fearing and virtuous life on earth. in her lament, Matriona enumerates her mother’s good deeds, including raising nine children, and mentions that her mother had, remarkably, always fed beggars and the crippled and offered them shelter (Pino, Sarv 1981: 27).

the hospitable seto probably remembered the popular legends about Jesus visit-ing a rich and a poor family as a cripple or old man. Many legends that were popular among the seto highlight the need to show kindness to beggars and wanderers, for example A Man Invites God to His House (atu 751a*), The Judgments in This World (at 840B*) (see also loorits 1959: 20; salve 1993: 2609).

R e L I G I O u S f e A S T S O R D R I N K I N G B I N G e S ?

the active tradition of village feasts that is closely connected with church calendar in the Seto region is still very much alive (Lõiv 2008). A feast day is celebrated in every village or a group of villages on a church calendar holiday or on a saint’s feast day. setos themselves call these celebrations kirmask, kirmas or küläpraasnik.38 the celebration usually starts with a service held in the church or chapel and the commemoration of the dead in the cemetery and continues with a less formal party in the public village space and in family circles. in some regions a fair was held during the village feast. for the younger generation these celebrations were traditionally a place to get acquainted with others and for the parents to arrange marriages. Kirmask feasts involved singing and dancing and were accompanied by ritual meals and drinking binges. the feasts were not held during the fasting season, which is why many village feasts took place in summer and autumn.

While the nineteenth-century accounts of kirmask feasts sound rather romantic and positive, after the integration of the seto region into the republic of Estonia at the begin-ning of the 20th century the tone of representation radically changes. the nineteenth-century descriptions of Seto women and maidens who danced and sang and floated around like the whiteness of swans in their white outer garments, wearing tinkling silver necklaces (see, for example, Veske 1877: 4), are replaced by drunks and stabbings in the twentieth-century accounts. the abuse of alcohol and ether and the economic damage that the numerous old calendar holidays seemed to have made to the coun-try became the source of dozens of negative news pieces on Seto drinking binges and related criminal activity in national newspapers in the 1930s. Journalists replaced the word kirmask with the russian gulyanye, a term unknown to the seto, to strengthen the allusion to the russian nature of these feasts.

after the seto region joined the republic of Estonia, the authorities tried to push through several reforms in the orthodox congregations. the most radical of these was the separation of mixed Seto and Russian congregations (Raag 1938; Lõuna 1999: 68–69; 2003: 111–112) and the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. This met fierce opposition even in non-religious institutions, let alone the conservative church (Lõuna 1999: 59). In


1924, newspapers reported that in Pechory people went to church on the day of Epiph-any according the old calendar and demanded that service be held. When the priest refused to do this, the people began to sing Epiphany hymns and make much noise, dis-turbing the regular service (Petserimaalt 1924). Priests who were forced to hold services according to the new calendar often had to summon the police to calm the crowds. at the same time, many of them, among them father Joann, head of the Pskovo-Pechersky monastery, objected to the adoption of the new calendar in church (risch 1937: 128; Lõuna 1999: 59). Traditional religious rituals were still often performed according to the old calendar, but they were given partly false or new names. for instance, in 1933, the traditional st. Elijah’s day procession was held in Pechory according to the old calendar, but it was called the “feast celebrating the wiping out of cholera and plague”(Petserimaa 1933). a similar incident took place in kulye, where the st. Elijah’s day service held according to the old calendar was called “the commemoration of laying the cornerstone to the church” (ibid.).

The discussion in the estonian written press in the 1930s highlighted the differences in the work ethics and lifestyle of seto and russians from those characteristic of Estoni-ans. The numerous Orthodox feasts and the major importance attached to celebrating them seemed to conflict with the Protestant work ethic of the estonians. In addition to depicting the popular singing, dancing and eating feasts as russian, vulgar and crimi-nal, they were also shown to be causing great economic damage and instilling moral nihilism. More active opponents even took trouble to calculate the loss of such celebra-tions to the country. reports began to mention the increasing number of kirmask feasts: in the 1930s, for example, their number was reported to have been 245 and more (E. 1933; Petseri 1937; Lõuna 2003: 85). In addition, the number of people who participated in these feasts grew. While Mihkel Veske estimated that there were 80 to 100 women at the kirmask of 1875 in Miikse (Veske 1877: 4), the number of people at the kirmask of Vär-ska in 1932 was said to have been 2000 (Ed. 1932) and a year later, in 1933, there is men-tion of kirmask feasts bringing together a crowd of 10–18 000 (E. 1933; Petserimaa 1933).39 Below is an example of a hyperbolic and figure-manipulating description from 1933.

196 gulyanyes on specific days, and in addition 53 gulyanyes on movable days, mak-ing up the total of 249 feasts, are held each year in the Pechersky district. the num-ber of people at these feasts amounts from 300 to 18,000. the gulyanyes that bring together the largest number of visitors are satserinna with 10–12,000; kulye with 2–4,000; Lavry with 7–8,000; Pechory with 3–4,000; Izborsk with 4–5,000; Tailova with 8–10,000 and Pankyavitsa with 10–18,000 participants […]. The distribution of gulyanyes throughout the year shows that they fall mostly during the busy work period… if we count here the pilgrimages and movable gulyanye feasts, we’ll see the toll of partying during the best period of work. here we must not forget that a gulyanye never lasts for only one day, the more correct estimate would be that it lasts from two days to a week, counting also the hangover days. […] Let’s assume that an average number of participants at a gulyanye who waste their entire work-ing day is only 300. then 249 gulyanyes would sum up to 74,700 lost working days. if we estimate that the cost of each working day is one and a half kroons, then the loss in labour would make up 11,203,000 cents each year. i don’t even dare to include in this list the ordinary weekly holidays and the time spent on cross-processions, etc. (E. 1933)


The 1930s descriptions of Setos partying on work days (see, for example, Põldmäe 1938: 5) conformed well with earlier rhetoric according to which the seto were primitive and slovenly people with no regard for the future. typically, both folklore researchers and journalists juxtaposed russians and setos who partied during the precious haymaking period, with the assiduous estonians, who had already finished making hay (e. 1933; Põldmäe 1938: 5). Newspapers also wrote about how estonian farm owners struggled with their Seto workers, who rushed off to their village kirmask feasts in the middle of the busiest work period (Ringi 1933) or taught Estonian youngsters celebration in the “Russian style” (Maa 1934).

Photo 2. Entitled in the Estonian Folklore Archives as “Drunken women dancing during the baaba- praasnik.” Värska village, 1929. Photo by V. Säägi. ERA, Foto 646.

as the seto village feasts involved ritual meals and drinking at the cemetery, in the vil-lage square and at home, drunken people (including women and children) and fights ending with murders became an inseparable part of the descriptions of the feasts. the temperance movement, which was started in the late 1880s, became strongly estab-lished in Estonia and was, by this time, closely associated with ideas of radical national-ism and racial hygiene (kalling 2007).40 in 1924, the Estonian temperance society began to cooperate with the estonian eugenic Society, Tõutervishoid (Racial Health) (Eesti 1924), and the gazette of the society discussed, among other things, the issue of the compulsory sterilisation of “second-rate” and “criminal” persons (Madisson 1925). the seto village feasts and the binge drinking were discussed as a phenomenon that weak-ened the nation and has roots in “poor education, unfavorable social conditions and the old harmful ways” (Petseri 1925: 349). so it was agreed that the only way to salvage these ‘vodkaphile’ Setos would be to set down rules for complete prohibition, because


temperance propaganda would only be effective on the younger generation. They also criticised the Seto song festivals as “meagre” events from the educational perspective because the performers would take their fee and spend it at once at the tavern (lind 1925: 317). those who wrote about the drinking binges often employed the traditional rhetoric of the seto being at a lower level of civilisation.

the setos are far behind their Estonian kinsfolk in every possible way. the only thing in which they are a big step ahead of others is drinking. they all drink: men and women, young and old; even children are given their own shot of ether during the praasdnik (‘feast’), and if they refuse, it is forced upon them. The results of such terrible binge drinking can be seen everywhere: various illnesses of the mind and body, poverty and a desire to steal rule here beyond all limits. (setukene 1907: 8–9)

in the 1930s, the authorities intervened in the tradition of the seto village feasts and attempted to ban them altogether using police force. This was accompanied by constant assurances that celebrating kirmask feasts was a new tradition and had lost all ties with the church holidays (E 1933; Petseri 1933; Gulänjed 1933; Rammul 1935: 49; Põldmäe 1938: 8). The spontaneous feasts that were not registered as official gatherings were not quite within the laws of the republic of Estonia and caused complaints (E. 1933). since the celebration of religious feast days could not be completely banned, the authori-ties first officially forbade ninnikirmask, the only known non-religious feast held on the second sunday in July in the village of kahkva, on the border of areas inhabited by setos and Estonians (Ringi 1935). the feasts, however, were not abandoned but were quietly relocated: the very same kahkva kirmask moved from ‘the estonian side’ of the border to the village of Puugnitsa in the Seto area of settlement (Pino 1986). The authori-ties started to regularly use mounted police, batons, and pepper spray to disperse the crowds, and this violent practice was proudly applauded in the newspapers (Petseri 1937). the question of seto village feasts was tackled at the highest level – for instance, in 1932, the Minister of Internal Affairs and Justice Ado Anderkopp reported on his actions to secure control in the Pechersky district.

among other questions there was the issue of gaining control in the border areas, especially in the Pechersky district and the notorious “gulyanyes”. The minister explained that it is difficult to completely ban the traditional feasts in the region because they are, after all, the customs of the local population. But they definitely watch over the violation of laws at these gulyanyes. recently, for example, there was a case of successful use of pepper spray at a gulyanye and this will be used in the future. (Põrandaalustest 1932)

single voices tried to speak for the seto and protect the tradition of village feasts. the Estonian novelist friedebert tuglas wrote in his travelogue that gulyanyes should not be wiped out. “the people must evolve and only then the gulyanye will lose its negative connotation. They won’t come together to start a fight but to be happy” (f. T. 1936). At the same time, a few years before tuglas, the Estonian poet henrik Visnapuu wrote a splenetic epigram, entitled “Gulyanye and Baton”, targeting the supporters of village feasts, ridiculing the kirmask tradition and its protectors and emphasizing the violent aspect of the celebration.


oh, the terrible policemanBans your gulyanye feastand strikes with his batonWhen a fight with your girl is on.

you want to try your knife,To wish your friend something ‘nice’,and, again, the baton comes,Makes you humble as a dove.

[…]the state exerts full force,the feast cannot be loud, of course,can’t even crack a skull,oh, the good days of gulyanye are gone!What’s a seto party, right When you even cannot fight?you can drink ether, says the state,But the cudgel has to wait.‘Cause over you backside the baton comes,and you’re as quiet as a dove.(tulihänd 1933: 2)

H O W T O u N D e R S T A N D T H e f A S T I N G A N D f e A S T S O f O T H e R S ?

After the Seto areas were incorporated into the Republic of estonia, the differences in culture brought bitter conflict. While the modernised estonians, when speaking about setos, still employed the rhetoric of the noble savage and untouchable primal Esto-nians, they began more often to look down on them as their ‘younger brothers’ and tried to reform seto culture and lifestyle as something out-dated and backward. Quite unexpectedly, not only were differences in socio-economic situation and educational background sources of conflict, but also phenomena connected with religion and tradi-tion. divergences in the understanding of religious practices and piety, healthcare and housekeeping were so remarkable that the conflicts were often irreconcilable.

the religious rituals of the seto came to be regarded with a fresh eye: traditional fast-ing was associated with the discourse of healthcare, food sacrifice with economy and religious feasts with criminal activities and alcoholism. People measured the economic profits and losses of religious practices and their effects on health, but failed to under-stand that for the religious seto the observance of traditional ritual practices, such as the celebration of religious feasts and commemoration of the dead, was the only possible way of conduct, and such practical considerations were irrelevant.

the alternation of fasting periods and feasts formed the structure of the seto yearly cycle and determined the spiritually, physically and sexually more active and passive periods. When an attempt was made in the 1920s to modernise and secularise the Seto people, these so-far solid structures began to crumble. faith and related religious prac-tices, which had always formed the cornerstone of Seto self-identification, were now


being stigmatised as “the Russians’ religion” and an instrument of Russianisation. The Seto were to become a people like the Protestant estonians as soon as possible. The offi-cial policy of Estonia emphasised that there were only three nationalities in the Pechory region: Estonian, russian and latvian.

indeed, the population of the Pechory region became gradually more Estonian-minded and the attempts to estonianise Setos began to be successful, especially with Estonian-language education imposed on them. the observance of ancient religious traditions began to fade after police intervention and the imposition of fines to sever the tradition of village feasts were initially unsuccessful (see rammul 1935: 49). the more Estonianised population was suddenly embarrassed about their region being perceived as some open air museum (Manninen 1924), and in the late 1930s the Petseri Žurnaal (Pechory Journal) and nationwide newspapers started to write about the advances made in the Pechory region in modernising healthcare practices and silencing religious feasts (for example, Setumaa 1935).

Life is becoming more rational also in the Pechory region and the ‘golden calf’ of folklorists and ethnographers is losing its shine. in all areas of life you can see how the cultural influences of this century start to break through the walls that seemed so impossible to penetrate, such as the field of healthcare, formerly forced into backwardness and standstill by religious convictions. the number of people who make pilgrimages is decreasing and the former emphasis on religious life is return-ing to normal. We can notice that culture and awareness have come to balance life here as well. Everything progressive, acceptable and suitable for us remains. (Vahi 1936: 4)

the seto practices connected with food and drinking, abstinence and excesses, were established within a clearly outlined religious, social, political and economic context. The emic and etic interpretations of religious practices were diametrically different and during this tumultuous time there was no understanding or cross-cultural interpreta-tion. the representations of setos in the media and elsewhere were controlled by Esto-nians, and the descriptions of fasting and feasts were transformed into grotesque ritual practices with an emphasis on their self-destructive aspects. By the 1930s these prac-tices were removed from their original context and were relocated within the context of archaic folkloric and religious phenomena on the one hand, and pre-Modernist russian discourse, on the other.

for an outsider, fasts and feasts as perhaps the most noticeable elements of seto religious life were stigmatised in both popular and academic representations of seto culture. seto religious piety and traditional feasts were regarded in the young republic of estonia as an attack on a common national identity, something that subverted the ideals of abstemious and secular nationalism. the seto had no choice but to become Estonian, and nobody asked their opinion. setos’ views on their own religious life, which has become part of a disappearing tradition, were recorded only by the Estonian folklore archives.


n o t E s

1 the seto congress, which continues the work of a previous congress by the same name (originally organised by Estonians with its aim at that time being the Estonianisation of the seto, see Jääts 1998: 51), adopted a declaration in 2002 which stated that the seto are a separate ethnic group (sarv, sarv 2003).

2 this metaphor by susan ritchie is a criticism of approaches in cultural or folklore studies that represent an Other who presumes to speak for a voiceless or silent nation and to ‘rescue’ its folklore from being forgotten or eradicated.

3 the use of diethyl ether as a recreational drug was common in Estonia already in the 19th century. advocates of temperance claimed in the early 20th century that the habit spread to the rest of Estonia from the seto (kalling 2004: 115). the seto hold several traditional beliefs about the effect of ether and its use to this day.

4 Jakob hurt (1839–1907) was an Estonian folklorist and linguist and one of the leaders of the Estonian national movement.

5 The report was published first in Russian in 1903 and a year later in German in the author’s translation.

6 I am well aware that the texts stored in the archives have passed through the filter of an Estonian folklorist or collector, as the questions and emphases in these texts have clearly been provoked by the researcher. at the same time, regardless of this mediation, it is possible to detect the Setos’ own ‘voice’ in lengthier language samples or in a close reading of longer oral texts recorded from seto informants. as the seto were largely illiterate, recordings are often the only available source of information about the worldview and beliefs of the seto of the time.

7 Written documents about the St. Nicholas Church in Izborsk (Irboska) date back to 1340, but the church is estimated to have been there since the 12th or even the 11th century. the Pskovo-Pechersky monastery was founded in 1473 (Piho 2011: 13).

8 researchers of russian peasant culture have noticed how the non-orthodox or especially Lutheran background of the researchers has too easily affected consideration of the vernacular and lived Orthodoxy to be a formal fulfilment of customs. The fundamental principles of Prot-estantism expect individual faith, knowledge of scripture, and understanding of the dogmas, and therefore illiteracy and vernacular piety may seem as the lack of faith or as dual faith (a mixture of paganism and christianity), cf.: lewin 1990: 166–167. although the russian peasants may not have known the dogmas, they were still devoted participants in the rituals. although the religious practices may not have been in accordance with official dogmas and rules, it does not necessarily imply that religion was not taken seriously, see Heretz 2008: 8–9.

9 see, for example, usstav 1908: 7–8; rammul 1935: 49; hagu 1999.10 religion has drawn a clear line between the seto and lutheran Estonians. Even in the 19th

century, setos referred to themselves either as russians, because of their religious adherence, or as “country folk” (Sarv 2000: 62).

11 Era ii 286, 160 (132) – Ello kirss < ode Palo, born in 1869 (1940).12 More often, though, the weekly fasting was limited to Wednesday and friday. as in other

regions of the russian Empire, fasting on Monday was also known to the seto, which undoubt-edly is a vernacular imitation of pious convent residents’ sukhoiadenie. enriching the official church calendar with another day of fasting and in that way excluding another day from profane week-time and making it a feast-day and therefore part of vernacular piety, see Heretz 1997: 71. a detailed overview about fasting customs and the vernacular calendar in russian orthodox karelia has recently been made by Marja-liisa keinänen (2012).

13 The two latter were often called lenient fasts, since they were not observed quite so strictly, H II 63, 481/2 (1900).

14 eRA II 209, 156/7 (9).


15 eRA II 209, 122/5.16 Michaelmas fast was reportedly observed in the Meremäe region, and in usinitsa village,

where people believed that it would prove helpful for the treatment of rabies, see Era ii 286, 126/8; eRA II 155, 394/5 (187). Leonid Heretz (1997) also describes the Russian peasant custom of adding fast days and making them more strict.

17 eRA II 209, 122/5.18 Era ii 194, 354 (2).19 eRA II 286, 126/8 (93).20 eRA II 296, 449/50 (12).21 My studies on singing restrictions during fasts among members of the Värska church choir

and the village choir “Leiko”, both situated in the Seto region, show that some of the fasting taboos are still observed (kalkun 2004; kalkun, ojamaa 2009).

22 eRA II 286, 159/60 (131a) – ello Kirss < Ode Palo, born in 1869 (1940).23 the seto believed in the miraculous healing powers of prosphora. Prosphora were used in

several healing rituals, and was also useful for treating children or animals who had been cast the evil eye. People also believed in its magical nutritive value (loorits 1959: 18).

24 similar beliefs were associated with st. Paraskeva, who was honoured in several parts of the Seto region, see eRA II 209, 247/8 (18).

25 H II 63, 454/5 (5) – Jaan Sandra (1900).26 l < Petseri – o. loorits < k. usstav (1940).27 S 88625/8 (33e) – Grigori Karulaan < Anton Täht (1934).28 h ii 63, 452 (5).29 Era ii 286, 159 (131).30 caroline Walker Bynum (1992: 141; also 1987), who has analysed the motifs that emerge in

medieval hagiographies of female saints, shows that fasting (or abstinence from earthly food) is often connected with heightened interest in feeding others.

31 It is likely that the dietary habits of Seto children were also influenced by the traditional fright tales told during fasting seasons (the priest will cut out your tongue if you dare to eat dairy products or meat; you’ll go blind if you eat butter or eggs, and so on).

32 In different cultures, fasting has been associated with exercising control over one’s sexual-ity; see, for example, an approach to the topic based on the example of russian agrarian culture (Heretz 1997) or another on American culture (Griffith 2004: 120).

33 eRA II 248, 665/6 (2) (1939).34 Era ii 194, 424 (26) (1938).35 S 57778 (7) (1933); eRA II 194, 270/1 (3) (1938).36 H II 69, 825/6 (1) (1903).37 seto funeral laments represented communication with the next world and often entailed

addressing the deceased, see Pino, sarv 1981. i have previously discussed the use of food symbol-ism in anne Vabarna’s seto epic Peko (kalkun 2008).

38 the seto word kirmask probably derives from the russian kirmash, and etymologically stems from the german Kirchmesse.

39 the wide range of estimates is probably caused by the fact that researchers of the late 20th century only counted seto village feasts, whereas the news articles of the 1930s also include rus-sian village feasts.40 similar developments took place in the finnish temperance movement; see Mattila 1999; Apo 2001: 209–12.


s o u r c E s

Manuscript collections of the Estonian folklore archives at the Estonian literary MuseumEra – folklore collection of the Estonian folklore archives (1927–1944)h – folklore collection of Jakob hurt (1860–1906)l – folklore collection of oskar loorits (1900–1961)s – seto folklore collection of samuel sommer (1922–1936)

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Eestis. – Eesti Kirjandus: Eesti Kirjanduse Seltsi väljaanne. nr. 6: 294–306.Petseri 1925 = Petseri Eesti hariduspäev. – Tulev Eesti. Eesti Karskusliidu, Haridusliidu ja Eesti

Eugeenika Seltsi “Tõutervishoid” häälekandja. nr. 11: 348–349.Petseri 1933 = Petseri tujukas august. – Postimees. 1933. nr. 198 (25. Viii): 4.Petseri 1937 = Petseri ja tema guljänjed. kakluste ja kuritegevuste poolest pole Petserimaa sugugi

esikohal. “Kerjamiskultuurist”. – Postimees. 1937. nr. 84 (26. iii): 4.Petserimaa 1933 = Petserimaa gulänjed ettekäände all. Otsiti Ilja-päeva pühitsemiseks põhjusi. –

Postimees. 1933. nr. 180 (4. Viii): 1.Petserimaalt 1924 = Petserimaalt. kalendri segadused setumaal. Venelased ei taha uue kalendri

järgi pühi pidada. Lärm Petseri kirikus. Preestrid politseid kaitseks palunud. – Päevaleht. 1924. nr. 24 (26. i): 6.

Piho, Mare 2011. setode usk ja setomaa tsässonad. – ahto raudoja, tapio Mäkeläinen (koost.). Setomaa tsässonad. [Obinitsa]: Setu Kultuuri fond, 13–60.

Pino, Veera 1986. kui kirmaskil ma käisin… – Töörahva Elu. nr. 100 (26. Viii): 3.Pino, Veera; Vaike sarv 1981. Setu surnuitkud 1. Ars Musicae Popularis 2. tallinn: EnsV ta keele

ja kirjanduse instituut.Põldmäe, Rudolf 1938. Rahvakultuurist, eriti rahva lõbutsemisvormidest Setumaal. – Eesti Noorus.

nr. 4–5: 3–10.Põrandaalustest 1932 = Põrandaalustest, salapiiritusest ja seadustikkudest. Pisargaasiga “guljan-

jete” vastu. Jutuajamine sisekohtuministriga. – Postimees. 1932. nr. 210 (8. ix): 3.raag, nikolai 1938. Petserimaa kogudused. – Usuteadusline Ajakiri. nr. 1: 24–35.rammul, aleksander (toim.) 1935. Petserimaa tervishoiuline kirjeldus. Description sanitaire de

l’arrondissement de Petseri. Beschreibung der sanitären Verhältnisse des Petseri-Kreises. tartu: tervishoiuvalitsus, tartu Ülikooli tervishoiu instituut.

Ringi 1933 = Ringi ümber kodumaa. Võrumaalt. Koiola talupidajad hädas teenijatega. – Postimees. 1933. nr. 188 (13. Viii): 6.

Ringi 1935 = Ringi ümber kodumaa. Petserimaalt. Ninni laada matused. – Postimees. 1935. nr. 190 (16. Vii): 5.

risch, helmut 1937. die estnische apostolisch-rechtgläubige kirche. – Kyrios. Vierteljahresschrift für Kirchen- und Geistesgeschichte Osteuropas, 2. Jahrgang, heft 2, 113–142.

Ritchie, Susan 1993. Ventriloquist folklore: Who Speaks for Representation? – Western Folklore. Vol. 52, No. 2/4 (Special Issue: Theorizing Folklore: Toward New Perspectives on the Politics of Culture): 365–78.

Saarlo, Liina 1996. Pühakutest ja mõnest muust ning mis nende ümber. – Heiki Valk, ergo Västrik (toim.). Palve, vanapatt ja pihlakas: Setomaa 1994. a. kogumisretke tulemusi. Vanavaravedaja 4. tartu: tartu nEfa, 93–132.

Salve, Kristi 1993. Toone tare. Tähelepanekuid setu surnuitkude žanridevahelistest ja geograafi-listest seostest. – Akadeemia. ak. 5, nr. 12: 2605–2621.

sarv, Õie; ain sarv (koost.) 2003. VI Seto Kongress. 9. oktoobril 2002. a. Verskah. Verska: seto kong-ressi Vanõbidõ Kogo.

sarv, Vaike 2000. Setu itkukultuur. Ars Musicae Popularis 14. tartu: Eesti kirjandusmuuseum, etno-musikoloogia osakond; tampere: tampereen yliopiston kansanperinteen laitos.

setukene 1907. kiri setumaalt. – Eesti karskusseltside aastaraamat. ak. 9. Jurjev: Eesti karskuse seltsid.

Setumaa 1935 = setumaa eestistub kiiresti. – Postimees. 1935. nr. 207 (2. Viii): 4.


tammekann, august ferdinand; Edgar kant, Johannes Voldemar Veski (toim.) 1928. Setumaa: maadeteaduslik, tulunduslik ja ajalooline kirjeldus. Eesti Kirjanduse Seltsi kodu-uurimise toimkonna väljaanne 8. tartu: Eesti kirjanduse selts.

Truusmann 1890 = Трусман, Юрий. Полуверцы Псково-Печерского края. – Живая Старина. 1890. Вып. 1: 31–62.

Tulihänd [Visnapuu, Henrik] 1933. Gulänjed ja kumminui. – Postimees. nr. 169 (22. Vii): 2.usstav, karl 1908. Pihkwa eestlased. tartu: Postimehe kirjastus.Vahi, Paul 1936. Rahva eduteedele eluõigust! – Petseri Žurnaal. detsember: 3–5.Valk, Heiki 2005. Lõuna-eesti kaugemast minevikust. – Vikerkaar. Nr. 7/8: 124–129.Valk, heiki 2011. setomaa tsässonad: pärimus, rahvausk ja kombed. – ahto raudoja, tapio

Mäkeläinen (koost.). Setomaa tsässonad. [Obinitsa]: Setu Kultuuri fond, 61–107.Veske, Mihkel 1877. Bericht über die Ergebnisse einer Reise durch das Estenland im Sommer 1875 von

Dr. M. Veske. Separatabdruck aus den Verhandlungen der Gelehrten estnischen Gesellschaft. Bd. 8, heft 4. dorpat: laakmanns Buchdruckerei.


Vol. 8 (1): 75–90

75

o f g r a P E , f E a s t a n d c o M M u n i t y: a n E t h n o g r a P h i c n o t E o n t h E M a k i n g

o f t h E g r a P E h a r V E s t f E s t i Va l i n a n i t a l i a n t o W n i n P i E d M o n t

MichElE filiPPo fontEfrancEscoPhd, Post-doctoral research fellow

universita degli Studi Scienze GastronomichePiazza Vittorio emanuele, 9 Pollenzo

12042 Bra, cuneo, italye-mail: [email protected]

aBstractthis paper analyses the phenomenon of grape harvest festivals in italy. By explor-ing ethnographically the grape harvest festival of lu (alessandria province, Pied-mont region), the paper points out the economic and social roles played by the festivals in modern italy. the historic analysis of the case study helps to focus on the history of these festivals in the country and the role played by television and localism in defining the present forms of the rite.

kEyWords: italy • grape harvest festivals • fascist celebrations • invented traditions


As early as 1955, Claude Lévi-Strauss reflected on how local cultural traditions – a favourite topic within cultural anthropology – were disappearing with the advance-ment of the modern world (lévi-strauss 1955: 36–37). this transformation, however, did not concern only the native communities of Brazil. The two World Wars, growth in trade, new means of transportation, and therefore new travel opportunities, made remote places more accessible. a process of profound change could also be seen in the communities of those remote areas, who, for the previous generation of anthropolo-gists, were considered ‘untouched’ or ‘wild’, and as such repositories of ancient, distant and pristine traditions. the social processes that were threatening the integrity of exotic cultures, were, at the same time, modifying european culture, particularly the ‘tradi-tional’ cultures of rural areas. notably in italy, the transformation from autonomous and self-governing agricultural communities into suburbs of large industrialised urban centres (Bravo 2013; grimaldi 1993; 2012) triggered a process of reinvention of local tradition that was based on a reworking of traditional rituality according to the needs of the new society and the invention of new customs.

this article will focus on the creation of a new custom, la Sagra dell’Uva, the grape harvest festival, in the small italian town of lu, near alessandria in the Piedmont region. While Eric hobsbawm and terence ranger (1983: 6) pointed out that the mak-ing of a festival, the creation of a tradition, is substantially linked with the making of a new collective identity, the festival, still celebrated today and first introduced in the late 1960s, represents an important moment in defining local identity following the


economic transformations of the area that saw lu change from an isolated rural com-munity into a commuter town in the hinterland of the provincial capital, alessandria. thus, the festival was intended to revitalise tourism in the small town by creating an event that could bring together and involve the entire population of lu. to create this new custom, the community enhanced its traditional knowledge of festivals with ele-ments of customs seen on television. What resulted was a form of custom that ech-oed the model grape harvest festival invented and promoted by fascism elsewhere in italy, despite the fact that no grape harvest festival had ever been organised in lu and that no members of the organising committee in Lu remembered any such festival.

using the role that the festival has acquired for the population of lu as a point of departure, this article will aim to gain deeper insights into the cultural premises that led to the creation of this event and to the construction of its customs. What is more, by reviewing the process of its creation (or invention), a connection will be posited between the festival in lu and the antecedent italian fascist festivals.

M E t h o d o l o g y

this article is based on research undertaken by the author beginning in 2003, with a study on the changes over the 20th century in the calendar of festivities of lu. the initial findings were presented as a monographic work on the evolution of the cult of the patron saint of lu, saint Valerio (see fontefrancesco 2006). from 2005, research has focussed on the grape harvest festival, the main event of the community’s cur-rent festival calendar. Research in Lu has been conducted by combining three different methodologies: archival research, principally the archives of the local newspaper Al païs d’Lü; in-depth interviews with the organisers of the early festivals; participant observa-tion conducted in the village from 2004 to 2006 and then later on from 2010. Particularly important for this essay has been the ethnographic experience of the preparations of the 37th Grape harvest festival in 2005 and of the creation of one of the festival floats. since that year the structure of the festival has not substantially changed, thus the eth-nographic gaze focuses on that particular festival as an example and expression of an on-going tradition celebrated by the local community.1

l u

lu is an italian town situated in a part of the province of alessandria known as Mont-ferrato casalese. the town is about twenty kilometres from the towns of alessandria, Casale Monferrato, and Valenza. Since most of the local residents work in the three above-mentioned cities or in the large metropolitan areas of genoa, Milan and turin, lu is today mainly a residential centre: few families still run farms, businesses specialising in arts and crafts, or shops in the lu area.

Despite population decline (Popolazione Lu 1861–2012) registered during the twen-tieth century, the town’s economy only underwent a significant change in the post-Sec-ond World War period. Agriculture flourished in Lu until the Second World War. After the war, in less than a decade, lu became economically dependent on alessandria and

Fontefrancesco: An Ethnographic Note on the Making of the Grape Harvest Festival 77

casale Monferrato. indeed, during the fascist period, the only way to escape shortages in the agricultural economic system was to move to the main cities in northern italy or to move abroad, mainly to france, argentina, the usa and australia. subsequently, with the abolition of the fascist law which controlled the movement of citizens across the italian territory,2 and the improvement of both general transportation infrastruc-ture, as well as local public transport, an increasing number of people were able find a job in the huge industrial centres of turin, Milan and genoa, and in the cities of ales-sandria and casale Monferrato. the post-second World War period proved to be an era full of new possibilities and, in a decade, the hill town of lu changed radically. lu had not suffered mass emigration at the beginning of the twentieth century (guaschino, Martinotti 1984), and did not sustain major damage during the Second World War. Therefore, people’s lives continued to be influenced by the agricultural seasons and the liturgical calendar. As Gigi Busto, the first president of the Pro Loco3 association of lu that sought to promote Lu for tourists, and member of the organising committee for the grape harvest festival, stated:

Every day many young people commuted from lu to the nearby cities, or came to lu only on the weekends or for their holidays. only the elderly stayed in lu and thanks to the growing number of cars and motorcycles, the young people no longer sought to spend their free time here and even less their holidays. the town had changed and needed to be re-launched (revitalised). for this reason, we came up with an idea for a new festival.4

l u ’s t W o f E s t i Va l s

as gigi Busto highlights, the economic change in lu led to a clear transformation in the town’s social fabric that created repercussions at the local cultural level.

today the calendar of festivities appears to be almost detached from the world of agriculture, and is instead heavily influenced by the rhythm of liturgical holidays, with its most important celebrations being christmas and Easter. the calendar divides up the year, depending on both industry and school requirements, into a long produc-tion period, lasting from september to June, and a period of either partial or complete suspension of production in July and august, the time when people traditionally take their holiday.

Within the annual festival cycle, the two main local festivals are those of the patron saint Valerio, held in January, and the grape harvest festival, which takes place in September. Both events are considered crucial in defining local identity by Lu peo-ple, so that from both tourist materials published since 2005 by the municipality of lu, and television documentaries broadcast as part of the In famiglia5 programme by the national italian raidue network between 2006 and 2007, it is clear that both the local town council and the Pro loco wanted to locate the identity of lu within these two festivals. As ferruccio Mazzoglio, mayor of Lu from 1999 to 2009, explained, “the Luese identity emerges through our traditional festivals: the patron saint of Valerio and the Grape Harvest festival”.6

The festival of Saint Valerio and the Grape Harvest festival are two very different events with different roots. The tradition surrounding the festival of Saint Valerio is of


medieval origin and can be traced back to the 15th century. today, this celebration is the only remaining legacy in the calendar of festivities of lu that represents the exigen-cies of the agrarian culture that disintegrated after the radical economic changes of the 1950s. giancarlo ribaldone, now retired, recalled:

the increase of motorbikes and cars, the mechanisation of agriculture and the rise of large food retailers had already changed the town after the second World War. then, many inhabitants of lu emigrated and abandoned their land holdings. in the fifties, an increasing number of people found employment in the cities and agricul-ture became for many a part time activity and did not represent the main income of a family anymore.7

as agriculture lost its economic and cultural centrality for the people of lu, a rapid decline can be seen in acts of worship and festivals linked to agriculture – both practices that were strongly present and still observed not many years before in the 1940s. leone rota, businessman and chairman of the historical and cultural association of saint gia-como recounted:

until around the post-War period, one of the town’s most important events was the saint Bovo festival in May. families from the countryside around lu gathered at the church of Saint Giacomo to have their cattle blessed: after the War the small land-holdings with cattle disappeared and inevitably so did this festival.8

in the early 1960s, the festival of the patron saint of lu seemed destined to have the same fate as the festival of saint Bovo. the festival of saint Valerio, celebrated on the 22nd of January, had been neglected by most of the population who were working elsewhere and therefore were unable to attend the celebrations. In order to guarantee its survival, it was necessary to readapt and repurpose the festival to the new needs of the population, by postponing the festival to the closest sunday to the canonical date. With the inhabitants of lu having become commuters, and agriculture ceasing to have cultural centrality, modifying the customs of the festival allowed for a new articulation of the festival for the community. Piergiorgio Verri, the current parish priest, recalled:

in the seventies, i studied in turin. i remember that even by then the festival of saint Valerio had become the celebration to welcome back home those like me who had emigrated.9

today, only a few of the oldest inhabitants of the town can detect the extent to which the symbols and the rites of the festival are linked to the religious and agricultural cycle: today the festival dedicated to the patron saint is commonly considered, as Verri highlighted, a festival for emigrants who return to lu to visit their families and their birthplace.

While the veneration of saint Valerio goes back to ancient times, the grape harvest festival was born forty years ago and its birth was linked to the decline of another rural festival, one dedicated to our lady of august, celebrated on the 15th of august (Ferra-gosto). this festival took place during the pause in the agricultural year after threshing and before the grape harvest. for that occasion the young people used to organise a public ball called ballo a palchetto in Piazza Gherzi, the main square of Lu. Gino Gar-lando, a musician who played for many town festivals during the 1940s, recounted:


it was the festival the young people loved the most. the most anticipated event of the summer. Everybody looked forward to the festival and, especially, to the ballo a palchetto, the most important [event] of the year. All the peïsa [Piedmontese dialect term for ‘weight station’], Piazza Gherzi, was decorated and in the middle of the square a wooden stage was built. Everybody in town waited for the ball. it was the most important event for the people of this community, people who had never been even as far as alessandria in their lives. it was the event in which the young people made their debut into society, people sought company, and marriages were arranged or destroyed.10

The slow decline of the festival began in the 1950s and lasted for more than fifteen years.11 in May 1977, in an article published in the local paper, federico scarsoglio, then secretary of the local municipality, clearly explained the social function of that festival and the cultural reasons for its decline:

the increasing number of cars has solved the problem of the lack of places to social-ise: many young people flock to social venues springing up in numerous places, not to mention the cinemas in the towns. furthermore, everybody, especially young people, long to spend the days of mid-august resting in a place by the sea or in the mountains. only the old people and those who have work there stay in town.

The traditional Mid-August festival [sagra di Ferragosto], once long-awaited, is now neglected; sometimes it causes arguments between parents who want to cel-ebrate this event with all the family, and the children, who want to enjoy their summer holidays by the sea.

It was so different and so beautiful before, when the young girls still used to show off the new dresses they wore to go dancing, while the town gossips, who did not take part in the big dance, looked them up and down! and the proud mums observed their elegant and perfumed daughters, while the young men gazed at them, hoping to dance or win the heart of one of the girls.

now those beautiful and lively girls are on a beach, basking in sunshine, or wandering around, clumsily dressed with blue-jeans patched like quilts.

this being the case, over the last few years, the Pro loco has wondered if this festival, which is no longer loved by young people, should be organised at all. […] So, why should we organise a festival that young people do not love any-more? Is it not better to couple it with the Grape Harvest festival that, starting from this year, will take place on the second sunday of september, when people come back home from their holidays? The Pro Loco cannot afford two festivals close together – as the town councillors can confirm – because they wear out both the people and the enthusiasm. […] If, in the immediate future, there will not be a town committee that can take on the responsibility of continuing to organise the festi-val, i think we should cancel it and organise a wonderful grape harvest festival. (scarsoglio 1977)

The mass motorisation among younger residents of Lu irreparably shattered the micro-cosm of society in lu. as a result, cultural consumption evolved leading to the real cause of the decline of the Mid-august festival. this celebration died out as it had lost its social function, substituted by holidays by the sea and the grape harvest fes-


tival, born almost a decade before the last celebration of the Ferragosto, as a conscious response to its decline.

gigi Busto, originally from casale Monferrato, remembered what it was like arriv-ing in lu in the post-War period:

When i arrived in lu, at the end of the 1950s, the Mid-august festival was becom-ing progressively less popular among the younger residents of lu. the custom of spending the holiday at the seaside and of leaving lu during the month of august began to spread, and the only people who remained in lu at this time were the old people. the Mid-august festival celebration was, however, organised by young people for young people and therefore could not survive without them.

But then, those young people who would leave for the holidays and would return to lu in september still felt the need to have a celebration just for them-selves. that is how the idea came to us of organising a celebration in september. furthermore, between the 1950s and 1960s lu’s population was decreasing. faced with this worrisome fact, the question of how it would be possible to revitalise lu and attract new people to live there naturally followed. A celebration that would attract tourists seemed like a good idea to us and so that is how the Grape Harvest festival was born.12

There were, therefore, two reasons behind the Grape Harvest festival: to offer a celebra-tion capable of involving the young people in lu again and to relaunch the town from a tourism point of view. The definition of this new celebration as an event to promote the production of wine in lu is linked to an incident that occurred in the summer of 1967. this was reported in the local newspaper:

i remember how one night, after playing the Mariana card game for a long time, we moved out of the bar in search of a bit of fresh air and to find Aldo Capra, then mayor, who had been that day in Milan to deliver some wine. on his return he saw two posters advertising two different festivals, one was for peppers and the other for asparagus, and he said: “Why don’t we also do something like that to promote the fruit of our land?” The idea was talked about until the early hours and that same night it took shape and was passed. grapes as an illustrious product of lu and its surrounding area became the main focus of our discussions every evening and for many evenings thereafter. The Grape Harvest festival was the first of a long and continual series of celebrations. (Busto 1992)

indeed, in the past there had never been any organised celebrations for the grape har-vest (vendemmia), outside those held on farms for the grape harvesters and organised by the owners that were widespread in the lower Monferrato area.13 What is more, no member of the organising committee had any memories of earlier grape harvest festi-vals in the vicinity of lu.14

In order to create a festival that attracted tourists, something unique had to be cre-ated, something that would intrigue and appeal to people from all over the prov-ince. for this very reason, we sought ideas from television and were inspired by the Grape Harvest festival of Lugano (Switzerland). Back then, we could still see the swiss television in lu and became acquainted with this festival.


it was a very important festival with crowds of people. the lakeside parade of festival floats, dedicated to the grape and the vine was the highlight: no other pro-vincial festival offered a float parade outside the carnival period.15

The Grape Harvest festival of Lugano was first organised in 1933 and since the very first event, festival floats have been its main attraction. Virgilio Chiesa, in his book L’Opera della Pro Lugano, offers the following description of the first parade:

In the afternoon, the grape harvest floats would parade past, each time different and always distinctive. The floats depicted typical images that reflected our iden-tity: a chalet, a mill, a winepress, a little porch decorated with cobs of corn and on the bench an old spinning wheel, the inside of a kitchen with a young mother, sitting next to the fireplace, rocking her baby and knitting; a votive chapel where a young girl confides her deepest feelings to the Virgin Mary: a grape arbour in a tavern courtyard and cheerful regular customers sitting at the tables; a picture of two fishermen busy with drift nets; a fountain and next to it two stout peasants scouring copperware; and floats representing the Malcantone landscape, the hat-ter of the village of Onsernone, the weaver of the Verzasca valley, the locksmith of the Val colla valley and other craftsmen, who for this special occasion worked on a holiday; and well-designed symbolic floats, groups file past on foot, wearing period costumes, singing happy songs that used to resonate in the vineyards dur-ing the grape harvest; bands play joyful marches, accordionists and four explorers who hold the four corners of a large national flag in which people put their offer-ings for the red cross. (chiesa 1949: 56–57)

over time, whilst remaining anchored in the traditional theme of the grape harvest, the floats in the Lugano festival began to explore new combinations of themes, linking the agricultural ideal with elements drawn from cinema, fashion, and current affairs. Giampiero Rinaldi, one of the youngest members of the organising committee of the first Grape Harvest festival in Lu, affirmed that the floats in the 1960s

[…] looked like carnival floats, but with one difference: instead of Harlequin and Pulcinella, there were bunches of grapes and bottles of wine. everybody liked the idea of building floats like those for our festival. A parade of floats in September was something completely new, but at that time in lu there were already people – including some of us [the members of the first organising committee] – who built the carnival floats in Alessandria and Casale every year.16

The float parade was introduced into the traditional program of the festival. The parade managed to adapt a custom that was already known to the town, the procession of symbolic floats, and the proven ability of at least some of the organising committee to design and build the floats. These elements combined to create a festival that was wholly unique to the Alessandria region of the 1970s. In addition to the float parade, the ballo a palchetto was reintroduced, so that the new festival included the same kind of festivity as the festival of our lady of august that was waning in popularity. finally, to allow tourists to sample the local wine and grape products, the organising committee decided to give tourists a bottle of wine as a gift and organise stands to sell local grapes and wine.


Photo 1. The streets of Lu during the parade of the Grape Harvest Festival. 11 September 2005. Photo by Davide Capra.

Photo 2: The float named “The Addams Winery” during the parade of the Grape Harvest Festival in Lu. 11 September 2005. Photo by Davide Capra.


The first Grape Harvest festival that took place in 1969 successfully attracted much public interest that pushed the organising committee to continue with the event and add to the programme over the following years.17 Year after year the float parade con-tinued to be the core of the festival and as Gianni Boccalatte, the later president of the Pro loco, had reiterated many times over the years from the 1970s to the 1990s, “the floats are the Grape Harvest festival”.18

The 2005 parade was an example of the way in which the floats could combine grapes and wine with themes linked to local tradition, current affairs or sport:

Here comes the primary school’s float “The fountain of Youth” with a wonderful bubbling fountain (just a few little passengers on it, but full of enthusiasm); then “Herbie, the tipsy Beetle” powered by the wine of Lu and built by a group called “The fools”; also the group of “The Saints” is competing with the “fred Barbera and Ginger Cortese” float: a couple of bottles next to a gramophone covered with grapes.

Then comes the float named “The Addams Winery” built by the hamlet of Mar-tini: the big white hand stands out against the gloomy family (it seems a dark day for them too!).

finally there are the two groups of the oratory and the sablot that do not partici-pate in the competition for the title of best float. The group of the oratory, named “Waiting for Valentino Rossi”, is dressed in yellow and blue, with helmets and bicycles disguised as motorcycles, while the group “Paisò” of the Sablot recalls the old ways of the grape harvest. (Bo 2005)

Photo 3. The “Herbie, the tipsy Beetle” float during the parade of the Grape Harvest Festival in Lu. 11 September 2005. Photo by Davide Capra.


Photo 4. The “Fred Barbera and Ginger Cortese” float during the parade of the Grape Harvest Festival in Lu. 11 September 2005. Photo by Davide Capra.

a f a s c i s t c E l E B r a t i o n

in the course of its forty-year history, the lu grape harvest festival has managed to take centre stage in the region, becoming one of the main events in september.19 in particular, the elements that have characterised the grape harvest festival have been the float parade, the ballo a palchetto, and the organisation of stands to promote and sell local wine.20

Whilst the ball is a legacy of an agricultural festival, namely the festival of our lady held on 15th August, the combination of a float parade and the promotion and sale of local wine can be traced back to a more recent festive model, which became widespread in italy in the 1930s under the fascist regime, namely the grape harvest festival.

The “first national day of the Grape Harvest festival” was celebrated on 28th Sep-tember 1930 (Cavazza 1997: 122–125), turning this initiative of Arturo Marescalchi, the then under-secretary of agriculture, into a reality. In fact, he wanted to find an effective way to boost grape and wine sales nationwide through an extensive schedule of festi-vals centred on grapes and wine.

Before this celebration was made official, fascism had already promoted and adver-tised single-themed festivals, centred on specific crop production, such as strawber-ries, wheat and grapes. These proved to be effective tools to re-launch tourism and the local economy (ibid.: 122). from 1930 onwards, based on these first experiences, the


regime enforced a vast national programme of grape harvest festivals in order to revive the wine growing and producing sector that suffered from the recession of the entire national viniculture market. These festivals had to be organised by local committees and had to conform to certain criteria: provide a contest for “the best offer of grape sales” and set up a parade with people dressed up as traditional peasants and decorated grape harvest festival floats, which represented themes linked to wine growing and agricul-tural life (ibid.: 122–123). the archive of the luce institute owns several video accounts of some of the first grape harvest festivals.21 Particularly representative is the video of the second festival in rome, where people paraded in clothes of the style worn in rome in the mid-19th century, men in greek peplos whose hats were trimmed with garlands of vine, a float representing a still life made out of a big bunch of black grapes in a wicker basket, decorated with vines, a float representing a steam boat with men and women on its deck dressed as sailors giving out bunches of grapes to the crowds, and, finally, a float representing a tavern where men and women dressed in traditional costumes sang and played songs in dialect. This parade, with its festival floats and its groups in costumes, appears artistically very similar to the ones seen in lu.

indeed, it is not by chance that it is possible to retrace a path connecting the proces-sions in Lugano, the festival in Lu and the floats of the fascist Grape Harvest festi-vals. As Stefano Cavazza highlights in his work on fascist festivals, the model of the grape harvest festival became very popular and widespread across the whole of italy

(ibid.: 122–125). the success of this festival can be seen in its adoption and continuation throughout italy after the second World War and after the fall of fascism in the post-War period and beyond to the present day.22 indeed, after almost eighty years, some of the grape harvest festivals created during the fascist period continue to take place every year, such as those of Poggio sannita (isernia Province) and impruneta (florence Province), as well as those that were sponsored and promoted on a national level, such as the grape harvest festival of Marino (rome Province) (ibid.).

the popularity of this model even crossed national borders. indeed, festivals dedi-cated to grape and wine were organised in the swiss border region of canton ticino, for example, from the beginning of the 1930s. in addition to the aforementioned festival of lugano, the festival of Balerna and Mendrisino (Prima festa dell’uva 1957) adopted the fundamental elements of the fascist festivals: a market to promote local wine and, above all, the float parade. These festivals were acclaimed locally and became so popular that they continued to be organised over the years. in particular, the festival of lugano became one of the most important events of the whole canton ticino, and many tel-evision programmes were dedicated to it during the 1960s. these programmes, which were broadcast by swiss television also in lu, aroused curiosity among its inhabitants.

When, in 1967, a group of residents of lu chose the festival of lugano as a model for their new festival, and when, in particular, they decided to take the idea of a float parade as the central element of the Lu’s new festival, a bizarre cultural triangulation was completed. indeed, the residents of lu, convinced that they were introducing a completely new kind of celebration in the province of alessandria – since the idea was taken from abroad – in fact successfully re-introduced the same pattern of festival that had previously been widespread in the fascist period, at least in the main towns, and that had disappeared during the war and the industrial boom of the post-War period.


c o n c l u s i o n

the grape harvest festival of lu is an example of how social dynamism in a commu-nity can strongly stimulate the development of local traditions; furthermore, analysing the features of this festival, television emerges as a powerful cultural vector that has been able to convey a model for a festival on an international scale.

studying the evolution of celebrations in the Jerte Valley in spain, the anthropolo-gists francesco Cruces and Angel Díaz de Rada (1992: 72) established the evolutionary process of celebration rituality in a community:

the decline of certain lesser religious celebrations and the customs associated with them under the direct impact of the transformation of the productive cycle and the indirect effect of the tendency towards secularisation.

the persistence of traditional celebrations, and especially their ludic aspects, suggesting a “return to tradition” by generations that have no direct experience of it. this is a modern phenomenon because it implies mediation by non-traditional institutions and learning.

the appearance of new forms of celebration on the margins or in the interstices of the traditional festive process, sometimes as a result of the activity of voluntary associations or supralocal institutions.

in the case of lu, these trends can be found in the evolution of the festival of our lady of august and the organisation of the grape harvest festival. With the cultural crisis in the agricultural world there were fewer social assumptions on which the mid-august celebration was based. since it was not at all suitable to the new social context, this fes-tival underwent a crisis and was ultimately abandoned as it was no longer capable of meeting both the cultural and recreational demands of the younger generation in lu, who should have been the festival’s target audience. to respond to such a demand, a new celebration was created from scratch, the grape harvest festival, which took some of the celebrations associated with the festival of our lady of august, the entertain-ment of the ball, and introduced them into the new framework of the festival. in order to complete and give more weight to this new celebration, the ball was accompanied by a float parade, an innovative element compared to the local cultural context in which it was introduced, and one that had taken its cue from the media.

it has already been pointed out that, since the 1960s, television has been a crucial element in the cultural unification of Italy,23 but the example of lu shows how this communication tool was already able to create an international network from which a single rural area could acquire information and cultural models which were then adapted to its own region. television, therefore, was already a cultural and globalising vector capable of spreading cultural models, going beyond geographical and political barriers. Without wishing to paint a picture of lu as a town in which the transformation from a traditional society to a globalised information society has been achieved, this undoubtedly shows that forty years ago, television had already become one of the tools the “bricoleur of tradition” used in the creation of customs (Grimaldi 1993: 34). This can be seen in modern society’s ability to take inspiration from television, to acquire new cultural practices, and to apply them to its world.


This was not an innocent change. The making of a new festival represents an attempt of a community that is facing its disaggregation to counter the social effects of this trend. in so doing, the passage from a religious feast to a mundane one is not just a matter of opposition between sacred and profane. Rather, at stake is the very strategy adopted by a community to maintain its social integrity. While the feast of our lady of august shows a social group that protects its integrity by closing up, almost inter-dicting foreigners from participating in the rituals, the new festival instead chases the preservation of the community by opening it up to tourists and other strangers, hoping that this move would attract new financial and human resources. This strategy shift is implicitly linked and shows the growing sense of marginality present in the community of lu after the second World War.

thus, the lu grape harvest festival is an example of how a complex society creates its own customs, trying to fill the void left by the death of previous celebrations, which were in crisis following social and economic transformations within the local commu-nity. the operation of cultural bricolage, that is necessary for the creation of a festival, uses all the tools that a society has (previous experience of each of its members, local tradition, and mass media), often looking for inspiration in external models, sometimes from afar. in this process the elements of this creative game lose their original mean-ing and find new ones. The result that is obtained is something new for the commu-nity, even if, unintentionally, it can represent a form of celebration now forgotten, that existed locally just a few years earlier.

n o t E s

1 the photographs accompanying this article were taken at the 2005 festival by davide capra, whose contribution i would like to formally acknowledge here.

2 The effects of fascist law on the world of agriculture in northern Italy are well documented by anna cento Bull and Paul corner (1993).

3 Pro loco associations are organised in the unione italiana Pro loco league. those institu-tions were created after the second World War as non-governmental players in the tourist devel-opment of the municipalities in which they are located and with which they are related. for fur-ther information on the national history of the Pro loco associations, see il Portale delle Pro loco.

4 interview with gigi Busto, 29 January 2007, in casale Monferrato.5 in autumn 2006, the municipality of lu and its Pro loco decided to participate in the televi-

sion In famiglia programme broadcast by raidue. that year the programme, which was broadcast on saturday and sunday mornings, introduced a competition for villages and small towns across italy: a team from all the towns and villages that decided to pay the deposit was to take part in a tournament that lasted the entire season for which the show ran, and to take part in a series of challenges, quizzes and agility games against teams from other Italian towns. The prize was a school bus as well as the chance to make your own region and its history known across italy dur-ing the course of the broadcasts. at their debut, each team was guaranteed a micro-documentary lasting three minutes, during which they would showcase footage of their local area and present historical information about their town or village. this micro-documentary was the only time dedicated entirely to tourist publicity for the towns. on the 2nd of december 2006, the team from lu made their debut introduced by their micro-documentary. While the documentary largely focused on one of the village’s two main festivals, namely the festival of the patron saint Valerio, in addition to shots of Lu taken by the Rai film team, the footage also showed images of the float parade, characteristic of lu’s other festival, the grape harvest festival.


6 Interview with ferruccio Mazzoglio, 23 March 2008, in Lu.7 interview with giancarlo ribaldone, 3 March 2007, in lu.8 interview with leone rota, 20 May 2007, in lu.9 interview with Piergiorgio Verri, 18 december 2007, in lu.10 interview with gino garlando, 29 May 2006, in lu.11 the last ballo a palchetto was organised in 1975. in 1976, what remained of the festival was

“one lonely stand of a nougat seller”, as Mauro Bisoglio (1976) wrote in the local magazine. In 1977 the festival of Our Lady of August officially ceased to exist.

12 interview with gigi Busto, 29 January 2007, in casale Monferrato.13 the atmosphere of these festivals is described in the last verse of the poem “La vandümmia’d

na vota” of G. Parmiani in 1997 (Botto et al. 2003: 104), written and performed for the annual lunch for the members of the wine cooperative of saint giorgio Monferrato: A vandümmia finija as fava la curmà / e a ca dal pardon iera da senna e da disnà. / Pö i sunadur cun l’armoni? e la ghitara, as bütavu sunà / e al divertiment? la comensipiava cun in bel balà. (Once the grape harvest is over the feasting began / and at the master’s house there was dinner and supper. / Then the musicians with the harmonica and the guitar began to play / and the festivities began with a wonderful dance.)

14 as this article will later demonstrate, despite the fascist regime promoting the annual organisation of a Grape Harvest festival throughout Italy through the ente Nazionale Dopola-voro (national recreation organisation), it remains impossible even today to reconstruct how widespread this festival became in the province of alessandria. the reason for this is that the regional archives of the ente Nazionale Dopolavoro were destroyed in 1944 and local newspa-pers of the time, in particular Il Piccolo and La Stampa, do not provide details on events promoted by this organisation. the only grape harvest festival in the area that certainly took place was at ovada, and has been documented in Pestarino 2007.

15 interview with gigi Busto, 29 January 2007, in casale Monferrato.16 interview with giampiero rinaldi, 21 January 2007, in lu. 17 initially, the festival events were limited to the second weekend of september: the main

event of the saturday night was the ballo a palchetto, while the parade took place on the sunday evening.

from the 9th year, the celebration also included the friday before, as can be seen in the pro-gramme of the 10th grape harvest festival (Programma della 10a sagra dell’uva 1977). addi-tional events were planned prior to the festival that could extend the celebrations to the weekend before that of the float parade, for example in 1976 the exhibition of Wine and Silverware was inaugurated on the 12th of September, the Saturday preceding the float parade (Programma della 9a sagra dell’uva 1976).

With the progressive improvements in catering organised by the Pro loco, the festivals began to extend to the weekend preceding the float parade. The first two-week event took place in 1989, as the programme of that year shows (Programma della 22a sagra dell’uva 1989).

The first festivals to take place over two weekends, however, offered a very limited pro-gramme on the first weekend, organised mainly around the dual themes of food and Dance, and accompanied with the openings of art exhibitions and/or events featuring local products.

The 2004 event represented a considerably more tourist-oriented festival: the first weekend remained less extravagant than the second and contained fewer events, but, at the same time, it was characterised by very popular events for a niche market with merchants who come from all over the northwest of italy, for example, the Vesparaduno that took place in 2005. from that point, the festival organisers began to offer a product that attracted tourists not just from the town itself but also from outside the local area. from the 2005 festival onwards, there have not been further substantial alterations to the programme of events.

18 Interview with Gianni Boccalatte, 4 August 2006, in Lu.


19 as highlighted by local journalist luigi deambrosis in his presentation of the 2005 grape harvest festival (deambrosis 2005: 14).

20 the catering must be mentioned in addition to these three elements. catering was intro-duced for the first time in 1972, during the 5th Grape Harvest festival, and for this event the Pro Loco hired the ‘famous chefs of Ponti’ who were invited to return in 1978 to prepare their polenta and frittata with cod, as Gigi Busto explained in his interview (29 January 2007). Catering services were properly introduced with the 10th festival, and were located in the Papà francesco restaurant, in via colli. the menu was characterised by local dishes from Piedmontese tradition, as shown in the programme of the festival (Programma della 10a sagra dell’uva 1977).

from the 11th to the 14th grape harvest festivals, the catering service was provided intermit-tently. Only with the 15th Grape harvest festival did the restaurant take on a definitive role as Mario Dealassi explains in his article (Dealassi 1982). Having bought field kitchens, which are still in use today, the Pro loco organised catering in the Cantina Sociale in Via roma, and the catering remained there until 1998. the 33th festival saw the catering moved to its current location, the courtyard of the town hall, as the programme of this event shows (Programma della 33a sagra dell’uva 2000).

21 a vast amount of visual documentation on the grape harvest festivals in italy is made available on the institute’s web site (see archivio storico instituto luce).

22 the grape harvest festival of Vagliagli, a village in the area of castelnuovo Berardegna (siena Province), serves as a good example. the demise of this festival was not due to a political factor (the fall of fascism) but to a socio-economic factor. the festival was abandoned in 1977 because, in that agricultural society, metayage tenant farming had fallen into disuse following the progressive industrialisation of the countryside and emigration from the village to siena. in 1995, the inhabitants of the village reorganised the festival, considering it a “traditional festival” whose renewal meant re-asserting local identity. (scala, galgani 2005: 15–56)

23 “Television and direct dialling are presented as tools for the unification of cultural circula-tion in a country in which internal migration represents the main tool of cultural circulation, first of all in terms of physical mobility” (Ortoleva 1997: 132).

s o u r c E s

Interview with Gianni Boccalatte, 4 August 2006, in Lu.interview with gigi Busto, 29 January 2007, in casale Monferrato.interview with gino garlando, 29 May 2006, in lu.Interview with ferruccio Mazzoglio, 23 March 2008, in Lu.interview with giancarlo ribaldone, 3 March 2007, in lu.interview with giampiero rinaldi, 21 January 2007, in lu.interview with leone rota, 20 May 2007, in lu.interview with Piergiorgio Verri, 18 december 2007, in lu.

r E f E r E n c E s

Archivio Storico Instituto Luce. http://www.archivioluce.com/archivio/ (accessed June 6, 2014).Bisoglio, Mauro 1976. 10 anni di sagra dell’uva. – Al Païs d’Lü. anno ii, n. 9: 1.Bo, Maria Cristina 2005. Domenica 11 settembre: le foto, la cronaca, i protagonist. – Al païs d’Lu.

anno xxiV, n. 8: 2.


Botto, elio; Teresio Mapassuto; Giorgio Dilani (cur.) 2003. Spirit Munfrin, Antologia di poesie, businà e canti dialettali del Monferrato Casalese. Casale Monferrato: Città di Casale Monferrato.

Bravo, gian luigi 2013. Italiani all’alba del nuovo millennio. Milano: francoangeli.Busto, gigi 1992. la sagra d’argento. – Al Païs d’Lü. anno xVi, n. 9: 8.Cavazza, Stefano 1997. Piccole Patrie. Feste Popolari tra Regione e Nazione durante il Fascismo.

Bologna: il Mulino.cento Bull, anna; Paul corner 1993. From Peasant to Entrepreneur: The Survival of the Family

Economy in Italy. oxford: Berg.chiesa, Virgilia 1949. L’Opera della Pro Lugano. Lugano: Arti grafiche già Veladini.Cruces, francisco; Angel Díaz de Rada 1992. Public Celebration in a Spanish Valley. – Jeremy

Boissevain (ed.). Revitalising European Rituals. london: routledge, 62–79.dealassi, Mario 1982. 15a sagra dell’uva. – Al païs d’Lü. anno Vii, n. 9: 1–2.deambrosis, luigi 2005. Pigiatura e tomboluva. – Il Monferrato (2 settembre).fontefrancesco, Michele filippo 2006. I fiori dell’inverno. torino: omega.grimaldi, Piercarlo 1993. Il calendario rituale contadino: il tempo della festa e del lavoro fra tradizione e

complessità sociale. Milano: francoangeli.grimaldi, Piercarlo 2012. Cibo e rito. Il gesto e la parola nell’alimentazione tradizionale. Palermo:

sellerio.Guaschino, Maura; Maurizio Martinotti (cur.) 1984. Contadini di collina: viticoltura e condizioni

materiali nella cultura orale del Basso Monferrato casalese. torino: regione Piemonte assessorato all’agricoltura e foreste.

hobsbawn, Eric; terence ranger (eds.) 1983. The Invention of Tradition. cambridge: cambridge university Press.

Il Portale Delle Pro Loco. – http://www.unpliproloco.it (accessed June 6, 2014).lévi-strauss, claude 1955. Tristes tropiques. Paris: Plon.ortoleva, Peppino 1997. Mediastoria: Comunicazione e cambiamento sociale nel mondo contemporaneo.

Milan: Pratiche Editrice.Pestarino, Lorenzo 2007. fascismo rurale nell’Ovadese. Sistema di potere e società tra crisi agraria

e folklore. – URBS Silva et Flumen. anno xx, n. 1: 61–70.Popolazione Lu 1861–2012. http://www.comuni-italiani.it/006/089/statistiche/popolazione.html

(accessed June 6, 2014).Prima festa dell’uva 1957. – informatore di Mendrisio (13 luglio): 1.Programma della 9a sagra dell’uva 1976. – Al païs d’Lü. anno i, n. 7: 1.Programma della 10a sagra dell’uva 1977. – Al païs d’Lü. anno ii, n. 9: 1.Programma della 22a sagra dell’uva 1989. – Al païs d’Lü. anno xiii, n. 7: 1.Programma della 33a sagra dell’uva 2000. Al païs d’Lü. anno xxiV, n. 7: 1.scala, giacomo; licia galgani (cur.) 2005. Al principio d’autunno. Vagliagli, la comunità si racconta

attraverso la festa. florence: aska.scarsoglio, federico 1977. la festa di lu deve sparire. – Al Païs d’Lü. anno ii, n. 5: 1.


Vol. 8 (1): 91–110

91

u d M u r t i d E n t i t y i s s u E s : c o r E M o M E n t s f r o M t h E M i d d l E a g E s t o t h E P r E s E n t d a y

MariE casEnPhd student

department of finno-ugric studiesinstitut national des langues et civilisations orientales (inalco)

75013 Paris, francee-mail: [email protected]

aBstractthis paper* gives an overview of collective identity issues among the udmurt peo-ple, stressing the importance of the historical background since 1552, up to and including current udmurt ethnic activity. The first section of the paper considers the foundations of the udmurt collective identity (linguistic family and the sig-nificance of the territory). The second section focuses on occasions when udmurt identity markers were at stake as a consequence of official policies or legal affairs during the tsarist and soviet periods. the third section presents the paradoxical role of the capital of udmurtia, Izhevsk, the place where assimilation into Russian culture is more important than anywhere else, and which is also the centre of lin-guistic and cultural official planning where institutional structures are devoted to minority preservation. the last section will be dedicated to udmurt contemporary ethnic activity in the context of globalisation.

kEyWords: udmurt • russia • history • globalisation • ethnic activity • identity


one of the consequences of perestroika, initiated by Mikhail gorbachev in 1985, and of the collapse of the ussr in 1991, was the possibility, for the non-russian minori-ties of the former Soviet union, to start redefining their identities. The effects of this movement, also called “the uSSR Republics’ parade of sovereignty” (Petrov 2004) – the questioning of the supremacy of the laws of the ussr, increased national autonomy of non-russian subjects of the russian federation – have manifested themselves in dif-ferent ways. some former ssrs, like the Baltic states, separated from the ussr. for example, the sovereignty declaration of the Estonian ssr was passed on 16 novem-ber 1988, the restoration of latvia’s independence took place on 4 May 1990 and the re-establishment of the state of lithuania on 11 March 1990. apart from these, other attempts to restore national independence have led to war (see, for example, conflicts

* the author is grateful to svetlana Edygarova (department of finnish, finno-ugrian and Scandinavian Studies, university of Helsinki), Matthew Bray (New York City) and eva Toulouze (department of finno-ugric studies, inalco, Paris) for their support and contribution.


in the caucasus). however, for many of the peoples of russia, the consequences were less spectacular. Within the russian federation, some ethnic minorities began to con-sider new ways of relating to the state, which were transformed into negotiations with the aim of acquiring a more desirable political status, including official recognition and sovereignty. such is the case for the Volga region’s minorities, although the scope of post-soviet change is wide: the strong-minded tatar minority obtained important benefits, including ownership of its rich subsoil (Parent 2011: 285), while udmurtia, a long-standing strategic armament zone where udmurts constitute less than one third of the present-day population of their eponymous republic, was unable to muster the decisive advantage necessary to achieve statutory recognition. despite many adminis-trative decisions in the 2000s made under the Putin and Medvedev governments – for example, the incorporation of deficit areas populated by non-Russian minorities into wealthier regions1 – the aim of which was to regain regional control lost during the 1990s, the ethnic activists2 pursued the process of redefining their identity through an affirmation of non-Russian minority recognition.

this article is based on the literature concerning udmurt identity issues and is com-plemented by several interviews, conducted between 2009 and 2012, with contempo-rary udmurt ethnic activists. My informants were volunteers who considered them-selves active participants in the development of contemporary udmurt culture (they were related to universities, promo-groups, research institutes, museums, etc.). the interviews were either formal or informal3 and focused on qualitative aspects. the data collected concerns three main aspects of udmurt identity: what creates the feeling of membership to the udmurt community, what it means to be udmurt and which refer-ences informants invoke concerning udmurt identity.

talking about a people whom i do not represent is a tricky task. the subject is not easy to navigate. Scientific rigor prevents non-native researchers from applying con-cepts from our own scientific tradition to people whose individual and collective con-struction is not founded on the same conceptual basis. in some languages (for example, french identité, English identity, spanish identitad) this notion can refer to the entangled factors (cultural, economic, social, political and historical) that affect a self-aware group (chevallier, Morel 1985: 3). in contrast, in neither udmurt nor russian do the transla-tions for identity cover the full meaning methodologically required for the study of what french, English or spanish people would call identity: identichnost’ (the russian word is also used in udmurt) concerns only the psychological aspects of individuals, while the udmurt notion s’am or the adjective aspörtemlykse valas’murt can refer to the personality of an individual4 (in russian lichnost’). The dictionaries give us further defi-nitions: udmurt kalykvyjy (in russian natsionalnost’) is affiliation with an ethnic group (Maksimov, danilov, saarinen 2008: 184). however, one can consider the udmurt notions of self-consciousness, asshödon or asvalan5 (in russian samosoznanie), as closer to the french, English and spanish meaning of identity previously mentioned. in this article, based also on the results of my fieldwork6 in Izhevsk, I will use the notion of identity not as an issue in itself but as a theoretical tool: i will not try to determine what udmurt identity is, rather i will use the cultural elements considered as part of udmurt identity by my self-identified udmurt informants.

having said that, the preservation of udmurt identity is of major concern to the udmurt people themselves. the extent of research activity conducted by ethnic udmurts

Casen: Udmurt Identity Issues: Core Moments from the Middle Ages to the Present Day 93

about udmurt people demonstrates the intensity of the concern regarding their des-tiny as a nation. the scholars of the udmurt institute of history, language and litera-ture (ural Branch of the russian academy of sciences), carry out research in udmurt archaeology, ethnography, indigenous history, literature and folklore. according to the director of the institute alexey Zagrebin, the most dynamic period for udmurt research was between 1990 and 1998, but the institute currently publishes between 10 and 12 items every year (casen 2010: 166): monographs, conference proceedings, reviews and studies, including the series Феномен Удмуртии (Phenomenon of udmurtia)7 which is made up of legal texts, analyses of udmurtia and the udmurts, as well as results of a survey on the changes in udmurtia since the 1990s (see smirnova 2002). More recently, the doctoral thesis by Vladimir Vorontsov (2003) on ethnic self-consciousness among students in udmurtia and the presentation about udmurts in the contemporary world, given by an udmurt researcher galina nikitina (2012) during the udmurt days, which took place in Paris from 13 to 15 december 2012, have shown the topicality of the issue of identity preservation, in connection with the problem of the strong and permanent cultural assimilation into the dominant russian culture. thus, in the udmurt republic all the censuses show the continuing assimilation process and its serious consequences: the udmurt population is constantly decreasing. in 1926, the udmurts made up 52 per cent of the population of their titular administrative unit, while in 2010 the share of udmurts was only 28 per cent (rosstat 2010).

I will first present the udmurts in the context of both their finno-ugric linguistic family and their region, elements still considered as the foundations of their collec-tive identity (casen 2010: 412). then, in order to give an idea of the identity issues in udmurt history, i will consider central moments when some of the markers of their identity (faith, traditional culture) were at stake and came to light in the public sphere. finally, i will analyse the manifestations of current ethnic activity, both displaying the institutional structures devoted to minority preservation, and presenting contemporary udmurt identity issues in the context of globalisation.

t h E f o u n d a t i o n o f t h E M o d E r n u d M u r t c o l l E c t i V E i d E n t i t y 8

two unchanging features have played an important role for the construction of udmurt identity: the permanent relationships of udmurts with linguistically related peoples, and their territorial rootedness in particular within the Volga region.

The Udmurts in the Finno-Ugric Family

udmurt language is related to the Permic branch of finno-ugric languages. it is close to the komi languages, komi-Zyrian and komi-Permyak (salánki 2004: 223), and morpho-logically not very far from finnic languages. from a political perspective, finno-ugric peoples can be classified into two sub-categories: peoples with their own titular state (finns, Hungarians and estonians), and peoples who “have always been submitted to an ethnically different group” (Toulouze, forthcoming). The latter comprise of Kareli-


ans, Mordvins, Mari, udmurts, komi, Veps, ingrians, livonians, Votes, sami; and in siberia the Enets, khanty, Mansi, nenets, nganasan and the selkup people. up to the present, the great number of projects for scholarly and artistic cooperation in networks with their linguistic relatives allows a growing sense of belonging among the peoples of finno-ugric family.

The Udmurt Land

the udmurt-populated area is inscribed in the south and northeast of the quadran-gle formed by the lower kama and the Vyatka rivers (Moreau 2009). as, historically, udmurt settlement has existed since much earlier than a titular administrative terri-tory, about one fifth of ethnic udmurts9 live outside the boundaries of udmurtia: in the republics of tatarstan, Bashkortostan and Mari El, in Perm krai, or in kirov, sverdlovsk and tyumen oblasts. Most udmurts live in their eponymous territory that was granted an autonomous status (the Votyak autonomous oblast10) in 1920, at the same time as the other Volga peoples gained their titular administrative units.11

although udmurts have at present minority status12 in the udmurt republic, this official recognition had contributed to udmurt identity building – at least until the mid-dle of the 1920s when they were still free to develop their culture as shown by their enthusiastic participation13 in the Bolshevik literary structures (kulikov 1997: 72). at that time, soviet nationality policy was rather supportive of the non-russian nationali-ties: to use the official terms, “great-power chauvinism” was seen as more dangerous for the Soviet power than “local nationalism” (Toulouze, forthcoming).14 in 1934, this territory became the udmurt autonomous soviet socialist republic (uassr).

as a consequence of the collapse of the ussr, the udmurt assr became the udmurt republic15 on 20 september 1990. it had been hoped that the new status could lead to the recognition of sovereignty and political self-determination of the people living in this territory, but this did not happen since Moscow still held the majority of political and constitutional powers (casen 2010: 211). today, as noted by svetlana Edygarova (2012), udmurts do not typically associate their ethnic identity with the administrative territory of udmurtia, but rather more commonly refer to a geographically closer com-munity, for example, to the village or to an abstract community, including representa-tives of the udmurt diaspora living in the wider Volga region.

The Udmurts in the Volga Region

udmurtia is situated in the Volga federal district, which is, with caucasus, one of the most diverse parts of the russian federation in terms of ethnic composition. it incorpo-rates 14 federal subjects, including six ethno-territorial republics: the Mari-El republic, the republic of Bashkortostan, the republic of Mordovia, the republic of tatarstan, the chuvash republic and the udmurt republic (see figure 1). a history of successive inva-sions (by huns, Bulgars, tatars, slavic peoples) explains the multi-ethnic composition of the region, which includes russians, turks (tatars, Bashkirs, chuvashes) and finno-ugrians (Maris, Mordvins, komi-Permyaks, udmurts) with their diverse languages and cultures, and the commensurate religious diversity (arEna survey 2012).16


Figure 1. Map of the Volga Region.

as a consequence of centuries of cohabitation, the Volga region is characterised by a high degree of interaction between ethnic groups, which is another historical element of identity construction for the udmurt and other peoples of the Volga region. as far as udmurtia is concerned, the southern part, traditionally settled by finno-ugrians, was ruled by Mongolians of the Golden Horde until the fall of the Kazan Khanate in 1552, while the north was part of Muscovy (Vladykin, kristoliubova 1997: 31–36).

therefore, the political and administrative territory (udmurtia in its current boundaries) is not, for most of the udmurt, the referential framework of their identity; most important are local territories (villages), which are smaller and more functional: udmurts are more willing to refer to them as the territorially significant markers of udmurt identity. the non-geographical but abstract and imaginary udmurt (including the diaspora) and finno-ugric communities also represent a foundation for identity construction.

another noteworthy feature, resulting from ancient and recent udmurt history, is the long-standing assimilation process to the dominant russian culture (nikitina, forth-coming). the measures taken by the Ministry of national Policy in udmurtia to pre-serve minority peoples did not seem persuasive enough in the face of the advantages offered by assimilation into the prevailing Russian culture. from a political point of view the situation is a paradox. on the one hand, the soviet period, as well as the cur-rent leaders of the russian federation, has provided the means for udmurt national recognition (a territory, for example) and to preserve their identity (the Ministry of national Policy). on the other hand, the policies implemented by the authorities have been generally harmful to the udmurts by constantly destroying the will for rebirth and appreciation of their indigenous culture.


d E c i s i V E M o M E n t s f o r u d M u r t i d E n t i t y

in this section, i would like to situate the historical background in which the udmurt identity question has been prominent, in order to shed light on the significance of pre-sent day udmurt ethnic activity. this demarche is analysed by Bruno karsenti (2012: 12–50) in his book about the significance of the notion of nation, where he demonstrates three steps in identity building: the facts (reality), the stories presenting the facts (his-tory), and the appropriation of this speech by individuals (identity building). recount-ing the stories and historical narratives of a people participates in sketching the fictive framework in which a society can recognise and constitute itself as a people.

The Tsarist Period

Between 155217 and 1917 udmurt people were guilty of not being christians. the orthodox church considered the conversion of the peoples with animist and Muslim faiths of the Volga region an essential task for their integration in the russian state. in her thesis about the emergence of written culture among the udmurts, eva Toulouze (2000) has pointed out that the authors (for example, kappeler 1982) usually distin-guish two moments in this process. A “preparation period”18 that aimed to accustom the heterodox people to the new Russian State by finding allies in the population and by installing the structures (churches, monasteries) for the second step, and the sec-ond period, that of forced conversions, starting in the 17th century. the use of vio-lence, physical aggressions, material destruction19 and psychological pressure (constant control of rituals by church officials), had notable effects. It made the udmurt people realise the total assimilation intentions of the russian state; in addition to which, chris-tianisation partly succeeded in eradicating the udmurt ancestral faith, even if there had been resistance expressed through gatherings and syncretistic religious practices. (Toulouze 2000: 126)20

Moreover, udmurt identity was in question and brought under the public eye through religious-related accusations with the Vuzh Multan21 Affair, which took place in 1892. The Vuzh Multan affair was the first time the udmurt made headlines and received wide coverage in the press. the main point discussed was quite an intimate one: udmurt beliefs and religious issues. at the end of the 19th century, tsarist rus-sia was developing its industries, including an arms factory in Izhevsk, the capital of udmurtia. In that period, the labour of the Russian settlers did not meet demand and the help of indigenous rural people became necessary. as a consequence, there was more frequent contact between the first inhabitants of Izhevsk and the recently arrived population of udmurt workers. in 1892, ten udmurt peasants were accused of having committed the ritual murder of a Russian beggar. While no serious proof was found against them, “they were mainly guilty of belonging to a people suspected to practice barbaric rituals” (Toulouze 2012). The first trial in Malmyzh (1894) led to the convic-tion of seven udmurts who were sentenced to many years of forced labour. this sen-tence was imposed without regard for the right to a defence, and the defendants filed a cassation application. As a result, the court of final appeal reversed the judgement. there was a second trial in Elabuga (1895) under the same conditions and with the same


result. At the third trial, in Saint Petersburg (1896), the seven udmurts were acquitted. (Vanyushev 1995: 141–256) At the time, the Vuzh Multan Affair resonated to Moscow and Paris. But even years later the russian press persisted in presenting udmurts as uncivilised and dangerous people. the Gorodskoi Stil newspaper published an illustra-tion to commemorate the centenary of the Vuzh Multan Affair with a drawing beside the text that represents a fire, the smoke of which rises in the form of a question mark, as if the udmurts’ innocence remained unproven (Shkliaev, Toulouze 2001). In this affair the udmurts were made scapegoats, they were stigmatised as having a criminal cul-ture, a situation shared by other non-christian European minorities of the same period (Toulouze 2012).

The Soviet Period

the soviet period is a pivotal period for udmurt identity building, in turn supported, as in the first half of the 1920s, and dampened, as occurred between 1925 and the 1930s, as shown by the sofin22 Affair. The turning point occurred with a shift in orientation of the party’s ideology: the russian-minded tendency became the leading one (tou-louze, forthcoming). encouraged by the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of russia (15 november 1917) by the new Bolshevik regime, the udmurt intelligentsia teemed with activities, and udmurts could, at that time, identify them-selves as a group without fear and in a most gratifying manner. the promotion of indig-enous people, as expressed through the policy of indigenisation, allowed the udmurts to enjoy socio-professional and cultural recognition by occupying important positions in literary circles.

udmurt intellectuals began to shape udmurt identity through several publications in udmurt language: newspapers (Voinays’ Uvor, Gudyri,23 and several local newspa-pers), poetry (including Krez’ci by Kuzebay Gerd in 1922 and Ashalchi Oki’s Siures duryn in 1925), translations, and publications on contemporary issues, the advancement of women’s status, agricultural techniques and folk medicine (Toulouze 2001: 96–98). These works are the source of the first large-scale recognition of udmurt culture, and were popular and enjoyed by the udmurt public. Moreover, the production of udmurt texts was supported by the leaders of the soviet union as a way of tackling the issue of illiteracy. these were rich and constructive years for udmurt people as well as for the other indigenous peoples of the Volga region: the works of enthusiastic intellectuals forged lasting modern roots for udmurt identity in such a way that the contemporary udmurt intelligentsia still refers to them.24

in the middle of the 1930s, indigenous promotion started to be viewed as an obstacle to the realisation of the party’s ideology. in the article “socialist construction among the Volga region people”, published in 1937 in the journal Sovetskaya Etnografiya, unrelent-ing attacks against the peoples of the Volga region were justified like this: “for the peo-ple of multinational russia previous history is over and the history of liberated people begins” (Lekomtsev 1937: 3–14; Zagrebin 2007: 71). considering the deep nature-based organisation of udmurt traditional life, the upheaval of the rural structures and the way of life is undoubtedly responsible for the destruction of the udmurt identity frame-work. the main periods concerned are the collectivisation that started in 1928, when


a great number of udmurt peasants were repressed as kulaks (nikitina 1998), and the liquidation of ‘perspectiveless’ villages in the 1960s and 1970s (Heikkinen 2000: 290), the consequences of which where the disintegration of the social network of linguistic communities and the elimination of traditional values that cemented udmurt identity.

In the collectivisation period, the SOfIN Affair (1932–1934), was one of the first signs announcing the stalin terror. it struck the udmurt intelligentsia hard and was one of the saddest and most detrimental historical events to damage seriously the possibilities for building and confirming an udmurt national identity. The burgeoning generation of udmurt intellectuals25 from the 1920s, including Konstantin Yakovlev, Trofim Bori-sov, Kuzebay Gerd and the poetess Ashalchi Oki, were arrested by the OGPu and the nkVd.26 they were jailed, executed or terrorised and silenced by the soviet regime, on the pretext that they were spies working for finland in order to assemble a “great finland, from the Atlantic ocean to the ural mountains” (Kulikov 1997: 41). Any ten-dency to affirm udmurt identity was repressed with such violence that udmurt poetry could not find its voice again until 1991, with Viktor Shibanov’s book of poetry Bertis’ko Uishore (i come at midnight).

can the year 1991 can be considered as ushering in a prosperous period for the construction of udmurt identity, comparable to the dynamic that existed in the 1920s? strictly speaking, if the enthusiasm and sensibility of udmurt ethnic activists were similar to the spirit of the poets of the 1920s, the comparison ends there. times have changed. apart from the political and economic background and changes, the most notable consequence of the collapse of the ussr for the udmurt people, whose identity was built in the countryside, is gradual, irremediable and lasting migration to the cit-ies, which will have significant effects on the construction of identity for the youngest generations.

t h E u d M u r t s i n i Z h E V s k

although the udmurt traditions and identity are closely connected to the countryside, rural economy (Vinogradov 2009) and pace of nature (casen 2010: 54),27 urban udmurt settlement is not a new phenomenon: in the 19th century, booming industries required local udmurt and Tatar labour to lend aid to the Russian workers who had settled there during the previous century.

Izhevsk, a Russian Town

Izhevsk was founded in 1760 to respond to the various needs of the metallurgical and armaments industries. first, Russian settlers came and became workers in the factories and forges. at the beginning of the 19th century, tsarist russia operated two weapon plants that were significant to its territorial ambitions in the Caucasus: Tula, about one hundred kilometres from Moscow, and sestroretsk, in the gulf of finland. neverthe-less, the Izhevsk arms factory was built in order to supplement the Tsarist army’s need for firearms.


the predominance of the industrial sector persisted throughout the soviet period, when advanced technological military equipment was the regime’s priority, and it has remained so to this day even if the infrastructure is obsolete and the most important factories (for example, the Izhavto car company in Izhevsk) are no longer competitive. In 1863, Izhevsk’s population was nearly 23,000 inhabitants; in 2010 it was 610,633 (Rosstat 2010). russians are the majority accounting for around 59 per cent of the total population of the town, while the share of udmurts is 30 per cent, and that of tatars is 10 per cent.

the history of this town, its strategic importance to Moscow, especially during the soviet era, illustrates how serious an issue assimilation was. the fact is that, aside from a brief period in the 1920s, there was no evidence of udmurt identity until the 1990s, except in the ‘frozen’, sometimes misrepresented forms of folklore ensembles (casen 2010: 60).

The Udmurt Language in Izhevsk

At the sociolinguistic level, the udmurt language is not much used in Izhevsk, as shown by the survey titled Electrocardiogram of social changes, published in 2002, which compared two samples of the udmurt population: adults living within the territorial boarders of the udmurt Republic, and the udmurt students of Izhevsk (Smirnova 2002: 424–516). the results revealed the situation of the udmurt as a minority and their lan-guage as of minimal use in daily life. indeed, a clear generational distinction must be made between the mother tongue (as a heritage referring to the past), and the commu-nication language within the family (the language of everyday communication): for 75 per cent of survey respondents udmurt is the mother tongue, while 60 per cent of those surveyed use it in the family.

the survey also showed that the language skills of urban speakers are weaker than those of rural udmurts, reflecting the assimilation process that continues to inflict dam-age on language competence. furthermore, urban udmurt is a standardised language whose purified style avoids Russian loan words as much as possible (edygarova 2012), while dialectal varieties spoken by the majority of udmurts are available in the vernac-ular sphere (village community). urban udmurt is an abstract language with underde-veloped functionality in everyday communication. according to svetlana Edygarova,28 if this function is not revitalised, udmurt will find itself in the same situation as Irish (gaelic): as a consequence of its diminished use as a community language, udmurt culture and identity will become abstract concepts.

the minimal use of udmurt language in daily life touches the crucial role that language-planning representatives play in the preservation of the language (nikitina, forthcoming). language planning in the udmurt republic is the responsibility of the Ministry of national Policy, headed by Vladimir Zavalin, whose jurisdiction covers all the nationalities represented in the republic (about 100). in other words, the function of the Ministry is not to promote specifically the udmurt language. under the Resolution of the government of the udmurt republic from 16 June 1997, concerning the develop-ment of the national components of regional state in educational standards, two succes-sive programs were carried out between 2005 and 2009,29 and between 2010 and 2014,30 by the Ministry. as a subject of the russian federation, udmurtia must follow the poli-


cies and the priorities set by Moscow. in accordance with article 8 of the constitution of the udmurt republic (7 december 1994), the udmurt language is, with russian, the official co-language of udmurtia, although this law is not applied. According to a 2007 survey by the Ministry of national Policy, aimed at assessing the application of this law, even road signs and names of major Izhevsk factories are still only in Russian. in addition, there is another serious obstacle to the popularisation of the udmurt lan-guage: only the udmurt elite participate in cultural development, while the majority of udmurt people is not involved (casen 2010: 20), which can be explained by the fact that the udmurt language is almost absent in the education system.

Udmurt Language in the Education System31

the education system is at the heart of the question of udmurt identity because it is primarily responsible for the language education of the young udmurt generation, and also because it is an agent for social formation by preparing individuals to hold certain positions in society. thus, from a civic perspective, the national particularities are left behind, udmurt language remains marginal, and its representatives have a minimal access to powerful social positions.

according to article 68 of the constitution of the russian federation (12 decem-ber 1993), “the russian federation guarantees to all its peoples the right to preserve their native language, to create conditions for its study and development”. In addition, according to articles 10, 11 and 12 of the federal law on national and cultural auton-omy (17 June 1996), “citizens of the Russian federation have the right to receive basic general education in their mother tongue”. The creation of national schools in the 1920s was a measure taken to apply the Communist program of ‘indigenisation’, although it was quickly rejected: during the stalinist period, the communist policy changed and favoured russian (Edgar 2004: 97–99). in the 1980s, legislation was introduced which attempted to restore modern education in national languages32 in that, apart from lan-guage courses, study programs included the history and culture of indigenous peo-ples. These measures were effective until the end of the 1990s, although the number of national schools began to decrease again in the 2000s33 (Vasilyeva 2006), and the udmurt language is only a school subject, not the language of instruction. the redaction of the federal law on Education passed on 1 december 2007 poses an additional threat to national education because it modifies or excludes the udmurt-specific components from public education and, in practice, prohibits evaluation in non-russian languages (article 16.3).

In Izhevsk, an example of udmurt national education is the Kuzebay Gerd School. It was founded in 1999 with the aim of supporting udmurt language and culture. classes were supposed to be taught in udmurt, although now udmurt is as present in that school as it is in the 13 other secondary schools of the capital, which offer a “language and art” major, in which it is possible to study the udmurt language. (Casen 2010: 42) as a consequence, young people who wish to study udmurt, and not pursue artistic careers, are forced to relinquish any business, political or scientific ambitions. At the udmurt state university, the department of udmurt Philology, opened in 1993,34 offers majors in languages, literature and new technologies in philology. Most of the students


there learn another finno-ugric language (finnish or hungarian) and elements of udmurt culture, such as singing, music, dance, cinema and fashion.35

Today, in Izhevsk, young udmurts are still not trained for disciplines that prepare them for the challenges of universal modernisation, or they are trained, but in rus-sian. on the one hand, the authorities have strengthened the status of the language, while, at the same time, they restrict the possibilities of its daily use. they promote cul-tural recognition without giving udmurts the means for statutory (socio-professional) recognition. national cultural associations, especially the one named shundy,36 try to improve young udmurts’ statutory recognition. shundy was established in 1992 by a team that included, among other artists and intellectuals,37 svetlana smirnova, former deputy of the federal State Duma, and current vice-president of the State Committee for Youth Affairs of udmurt Republic. Shundy plays an important role in civic educa-tion in a multiethnic republic and also encourages the social advancement of young udmurt people. it maintains relationships with finno-ugric youth organisations (for example, the youth association of finno-ugric Peoples, Mafun) to ensure its mem-bers are included in a wider finno-ugric network.

As Russian society modernises, studying or working in Izhevsk is more and more common. although the city tends to push minorities into the assimilation process, expressions of original urban udmurt identity may be found, originating from groups and individuals who do not wish to be connected with anything official (such as sup-port from the Ministry, for example).

t h E P o s t -s o V i E t u d M u r t g E n E r a t i o n

udmurt ethnic activists can be classified according to their generation. Individuals of every generation bear the socio-professional, political and cultural characteristics of their era. this explains the reasons for the methods of their actions. in this way, we can distinguish between two generational groups: one composed of individuals whose udmurt identity was built during the soviet period, and the other, which is made up of people who came of age during or after perestroika. these young people are more familiar with new values such as human rights, which are widely accepted in a great part of the world and have penetrated the russian countryside through pervasive use of the media (television, newspapers, radio, and, in the last years, the internet). the dif-ferences between these generations are not based only on age differences, but also tied to the entangled political, social and economic changes initiated by the older generation and implemented among the youngest.

The Promo-groups of the Ethnic Activists and the Internet

Promo-groups are entities whose purpose is to promote a defined community by mak-ing its members more visible in the public sphere and consequently attracting new membership. the current udmurt promo-groups are the only groups capable of bring-ing together udmurt and udmurt-friendly people around unofficial activities. The mis-sion of the organisation iumshan-promo,38 created in 2005, is to collect, preserve, pro-


mote and interpret the artistic and cultural heritage of udmurt people. its main goal is to satisfy a critical need expressed by young udmurts: the desire to form an urban community in the city (casen 2010: 104). thus, iumshan-promo tries to meet the goal by hosting concerts, open-air performances and nightclub events. although the primary purpose is to provide a modern output for young udmurts, the group is deeply rooted in udmurt tradition and rejects what we can call ‘official folklore’ – a widespread phe-nomenon in russia, where elements inspired from authentic oral traditions are stylised and adapted to the stage in the Moiseev ballet style. Indeed, Iumshan-promo is influ-enced by ethno-futurist ideology,39 which brings hope for future development of minor-ity people threatened by assimilation through the means of language, art and tradition (Sallamaa 1999). The first urban udmurt festival in Izhevsk in 2009, the theme of which was the modernisation of udmurt culture, was organised by iumshan-promo, and consisted of lectures, debates and celebrations. More recently, another udmurt promo-group, Kechjöl zhyt’ës,40 organised events related to international Women’s day, on 8 March 2013 in Buranovo, the home village of the famous udmurt folk group Buranovs-kiye Babushki (Buranovo grandmothers), who won second place at the Eurovision song contest in 2012.

these udmurt community gatherings and initiatives to promote udmurt visibil-ity are anchored in contemporary issues, such as modernisation and women’s rights. Ethnic activists use the means of our era, such as debates, performances and celebra-tions. the arrival of the internet in udmurtia in 2000 was one of the crucial events for the expression of udmurt identity. following global trends and the desire to form a community, the internet is omnipresent as a powerful tool of ethnic activity, especially through social networks, participatory websites and forums, as they are characterised as reshaping social units based on particular features (sarhimaa 2009: 162).

One of the Internet’s significant advantages for the endangered minorities, suffering from the pressure of assimilation from the dominant culture, is the fact that it is a tool of mass-communication that escapes the mass control of the state,41 and serves therefore as a serious alternative to the traditional media.

sébastien cagnoli (2012), a researcher on komi identity issues, has drawn an over-view of the finno-ugric social network, focusing on non-sovereign people, i.e. the finno-ugrians of russia. cagnoli noted that this network is not only komi or udmurt but clearly entrenched in the overall finno-ugric perspective. the presence of finno-ugrians in russian social networks such as Vkontakte, odnoklasniki, the international portal facebook, as well as in the participatory websites including forums and com-ments (for example, uralistica, finugor), shares the same goal: reinforce finno-ugric community self-awareness by creating a sense of membership based on a focus on com-mon features, often the shared identity of endangerment. although these groups and the relationships between users are virtual, the sense of belonging to a community is real, and positively and truly experienced. for this reason it can be said that virtual communities enforce the construction of individual identity. furthermore, the topics of the interactions, such as cultural events, political and social issues, current research, etc., deal with the present and with contemporary concerns, and this allows the use of udmurt as the means of communication, more widely than in the family or village spheres. in short, the internet social networks represent an astounding laboratory for the future of udmurt identity.


The Strategies of Udmurt Ethnic Activists

Initiatives of udmurt ethnic activism take at least two directions. The first line con-sists of the cultivation of the growing consciousness of a broader cultural heritage (the finno-ugric family) that may help to fill in the gap of self-recognition as udmurt peo-ple, pointed out by svetlana Edygarova (2012). the second direction is the combina-tion of the standards and values of the globalised society42 with elements of traditional udmurt culture. This cultural integration finds numerous expressions: evgeni Biku-zin’s street art uses stencil portrait of the prominent udmurt poet, Kuzebay Gerd (see Photo 1). the artist depicts this integration movement through another stencil work that represents an udmurt girl carrying a placard with the inscription “speak English, dress Italian, kiss french, be udmurt” (see Photo 2). In other words, the young artist invites his generation to take the best that other people have to offer in order to become the best people they can be.

in the same vein, neo-folk fashion designers create contemporary clothes by using udmurt sewing techniques and inspiration from ancient times. Music also illustrates the appropriation of successful foreign elements: the recent udmurt version of the top hit Gangnam style, titled Opa val no skal43 by ullapalla Boy, and the udmurt version of the Beatles’ songs Let it be and Yesterday performed by Buranovskiye Babushki. We can assume that the strategy of building an identity by integrating foreign elements promotes collective self-awareness. it also, however, raises the serious question of the limitations of this strategy as this integration process can threaten the core of udmurt identity, or even replace it.

Photo 1. Evgeni Bikuzin’s Street Art: Kuzebay Gerd. Photo by the artist in Izhevsk, 2012.


Photo 2. Evgeni Bikuzin’s Street Art: Speak Eng-lish, dress Italian, kiss French, be Udmurt. Photo by the artist in Izhevsk, 2012.

Acculturation as Another Modality of Assimilation

the cultural codes borrowed from abroad and from dominant cultures (for example, Western or asian cultures) may constitute threats and be harmful to the identities of minorities, when they take the place of original cultural norms. these minorities may abandon their native cultural codes in favour of more appealing ways of life. the behav-iours of young urban udmurts are thus categorised by the udmurt researcher galina nikitina from the udmurt institute of history, language and literature as follows: acculturation (that is taking over Western or asian cultures), assimilation (that is rus-sification) and ethnic activity (Casen 2010: 113). In my opinion, it is quite unlikely that udmurt ethnic activists will fall into the trap of acculturation in light of the fact that they are already attuned to the issues of identity endangerment through combating assimila-tion processes. on the contrary, acculturation poses a real threat to the udmurts who are not themselves committed to the development of their culture. Indeed, the global culture, widely visible and glamorised in the worldwide media, may appear a more prestigious alternative to udmurt and russian cultures.

It appears that the use of global culture codes by the udmurt ethnic activists reflects a desire to place their culture on an equal footing with influential and media-export-ing cultures. this strategy allows udmurt culture to become competitive on the inter-national cultural scene. indeed, this approach is illustrated by the recent hit song by Buranovskiye Babushki Party for Everybody, when they represented russia at the Euro-vision song contest in 2012 in Baku. on the evening of the show, the whole of russia


supported the udmurt team against the foreign opponents. another event that received less media attention, but which is also indicative of this strategy, a recent udmurt film called Uzy Bory (2011),44 was a resounding success in the udmurt republic. unlike pre-vious udmurt films (for example, documentary films or The Shadow of Alangasar, 1994), Uzy Bory is a romantic comedy, a mainstream film genre, and touches on universal themes such as love, injustice, friendship and adolescence. However, the film points out precisely the issues at stake for udmurts today: the division between rural and urban udmurts, painful compulsory military service, social hierarchy and relation-ships among udmurts. Moreover, Uzy Bory demonstrates the effectiveness of udmurt language in daily communications as well as the diversity of its language registers: humour (including a taste for metaphors and proverbs), daily family conversations, declarations of love, arguments, and of course, songs. it is quite probable that some of the film’s audience was not udmurt and not even interested in udmurt culture. People went to see the film because it was good, entertaining, with beautiful pictures of udmurtia. This film enjoyed huge success partly because its purpose was to create group cohesion. it used the same kind of strategy that Buranovskiye Babushki did: both used global cultural codes, which have nothing to do with ethnicity, but which enabled it to be appreciated by a great number of people, not only udmurt, but also people from other nationalities (for example, russians or tatars).

c o n c l u s i o n s

the atmosphere of terror of the 1930s subsided to some extent after stalin’s death in 1953 and more sharply in the 1990s following the era of perestroika. however, the assimi-lation process remained active and never ceased to cause damage, as has been reflected by russian census results since 1926.

in the contemporary period, global modernisation in society has had consequences in udmurtia (as elsewhere) from expansive rural depopulation and rural exodus, espe-cially for the younger generations. nonetheless, traditional culture perseveres in vil-lages, even if less vigorously. In any case, in Izhevsk, emerging expressions of identity continue at the initiative of urban ethnic activists, but the political, social and economic situation limits their expression and growth. indeed, the udmurt ethnic activists do not achieve statutory socio-professional recognition: cultural promotion actions do not create gainful employment and the young generations of udmurts do not hold power-ful positions in influential sectors (for example the political and economic sectors),45 based mainly in Izhevsk. That is why, using the means offered by modernisation, they move their activities to other territories, both virtually through the use of the internet in order to overcome social and political constraints of being anchored in the territory of udmurtia, and through either temporary or permanent exile. statutory recognition, including the professionalisation of art and research activities based in udmurt eth-nic activism, is critical to the preservation and development of udmurt identity. also crucial to this identity project are the finno-ugric countries of Europe that receive and fund the research of udmurt students through academic structures such as ciMo (the centre for international Mobility) in finland and the kindred Peoples Programmes in Estonia.


having said that, what is the meaning of ethnic activism when it is mainly expressed through the internet and when the activists have to move to foreign countries to get jobs in the domain of cultural development?

n o t E s

1 the komi-Permyak autonomous okrug, where finno-ugric people were more than 50 per cent of the population, was combined with Perm oblast to form Perm krai in 2005. the current share of komi-Permyaks in the population of the region is less than four per cent.

2 Ethnic activists are people who work actively for the preservation and adaptation of the udmurt traditions. there are also other people whose goal is not the revitalisation of udmurt culture but who live according to the udmurt way of life (language and religion).

3 i was able to stay two or three days with some informants, living with them and trying to catch the moment when they talk about their feeling of membership to the udmurt community, features recognised as udmurt, and references to the soviet or pre-soviet period and particular personalities.

4 Personal communication with svetlana Edygarova, an udmurt philologist at the university of helsinki, on the occasion of the udmurt language course in Paris, october 10–18, 2013.

5 in udmurt, асшöдон and асвалан are always used with a possessive suffix.6 including more than 30 interviews with udmurt people talking about what they consider

as their identity.7 12 volumes have been published between 1990 and 2009.8 Social and political events of the 20th century also had effects on udmurt identity build-

ing, but in this chapter the author refers to what udmurts themselves mentioned as part of their identity.

9 according to the 2010 russian census, there were 552,299 udmurts in russian federation: 410,584 were living in udmurtia, and 141,715 outside of the udmurt republic.

10 this administrative unit was founded on 4 november 1920. at that moment udmurts were called Votyaks. the territory was renamed the udmurt autonomous oblast in 1932.

11 Except the Mordvins.12 according to the 2010 russian census (rosstat 2010), among the 1,521,400 inhabitants of

udmurtia, 62.2 per cent were russians (912,539 inhabitants), 28 per cent udmurts (410,584 inhab-itants) and 6.7 per cent tatars (98,831 inhabitants).

13 for example, Kuzebay Gerd, the leading udmurt poet, was in charge of the Communist Party’s newspaper Gudyri.

14 that balance was reversed in the second half of the decade.15 in udmurt: Удмурт Eлькун (udmurt El’kun).16 according to the arEna survey (2012) in the Volga federal district, about 50 per cent

of the population adhere to the russian orthodox church, 20 per cent are Muslims (the Volga region is, after caucasus, the second largest Muslim region of russia) and smaller parts of the population adhere to different forms of local animist religion.

17 As a consequence of the occupation of Kazan by Ivan IV, the entire territory settled by the udmurt people came under russian domination.

18 Toulouze presents the different strategies put into practice by the Russian state towards the northern udmurts and the southern udmurts. Moreover, the christianisation process concerns not only the udmurts, but also all the Volga region people. (Toulouze 2000: 100–127)

19 for example domestic objects, doors and windows of houses were voluntarily broken (sadakov 1949: 12).


20 Toulouze (2000: 112) gives the example of a ceremony in which a horse was sacrificed according to udmurt ritual, although it then received holy water and christian prayers.

21 The affair is called by the name of the village where the initial event happened, Vuzh Mul-tan means ‘Old Multan’ in udmurt.

22 this abbreviation refers to the union for liberation of finnish People.23 In english ‘News of the War’ and ‘Thunder’.24 for example, today, Kuzebay Gerd is considered the national poet.25 it was not only the liquidation of the udmurt intelligentsia, but also Mordvin (for example,

Mikhail Markelov) and komi (ilya Vas’) intellectuals.26 the organisation of state security (ogPu), founded in 1923, became in 1934 the People

Commissariat for Domestic Affairs (NKVD).27 these two points are evident in the interviews with udmurt people carried out in 2009–

2010, and also in udmurt folklore.28 Personal communication with svetlana Edygarova on the occasion of the udmurt language

course in Paris, october 10–18, 2013.29 The first program involved all the udmurt speakers. It aimed to boost bilingualism and

popularised udmurt language by publishing books in udmurt and encouraging media dissemi-nation (local press, tV and radio broadcasting). a mid-term survey has shown that in 2007 only 19 books were published (50,000 copies).

30 the new programme, with funding of 80 million roubles, is addressed to the youngest udmurts and aims to publish children’s books, although the problem of the distribution system operators remains unsolvable: there are no books in udmurt in the town’s bookshops.

31 for details on the current education system in the udmurt republic, see Zamyatin 2012.32 for example, the law of the udmurt republic on People’s Education of 31 January 1996.

for further details see Zamyatin 2013.33 there were 346 national schools in 1991 and 425 in 1998, while in 2006 there were 403

national schools in udmurtia.34 one department of the university was devoted to udmurt studies earlier but it was closed

in the 1950s.35 including the creation of contemporary clothes inspired by traditional sewing and design

techniques.36 Shundy means ‘sun’ in udmurt. This association is the youth national organisation emanat-

ing from the kenesh and demen associations.37 these were Valeriy sidorov, tatyana kornilova, both tV journalists, gennadiy Bekmakov,

artist at the udmurt theatre, and Nadezhda utkina, musician and singer.38 Iumshan means ‘happiness party’ in udmurt.39 Ethno-futurism is an artistic and literary movement born in Estonia at the beginning of the

1990s:Etymologically, it refers with ethnos to minority peoples, whose national existence is at stake or at least threated by assimilation politics by states or multinational enterprises. ‘ethnos’ means a little people or nation with own traditions and culture, which lives under pressure of greater peoples, let’s say Russians [...]. Futurism does not anymore point out the modernist aesthetic program at the beginning of our century [...], but it means hope for future, for a new life, where peoples can develop their culture by means of their own language and traditions. (sallamaa 1999)40 Kechjöl zhyt’ës means ‘the nights of common sowthistle’, a yellow flower (Sonchus) of the

udmurt countryside.41 “It is easier to ban a speech at the individual level, but much more difficult in the global and

automatic context of the Internet” (Cagnoli 2012: 12).


42 Globalisation is defined by David Held and his co-authors as following: Globalization refers to the widening, deepening and speeding up of global interconnection. It can be located on a continuum with the local, national and regional and can be taken to refer to those spatial-temporal processes of change which underpin a transformation in the organi-zation of human affairs by linking together and expanding human activity across regions and continents. A satisfactory definition of globalization must capture each of these elements: extensity (stretching), intensity, velocity and impact. (held et al. 1999: 14)43 Opa val no skal means ‘neither cows nor horses’ and refers to a more bountiful past.44 Uzy Bory means ‘berry-strawberries’ in udmurt. This movie was directed by Pyotr Palgan

based on a story by darali leli. it is available on youtube in udmurt with russian, Estonian and french subtitles.

45 it seems to me that the sector of media is an exception. i noticed that some young udmurts have interesting positions in udmurt media companies (press and TV). This specific situation will be analysed in another article.

s o u r c E s

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nents of regional state in Education standards of 16 June 1997.

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Notes and Reviews 111



the aim of this paper is to present an eth-nography of religious ceremonies by the Bashkortostan udmurt. our task is solely to describe the main ritual activities as we observed them; we provide very little theo-retical framework and cultural meaning with which to understand these rituals. thus, what follows is a “thin description” (Geertz 1973) of ethnographic reality. We hope it can serve as a starting point for future analyses into dif-ferent aspects of udmurt animist ceremonies.

the scholars who have studied these ceremonies (ranus sadikov, tatiana Min-niyakhmetova) have a deeply rooted knowl-edge of their rituals, because they have ‘grown’ within the Bashkortostan udmurt community, while, as representatives of the russian school of ethnography, their works are focused on the past, on the attempt to reconstruct what the udmurt culture was at the last stage before modernity (modernity being considered as introduced by the 1917 Bolshevik revolution). therefore, they follow the present rituals not per se, but as residues of a bygone past in which the religious sys-tem was full-fledged.

this is not our perspective. We are inter-ested in ritual as an integral part of contem-porary life, with its own logic and role in present-day communities. the peculiar fea-ture of these rituals is that they have basi-cally disappeared in other regions inhabited by the udmurt. in the udmurt republic, or udmurtia, which is the core territory of

udmurts, there are some geographically lim-ited examples of village ceremonies in the south, in the villages of Kuzebaevo and Vark-let Bodya1 (lintrop 2003), if we do not take into account the individual manifestations of traditional religion or worldview. While the udmurts living in Bashkortostan have been protected from invading christianity by their Muslim surroundings (which was the reason why they migrated after the 16th century) (Minniyakhmetova 1995: 332; sadikov 2008: 7), their religious practice has evolved with only the minimal exterior constraint, which was shared by the whole of the soviet union (sadikov 2011a: 108). comparison with the udmurt practices of the udmurt republic, which is not the aim of this ethnography, shows that ceremonial life is quite different, and that the main rituals in Bashkortostan are not precisely the same as in the udmurts’ core territory.

We did our fieldwork in Tatyshly Rayon (district), in the north of the republic of Bashkortostan. in our ethnography, we shall concentrate on public collective ritual life, i.e. on ceremonies that are performed at the village level, or associating several villages. there are 19 udmurt villages in tatyshly rayon and they are divided into two ceremo-nial groups, separated by the river yuk. Each village group holds ceremonies together, and we shall call them here according to the vil-lage where the main ritual takes place. there are nine villages in the Vil’gurt (novye taty-shly) group2 and ten in the al’ga group.3

u d M u r t a n i M i s t c E r E M o n i E s i n B a s h k o r t o s t a n : f i E l d W o r k E t h n o g r a P h y

eva Toulouze, Liivo Niglas


the collective rituals are seasonal and take place before the solstice. in June, there is a cycle with village rituals (gurt vös’) and rituals associating several villages (mör vös’). in the past, between the gurt vös’ (one-vil-lage) and the mör vös’ (ten-village) rituals, there were three-village rituals (kuin’ gurt vös’), which have long since disappeared (sadikov, danilko 2005: 231). the cycle takes place in december and is analogous to the summer one, only the village level is not held any more. the intermediate stage, the winter equivalent of the three-village ritual is still alive in the al’ga group and is called the Bagysh vös’4 (sadikov 2008: 206). Both village groups hold a mör vös’ in december.5 in spring the collective rituals of these two groups are held with a differ-ence of one week: first the Vil’gurt mör vös’, then the alga’s. in winter, the Vil’gurt mör vös’ is held one week before the Bagysh vös’, and two before the al’ga mör vös’. this is explained as intended to give the opportu-nity for people to go visiting relatives and attend both ceremonies.

The aim of these sacrificial rituals is to call for divine blessing on the commu-nity’s activities: to ask for rain in summer, for health and prosperity all the time. the prayers’ address is Oste, Inmare-Kylchyne. it is difficult to decide whether they address one single god or two, in other words whether inmar and kylchin are seen as two separate entities or as two faces of the same one (sadikov 2008: 7). inmar is the udmurt word for god, which is seen as a male figure, a deus otiosus, whose interfer-ence in human affairs is limited to general benevolence. kylchin or kyldysyn is a deity that is much closer to human concerns and is mainly connected with fertility. one or several ewes are sacrificed during the per-formance and its or their meat is used for cooking ritual porridge.

the sites where the ceremonies are per-formed are established sacral areas, which are all surrounded by fences. ranus sadikov (2008: 46) notes that it is not an old tradition;

it has recently taken root in tatyshly rayon.in Vil’gurt, a space has been dedicated

to sacral activities at one edge of the village. the local collective farm demen has built a fence around it. the sacral area also encom-passes a prayer house, built in 1993 by the collective farm, where activities connected with the ritual may take place in case of bad weather or of the wish for privacy – for instance money counting.

in al’ga, the sacral space is also bordered by a fence, but it is more articulated than in Vil’gurt. there are actually two spaces delim-ited by fences: a public one, with the ‘prayer house’, and a more sacral one (where women are not welcomed), where there is an open shed offering participants protection from the wind, rain and snow. the prayer house is smaller than in Vil’gurt, but more compact, and contains a stove, which is quite conveni-ent in the case of winter ceremonies. it was built by the local collective farm, rassvet. al’ga is a small village, quite remote. it was chosen as a ceremonial centre in 1978, as it was wise to have a ceremonial place that would not be right under the nose of the Communist Party officials, as was the case with the previous sacral area in starokalmi-yar (sadikov 2008: 205).

the Bagysh vös’, which gathered eight vil-lages of the al’ga group in december 2013 (only starokalmiyar and Petropavlovka were left out), is held at a site outside the villages along a road (about 150 metres from it), not far from Kyzyl’yar village. It is a sacral area with a huge fir tree in the middle; the area is encompassed by a fence and it contains a shed, although there is no house nearby.

an important feature of the sacral areas is that they face towards the south. the place where the priests pray is at the south-ernmost edge of the area; the prayer house is situated in the north, and the fireplaces in the middle – people turn to the south to pray and for animal sacrifice.

We have attended both village groups’ spring mör vös’ and the two al’ga group’s winter ceremonies. Therefore we have suffi-


cient materials to describe how these rituals are performed, taking into account the dif-ferences connected to place and season.

t h E Pa r t i c i Pa n t s

the people and the functions involved in the ceremonies are the following:

• the manager of the ceremony (vös’ kuz’o), who may be a sacrificial priest as in the case of the Vil’gurt group or a ‘lay’ person as in the A’lga group. he is the organiser of the rituals, and, depending on the person, has more or less control of the organisation of the whole ceremony.

• The sacrificial priest (vös’as’) in the case of the village ceremony, several in the case of a ceremony for multiple villages. the priest is a wholesome member the village community, he must be married and be respected for his impeccable life. traditionally, as we know from old photographs, priests had special robes, called shorderem (sadikov, danilko 2005: 230; sadikov 2008: 45, 191). this costume has been maintained in only a few cases (we saw one old shorderem in Vil’gurt); the other priests, who had no special robe, used for rituals a kind of white work smock similar to what grocers might use. however, there was a notable change in the al’ga group in winter (december 2013): they had ordered through the rassvet coopera-tive a set of newly made shorderem, not home-woven, but very similar to those known from old photos.

• the priest’s assistants, two or three men from each village. they are necessary because the ritual is a complex one and there are simultaneous tasks to be dealt with. among the assistants, there may be some women, whose sole task is to wash the sacrificial animal’s entrails.

• the village community: usually only a few members of the village commu-nity attend the ceremonies. usually nobody except the people involved attend the ceremony at its early stages. towards the end of the ceremony, men and women from the village where it is held, along with visitors, may bring gifts, receive bowls of sacrificial por-ridge directly from the priests, eat them with their kin on the spot and partici-pate in the last prayer.

P r E V i o u s P r E Pa r a t i o n a c t i V i t i E s

the preparation activities that are performed in the days before the actual ritual are impor-tant from the point of view of the community: the material input for the ceremony is gath-ered from the communities. Each household gives crops, butter, and money beforehand. There are different traditions in each village about who is to gather those offerings: in some villages, as in Petropavlovka, women are the ones who go from one house to the other; in other villages, as in Bal’zyuga, it is the task of young boys.

The village sacrificial priest gathers all the offerings. Among them, there may be also different kinds of textile offering: ker-chiefs, socks, t-shirts, etc. they may be given beforehand, but may also be brought by the community members to the sacral area at the end of the ritual.

the vös’ kuz’o must also find the ewe or the ewes (for bigger villages) that shall be sacrificed. either they buy a ewe from a vil-lager, who will be paid after the ceremony; or they buy, with the money gathered beforehand, a ewe from the collective farm. In the first case, the person who provides the ewe must also give a loaf of home-baked bread, into which a coin is placed.

Journal of Ethnology and folkloristics 8 (1)114

t h E o P E n i n g o f t h E c E r E M o n y : t h E S I z ’ I S ’K O N

the siz’is’kon6 is the opening prayer to each ceremony, today as it was at the beginning of the 20th century (sadikov 2011b: 29). it must be performed before the sacrifices, but the modalities of its performance change depending on local traditions.

in the al’ga group, the siz’is’kon is held the evening before the ceremony. it must be made while there is still natural light, meaning that in winter it is held around 4 p.m. When the priest and the organisers, with one or two assistants, arrive, they make a fire and put a cauldron on it, where they pour salt with a short prayer; only after that do they add water. this is the way in all ritual actions when pre-paring porridge. When the water boils, they pour into it semolina and prepare, with salt and butter, semolina porridge. As they explain themselves, it is quicker to cook porridge with semolina than with other cereal.

When the semolina is ready, the priest puts a piece of bread into a bowl, sets it on a towel and either birch (in spring) or fir (in winter) branches; standing in front of the cauldron, he makes three circles above the caldron with the bowl held in his hands. the vös’ kuz’o, as soon as the priest is finished making circles with the bowl, throws a spoonful of porridge thrice into the fire.7 then, the priest prays alone turning his face towards south and his back to the assis-tants, standing in front of the simple wooden bench on the southern edge of the sacral area, what we might call ‘an altar bench’. there are branches (birch in spring, fir in winter) ‘planted’ on the other side of the altar bench. these branches

symbolically represent sacred trees, and are placed behind the bench even if the same kind of trees are growing within the sacred area. There are as many branches as priests offici-ating during the ceremony. While the priests pray, in the siz’is’kon as well as in all the other prayers, the assistants kneel behind them and bow, head down to the earth, when he says Omin’. Then, all the attending people (and the anthropologists as well) sit around the table in the house and eat the porridge. Everyone keep their heads covered. Before taking the first mouthful, men hold the spoon with porridge in front of their mouth and say a short prayer in a low voice. usually some porridge remains for the next day.

What is important is that the fire is kept burning for the whole night, so that on the fol-lowing morning it would be possible to light the other sacral fires from it. This requires some attention: thick logs are placed on the fire, and somebody living nearby has to check the fire once or twice during the night.

in Vil’gurt, the siz’is’kon is held early in the morning of the proper day of the ritual (see Photo 1). thus, there is no need to maintain the fire over night. The other fires are kindled nearby. But, unlike in al’ga, they make the

Photo 1. The first prayer, siz’is’kon, during Vil’gurt (Novye Tatyshly) mör vös’, June 2013. Photo by Ranus Sadikov.


porridge with the same mixed crops as the final porridge, and not with semolina, and they also pray holding a bowl of porridge instead of a bowl with bread. there is also no ‘altar bench’, rather the priest prays in front of ‘planted’ branches on the southern edge of the sacral area. the rest of the ceremony is roughly the same.

t h E s a c r i f i c i a l P r a y E r

there are some activities that must be car-ried out continuously during ceremonial activities in the sacral area. As the fires must be kept burning, some of the assistants deal with chopping the wood and adding it to the fires all the time. Another overall task, which may be very demanding is fetching water. in Vil’gurt, horse-carts circulated between the village and the sacral area bringing water. in al’ga and in the area for the Bagysh vös’, there is a spring in the forest nearby; in al’ga, it is situated less than 100 meters down the steep hill; at the Bagysh area it is some 200 metres away from the sacral area. so men must bring it in huge quantities, because the cauldrons are big (100 litres) and all the participants need to wash their hands and all the cooking utensils.

Each village, repre-sented by a priest and his assistants, has to prepare its own fire for the collec-tive ceremony. usually, there are as many fires as cauldrons, and as many ewes as priests praying at the ceremony. the priests are not chosen (by the vös’ kuz’o) accord-ing to which village has provided the ewes, but according to other crite-ria: for example in June, the village of Bal’zyuga provided a ewe (but we do not know who paid for it), although its young

sacrificial priest was associated as assistant but did not publicly pray.

When the fire is big enough, a cauldron is put onto it (see Photo 2). The first act is to pour salt into the cauldron with a prayer, as it was done in the siz’is’kon, and only afterwards is water added. at the same time, the assistants prepare the ewes for the sacrifice. The ewes must be healthy and have had lambs at least once previously. they are brought forwards. They are ‘cleaned’: the assistants sprinkle their heads, bodies and legs with water using small bunches of twigs. the priests take a bowl, hold it on a towel with branches, put on it the bread that will be served with the ewes, and prepare to pray. Each priest stays over his cauldron and makes three circles with the bowl, as in the case of the siz’is’kon. While the priests pray, the assistants are working in pairs or threes on the sacrificial animals. In alga, three men were dealing with the ewe during the prayer: while one assistant holds it down on the ground, the other slits its throat through the sacred twigs with a knife, and the third collects the animal’s blood on a spoon and throws it into the fire. He must do it three times. in the Vil’gurt summer prayer there were only two men; then, the one who holds the knife also holds the spoon. When

Photo 2. The five vös’as’ praying during Al’ga mör vös’, June 2013. Photo by Eva Toulouze.


possible, the ritual slaughtering takes place simultaneously for all the ewes.8 during the prayer, the attendants not involved in ewe slaughtering behave as before: they kneel and bow every time the priest says Omin’. at the end of the prayer, the priests each throw three small pieces of bread into the fire.

t h E M E a t P r a y E r

there is then quite a long pause in the ritual activities.

the priests may chat with one another or with other people, while some of the assis-tants are engaged in skinning and cutting the ewes into pieces. When there are women available, they wash the entrails. When no woman is there, the entrails are not cleaned and will later be thrown into the fire. The assistants mark ertain pieces of meat that the priest will use for prayer. the hides of the sacrificial animals are placed in front of the ‘altar bench’ (Alga) or on sides of the ‘altar line’ (Vilgurt).

When they have finished, they bring the meat pieces in buckets to the cauldrons. When there are only white ewes to be sacrificed, their meat may be mixed. When there are also black sheep, the procedure is somewhat different: they must be isolated from the others and their meat is not to be mixed with any other. actually black sheep are sacrificed to a different deity, the earth’s deity, Mu-mumy (Earth Mother). therefore a hole is made in the ground where the black ewe’s blood flows as an offering to the earth9 (see sadikov 2008: 37). Its flesh and skin are separated from the others and one caul-dron is dedicated to this particular ewe.

the meat is put into the boiling water in the cauldrons. and the company is quite free to smoke cigarettes (outside the sacral area), to drink tea and interact until the meat is cooked. When it is well cooked, so that the meat separates easily from the bones, it is extracted from the cauldrons and put into big bowls. Then, the priests have to fish out the parts of the animal they will need for the prayer: the heart, a piece of the liver, a piece of a lower right side rib, a piece of the right fore-leg, the whole head. the ribs and the legs are duly marked with a string by the assistants who skinned the animals, so that the priest recognises the proper ones for his selection.

When the prayer bowl is ready, the priests rotate the bowl clockwise three times above fire (in Vil’gurt, the priest did it four times, maybe because he had black ewe’s meat in his hand); they go to their post behind the ‘altar’ and pray with the meat, the towel and the branches (see Photo 3). Behind their backs, there are the fires with the cauldrons, behind the fires the bowls with the meat and behind the meat some seated assistants. the others kneel, still behind, and behave as is proper during the prayer.

Photo 3. The four vös’as’ praying during Vil’gurt (Novye Tatyshly) mör vös’, June 2013. Photo by Eva Toulouze.


When the prayer is finished, the assistants gather around the priests with the meat and eat the first of the prayer meat. Before eating, the men hold the piece of meat in front of their mouth and say a short prayer in a low voice. if there are guests, they are invited to join after the men have eaten. after this eating moment, two activities will be performed simul-taneously. on the one hand some of the assis-tants deal with the meat and separate the meat from the bones. the bones are collected in buckets, which are given to the first villagers to attend for them to nibble. on the other hand, there is action around the cauldrons: first, broth from all the cauldrons is mixed by the assistants, who pour it with buckets from one cauldron into the others. then, crops are also properly mixed and poured into the cauldrons. the same is performed for butter (in Vilgurt, the butter is added at the end). We may interpret this mixing as a community strengthening aspect of the ritual. at this stage, the porridge must be continuously mixed and assistants are now constantly behind the cauldron stir-ring with long wooden poles (see Photo 4).

Then starts the final stage of the ceremony. People have been arriving throughout the previous stage. in winter, they gather in the house and wait until the porridge is ready, nibbling the bones and interacting. some people have given beforehand, along with the crops, money and butter, textile offerings and bread. Those who afford to come person-ally bring them. in Vil’gurt, they just put the offerings in specific places: a horizontal pole for the textiles, a low bench in front of the praying priests for the bread. in al’ga, the tradition is different: the items are given to a vös’as’, who blesses them with some words

Photo 4. Preparation of the porridge during Vil’gurt (Novye Tatyshly) mör vös’, June 2013. Photo by Eva Toulouze.

and hangs them on a rope. if the people can-not afford to attend the ceremony, they give these items beforehand to the vös’ kuz’o.

When the porridge is ready, the meat is poured into the cauldrons. the assistants (and sometimes the priests as well) stir until they decide the porridge is finally ready. Then, they take the cauldrons from the fire (in al’ga, the cauldrons are covered with wooden lids in order to prevent cooling) and distribute the porridge to the audience and to the assistants (see Photo 5). Before eating, the men (at least the priests) say a short prayer in a low voice while holding the spoon with por-ridge in front of their mouth. in winter, the audience is more sparse: some village women or children (seldom men) attend the last stage and take porridge back home. in spring, it is a joyful moment when families and kin gather on the grass and eat their porridge together.

t h E c l o s i n g o f t h E c E r E M o n y

the closing of the ceremony consists of the final prayer and the sweeping of the fire-places.


in Vilgurt, the last prayer is the prayer over the money offerings (dzhuget). actually dur-ing the ceremony, a plate or a special box is put out, into which people are encouraged to offer money. The money gathered in the villages has also been counted and gathered at that stage. When most people have eaten, including the priests, it is time for the money prayer. in Vilgurt, this was done by the two most important priests – they were kneel-ing in front of the money box while saying the prayer. interestingly, this was the only time during the whole ceremony when the priests took off their hats. The last prayer is followed by quite a big audience, which par-ticipates in the prayer – it is quite a big village too! – kneeling and bowing. the very end of the ceremony is quite informal – the two head priests sweep the fireplaces while the audience leaves the ceremonial ground and the other priests and assistants start washing cooking utensils and packing things.

in al’ga, there is no communal prayer with money. Priests may pray with money at the request of visitors, who donate money and ask for an individual prayer to protect their family, etc. We witnessed only once the head priest praying with his hat on, while the

other priests and assis-tants were busy with distributing the porridge and cleaning the cook-ing utensils. the visi-tors were eating farther from the sacral area and were not active in the prayer activity. Money was washed before being offered, and an upturned water bottle is nailed nearby, allowing peo-ple to pour water on the money (in winter money is washed in snow).

in al’ga the clos-ing of the ceremony is somewhat different than in Vilgurt. While the priests pray holding the

branches in their hand, some of the assis-tants walk in circles around the fireplaces, on which the bones and the entrails have been piled up to burn, they hold branches in their hands and symbolically sweep the fireplaces. they walk clockwise in a circle thrice, and then join the remaining assistants, who kneel and behave as is proper during the prayer (see Photo 6).

The sweeping of the fireplaces marks the end of the ceremony. the last activities are to clean what is to be cleaned – the wooden poles, empty cauldrons, etc. further on, people get ready to go back to the villages. In summer most attended by car. In winter, horse-carts were the more frequent means of transportation. the cauldrons or buckets full of porridge are packed back onto the carts and the ceremony is closed.

t h E d i s t r i B u t i o n

the inhabitants of the villages, who have con-tributed to the ceremony, generally do not attend its performance, and this does not seem to be a problem for them. What is important is that they get their part of the sacral por-

Photo 5. Distribution of the porridge during Al’ga mör vös’, June 2013. Photo by Eva Toulouze.


ridge: this is their way to participate. When the sacrificial priest comes ‘home’, he distributes back to the villagers the output of the ceremony: it is the reverse opera-tion, symmetrical to the one before the ritual.

the villages are divided into areas and the porridge is distrib-uted into each area. so, in all the families, people will eat the sacral por-ridge, showing their par-ticular attitude towards this meal by covering their heads while eating. as Minniyakhmetova (1995: 333) says: “it is believed that magic virtues of the food enter everyone who eats them“.

this is a general description of the collec-tive rituals performed by the Bashkortostan udmurts in the tatyshly rayon. We take into account the local differences and the repeti-tive pattern of these rituals. We consider that attending four such rituals performed by two different groups gives us enough justification to consider that if some action has been per-formed in the same way every time, we may consider it is canonical.

We have found it extremely interesting to notice the differences between the ritual in two village groups that are very close to one another and that belong to the same wider region. there are other regions in Bashkorto-stan where the udmurt dwell and it shall cer-tainly be useful to attend ceremonies in those regions too, in order to achieve a cartography of the rituals that are fully alive today in the countryside.

Photo 6. The last prayer and the closing of the fireplaces during Al’ga mör vös’, June 2013. Photo by Eva Toulouze.

n o t E s

1 technically Varklet Bodya is in tatarstan, but it is situated some kilometres from Kuzebaevo and is clearly part of the same cultural complex, and does not belong to the udmurt diasporas in Mus-lim territory.

2 Aribash, Yuda, Vyazovka, urazgyldy, Bal’zyuga, Mayskiy, as well as Verhnye, Nizhnye and novye tatyshly (sadikov 2008: 205).

3 Bigineevo, Tanypovka, Kyzyl’yar, Verhnye and Nizhnebaltachevo, Starokal’miyarovo, Al’ga, dubovka, Petropavlovka, utar-El’ga (sadikov 2008: 205–206).

4 While according to sadikov this ceremony concerned only the three villages of Nizhnebal-tachevo, Verhnebaltachevo and Kyzyl’yar, our experience is different: it was attended in 2003 by eight villages.

5 actually this is a new tradition at least for the Vil’gurt group: it had been interrupted in the soviet period (sadikov 2008: 212).

6 from siz’is’kyny ‘to promise, to devote, to consecrate’.

7 We noticed this action in the winter cere-mony, while we had not fixed it in the summer rit-uals. this does not mean it did not take place: there are several actions taking place at the same time and it is easy, while concentrating on the priest, to miss some other activities.


8 in the Bagysh vös’, they discovered that knives had been forgotten, and they had but one knife, so the ewes were slaughtered one after the other.

9 actually, this tradition exists in udmurtia too (lintrop 1995: 274).

B i B l i o g r a P h y

Geertz, Clifford 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. new york: harper

Lintrop, Aado 1995. Pagan Sacrificing Procedures of the udmurts. – Mare Kõiva, Kai Vassiljeva (eds.). Folk Belief Today. tartu: institute of the Estonian language and Estonian Museum of literature, 270–275.

lintrop, aado 2003. Udmurdi usund. Eesti Rahva Muuseumi sari 5. tartu: Eesti rahva Muuseum.

Minniyakhmetova, tatyana 1995. Eating of Beestings as an original calendar rite of the Bashkirian udmurts. – Mare Kõiva, Kai Vassiljeva (eds.). Folk Belief Today. tartu: insti-tute of the Estonian language and Estonian literary Museum, 331–334.

Sadikov 2008 = Садиков, Ранус Рафикович. Тра-диционные религиозные верования и обрядность закамских удмуртов (история и современные тенденции развития). Уфа: Центр этнологи-ческих исследований УНЦ РАН, 2008.

Sadikov 2011a = Садиков, Ранус Рафикович. Молитвы-куриськон закамских удмуртов (модернизация культуры – трансформация текста). – Ранус Рафикович Садиков (отв. ред.). Традиционная культура народов Ура-ло-Поволжья в условиях модернизации обще-ства. Уфа: Институт этнологических иссле-дований им. Р. Г. Кузеева Уфимского науч-ного центра РАН, 2011, 108–133.

Sadikov 2011b = Садиков, Ранус Рафикович. Религиозные верования и обрядность Закам-ских удмуртов (сохранение и преемственность традиции). Автореферат диссертации на соис-кание ученой степени доктора исторических наук. Уфа: Институт этнологических иссле-дований им. Р. Г. Кузеева Уфимского науч-ного центра РАН, 2011.

Sadikov, Danilko 2005 = Садиков, Ранус Рафи-кович; Е. С. Данилко, Удмуртский жрец – хранитель традиции (взгляд визуального антрополога). – Галина Аркадьевна Ники-тина (ред.). Диаспоры Урало-Поволжья. Мате-риалы Межрегиональной научно-практической конференции. Ижевск: Удмуртский институт истории, языка и литературы УрО РАН, 2005, 230–233.


Eda kalmre, The Human Sausage Factory: A Study of Post-War Rumour in Tartu. amster-dam: rodopi, 2013. 180 p.

Eda kalmre’s monograph The Human Sausage Factory: A Study of Post-War Rumour in Tartu is a welcome addition to the study of legends of the soviet and post-soviet eras. as kalmre notes (pp. 18–19), this material was largely ignored during the soviet period by special-ists in the field due to the political situation at the time. this work uncovers an important contemporary legend cycle and its connec-tions to previously attested legends about cannibalism from the 18th and 19th centuries in the European and american traditions (as well as those in the 20th and 21th centuries within these traditions). in addition, it analy-ses how this cycle was reinterpreted within the Estonian context during the early years of soviet occupation in the post-War era of the 1940s and 1950s. kalmre also includes some insightful analysis of the role of the legend in post-socialist Estonia, a much needed con-tribution to the discipline and to our under-standing of this region. the author addresses the complexity of the legend cycle and its relationship to ethnic identity (Estonian ver-sus the ‘other’); to political and economic con-texts in the Estonian ssr and in independ-ent estonia; and to the effects of war on the populace.

the book is composed of an introduction and six chapters. the introduction lays out the history of the project, which stemmed from the author’s comments on the folkloric characteristics of the sausage factory story for a newspaper article in 2001. this opinion led to a backlash from her fellow citizens. Many interpreted that comment to mean that the story of the factory was ‘untrue’. People wrote or called to say that they were eyewitnesses to the post-War phenomenon of the sausage fac-tory (first attested in 1947); it was particularly important to them to set the record straight. the book is primarily dedicated to an explo-ration of why and how accurate descriptions of the past and belief in this legend are so relevant in post-socialist Estonia. the intro-

duction continues with a description of the documented history of the rumours and leg-end about the human sausage factory and lays out the theoretical underpinnings of the analysis. the author relies on analytical tools from the disciplines of psychology, sociology, semiotic theory, and folkloristics.

chapter 1 focuses on the history of leg-ends of cannibalism, primarily in Europe, although she also touches on related legends in the americas. this chapter examines the sources for legends about cannibalism: his-torical cases, the folk tradition of tales and legends and literary and popular culture. she argues that the Hot Chamber in the House of Robbers (atu 956) is of particular relevance as a precursor to the sausage factory legend. the historical beliefs surrounding the uses of human body parts and fat as charms or miraculous healing agents are considered as well. such legends, she contends, have emerged over the centuries at times of major social upheaval, precisely the case in post-World War ii Estonia.

chapter 2 describes the post-War context that produced the sausage factory legend. she contends that the violent disruption of the ‘golden age’ of estonian independence from 1920–1940 led to the resurfacing of this legend pattern in the form of rumours and stories about the human sausage fac-tory. estonia suffered occupation by German (1941–1944) and soviet forces (1939–1941) during the War. ultimately, the soviet union absorbed the territory in 1944 and held it until 1991. kalmre argues that both the dev-astation of war and the oppressive and vio-lent practices of the soviet union allowed this legend to flourish. Of particular import was the secrecy surrounding the actions of soviet-era security forces (the nkVd and its suc-cessor, the kgB). since people operated in a vacuum of information, because newspapers did not print accurate information, rumour and legend came to function as history and a means to assert control over the ambigu-ous situation. the face of evil, then, shifted from the devil disguised as german barons (the dominant imperial force in the 19th cen-


tury) to the representatives of soviet power: Estonian immigrants from russia, russians, and Jews, all described as dark and shadowy figures that contrasted physically from the Estonian populace. the author explores how these new residents disrupted a society that was ethnically uniform (one might question whether this assertion is accurate or simply based on perception of the nation).

chapter 3 explores this view of the Esto-nian ‘other’ as the source of the legend. The chapter presents an overview of the role each ethnicity played in the legend. Estoni-ans who had been living in russia for dec-ades returned after the ussr annexed the territory and were viewed as ‘Russian’ due to their differences in language and cultural practice. in point of fact, many of them were devoted communists and were vetted by the government and chosen to be resettled in their ‘homeland’ for that reason. The authori-ties were concerned that Estonia would be a hotbed for dissent and hoped to create a fractured populace. this opinion resulted in not only illegitimate arrests and exile of Estonians to siberian prison camps, but also in resettlement practices from other areas of the ussr. the russian ethnicity, represented at first by soldiers and then by security offic-ers and other people in positions of power in the administrative structure were also sus-pect. finally, conspiracy theories about the role of Jews in the soviet hierarchy (as well as folklore related to blood libel) contributed to the argument that this ethnic group was the driving force behind the sausage factory. one could only wish that the author had consid-ered a bit more why the german occupiers did not also assume this role in the folklore of the period as well, given Estonian history and traditional folk depictions of germans noted above. in addition, the author mentions that the roma and some central asian peoples also were connected to the legend, but does not explore their role in this conception of the evil outsider in any detail.

chapter 4 focuses on the role of food con-tamination in legendry, the importance of the

idea that the human sausage was produced in a factory and suspicions about cannibalism during the war, in particular in tartu’s close neighbour, Leningrad, which suffered from a Nazi blockade. Tartu, like many post-War cit-ies, suffered from a lack of basic necessities, and stories about the foods eaten and strug-gles to obtain food are still very much in circu-lation from people of the post-War generation. the market where the sausage factory legend was centred was particularly suspect, because abundant food (from regional farmers) could still be found there. thus, people were relying on remnants of a capitalist system in order to obtain food in a ‘socialist paradise’ that prom-ised a better life. As a result, the legend also functioned as a means to criticise the soviet-era economic system and to provide a distinc-tion between Estonian values and soviet ones.

The final two chapters turn to the role of the legend cycle in present-day Estonia and are the most intriguing in the book. kalmre provides an in-depth analysis of legends from four narrators. she examines how their expe-riences relate to the content of these variants and their perceptions of the legend and of the past. key to an understanding of their views on these issues, she argues, is their personal interaction with the socialist system. those who were successful and did not experience undue conflicts with the authorities perceive the legend as false, while those who under-went persecution view it as true. the last chapter explores the implications for this research as a means to uncover social truth, in particular the “beliefs, prejudices, values, and stereotypes of the post-war period” (p. 131) and the influence of folklore on memory and history in Estonia today. all in all, this volume presents a valuable analysis of the legend cycle of the human sausage factory and will be of use to those with an interest in legend broadly as well as urban folklore of the ussr and post-socialist state of Estonia.

Jeanmarie rouhier-Willoughby (university of kentucky)


n o t E s f o r c o n t r i B u t o r s

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics (JEF), the journal of the university of tartu, the Estonian national Museum and the Estonian literary Museum, welcomes articles in the research areas of ethnology, folkloristics, museology, cultural and social anthropology. JEF is a peer-reviewed journal, issued two times per year.

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General Conventions of References. Endnotes and parenthetical in-text citations in author-date style should be used as follows: (Bynum 1987: 83). a complete list of references cited should be provided at the end of the article as appropriate:

Bynum, caroline Walker 1987. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: the Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: university of california Press.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara 1989. Authoring Lives. – Journal of Folklore Research. Vol. 26, no. 2: 123–149.

radley, alan 1990. artefacts, Memory and a sense of the Past. – david Middleton, derek Edwards (eds.). Collective Remembering. london: sage Publications, 46–59.

The Royal Anthropological Institute. Report of the Strategic Review Working Group. – http://www.therai.org.uk/rainews/StrategicReviewReport2003.html (accessed August 20, 2008).

Editorial Information. the editors will consider all manuscripts received and will take no responsibility for their publication or return. the editors assume the right to make editorial revisions, while major changes will not be made without the permission of the author. if accepted for publication in JEF, the article should not be published elsewhere in the same form, in any language without the previous agreement with the editors of JEF.

Author copies. Each author will receive two copies of the issue containing their article. the author of a shorter piece will receive one copy.

detailed author guidelines are available online at http://www.jef.ee/index.php/journal/about/submissions

Editorial address:Journal of Ethnology and FolkloristicsEstonian national MuseumVeski 32, 51014 tartu, EstoniaE-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics (JEF) is a multidisciplinary forum for scholars. addressed to an international scholarly audience, JEF is open to contributions from researchers all over the world. JEF publishes articles in the research areas of ethnology, folkloristics, museology, cultural and social anthropology. it includes both studies focused on the empirical analysis of particular cases as well as those

that are more theoretically oriented.

u l r i k a W o l f -k n u t s“Would I Have Been Better Off There?” Comparison, Need

and conduciveness in finnish Emigrant’s account

t i i n a s E P PPilgrimage and Pilgrim hierarchies in Vernacular discourse:

comparative notes from the camino de santiago and glastonbury

a n d r E a s k a l k u nfasts and feasts in Estonians’ representations of the seto culture

M i c h E l E f i l i P P o f o n t E f r a n c E s c oof grape, feast and community: an Ethnographic note on the

Making of the grape harvest festival in an italian town in Piedmont

M a r i E c a s E nudmurt identity issues: core Moments from the Middle ages

to the Present day


udmurt animist ceremonies in Bashkortostan: fieldwork Ethnography

the human sausage factory: a study of Post-War rumour in tartu

issn 1736-6518 (print) issn 2228-0987 (online)

Jou r na l of E t h nol o g y a n d fol k l or i s t ic s

Volume 8 | Number 1 | 2014JEF