Encountering the Tsar : Nenets Epic Singing as a Representation of Historicity

This article discusses Nenets epic songs, focusing on two texts collected at the beginning of the twentieth century in relation to the divergent historicities they represent. The process of gathering and publishing folklore is analysed as folklorisation, whereby the texts have come to represent a ne...

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Published in:Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society
Main Author: Lukin, Karina
Other Authors: Department of Cultures, Faculty Common Matters (Faculty of Arts), Folklore Studies
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Suomen Antropologinen Seura 2023
Subjects:
5143 Social and cultural anthropology
615 History and Archaeology
epic poetry
folklorisation
historicity
imperialism
Nenets
traditionalisation
nenets
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10138/567246
id ftunivhelsihelda:oai:helda.helsinki.fi:10138/567246
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institution Open Polar
collection HELDA – University of Helsinki Open Repository
op_collection_id ftunivhelsihelda
language English
topic 5143 Social and cultural anthropology
615 History and Archaeology
epic poetry
folklorisation
historicity
imperialism
Nenets
traditionalisation
spellingShingle 5143 Social and cultural anthropology
615 History and Archaeology
epic poetry
folklorisation
historicity
imperialism
Nenets
traditionalisation
Lukin, Karina
Encountering the Tsar : Nenets Epic Singing as a Representation of Historicity
topic_facet 5143 Social and cultural anthropology
615 History and Archaeology
epic poetry
folklorisation
historicity
imperialism
Nenets
traditionalisation
description This article discusses Nenets epic songs, focusing on two texts collected at the beginning of the twentieth century in relation to the divergent historicities they represent. The process of gathering and publishing folklore is analysed as folklorisation, whereby the texts have come to represent a negation of the modern, but not giving voice to the singers or their communities. Nenets epic songs have served Finnish nationalism and Russian imperialism in creating hierarchies between Finns and their linguistic relatives and between different Russian ethnic groups, including Russians and the Nenets. The process of traditionalisation is discussed as a local strategy of recreating meaningful narration that relates both to tradition and other contextually relevant discourses. The songs discussed are shown to depict not specific past events, but rather Nenets historical experiences and understandings about their subaltern position and agency within the imperial context. Peer reviewed
author2 Department of Cultures
Faculty Common Matters (Faculty of Arts)
Folklore Studies
format Article in Journal/Newspaper
author Lukin, Karina
author_facet Lukin, Karina
author_sort Lukin, Karina
title Encountering the Tsar : Nenets Epic Singing as a Representation of Historicity
title_short Encountering the Tsar : Nenets Epic Singing as a Representation of Historicity
title_full Encountering the Tsar : Nenets Epic Singing as a Representation of Historicity
title_fullStr Encountering the Tsar : Nenets Epic Singing as a Representation of Historicity
title_full_unstemmed Encountering the Tsar : Nenets Epic Singing as a Representation of Historicity
title_sort encountering the tsar : nenets epic singing as a representation of historicity
publisher Suomen Antropologinen Seura
publishDate 2023
url http://hdl.handle.net/10138/567246
genre nenets
genre_facet nenets
op_relation 10.30676/jfas.115609
1 I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers and the editors of JFAS for their helpful and critical comments on this manuscript. This research was funded by the Academy of Finland (‘Imperialism in vernacular terms. Appraising the coloniality of folklore, tradition and heritage through and by the Nenets’, grant number 330374). Toivo Lehtisalo’s fieldwork and his premises for collecting and publishing Nenets folklore become understandable within the framework of folklorisation informed by Finnish nationalism and the colonial discourses embedded within it. His fieldwork was financed by the Finno-Ugrian Society, a scholarly community founded in Helsinki in 1883 in order to ‘spark patriotic spirits’ and offer financial help so that young scholars could continue the work of Matthias Alexander Castrén in studying what was called ‘the Finnish family’ (Salminen 2008: 10). Castrén had travelled extensively in northern Russia and Siberia, and his work is closely linked to the development of ethnography as well as comparative linguistics and mythology in imperial Russia and the Grand Duchy of Finland, a part of the Russian Empire (Branch 1968; Ahola and Lukin 2017; K. Lukin 2017; Salminen 2019). In mapping Russia, its minorities, and its history, Castrén’s activities and texts regarding the linguistic and cultural affinity of the Finns with several minorities in Russia served both Finnish nationalism and Russian imperialism. When working with tradition, folklorisation worked in these two directions. First, it looked for and discovered poetry linked to Finno-Karelian and would, thus, uncover the history of ancient Finnish poetry and its worldview. Folklorisation created temporal hierarchies between speakers of kindred languages so that Finns were situated as higher in civilisation than most other communities within the Finno-Ugric family (Anttonen 2005; Kuutma 2005). The Nenets, together with speakers of other Samoyed languages, were defined as residing within the lowest state of civilisation (e.g., Castrén 1857). Second, the work of Castrén produced knowledge about the cultural and linguistic variety of the Russian Empire within an ethnographic project framed as history. Castrén’s work was planned and financed by the Russian Academy of Sciences (Branch 1968). Accordingly, colonial tones of discourse were embedded within Finnish nationalism and the scholarly activities related to it from at least the nineteenth century onward.
Lukin , K 2023 , ' Encountering the Tsar : Nenets Epic Singing as a Representation of Historicity ' , Suomen Antropologi , vol. 47 , no. 3 , pp. 18-38 . https://doi.org/10.30676/jfas.115609
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spelling ftunivhelsihelda:oai:helda.helsinki.fi:10138/567246 2024-01-07T09:44:51+01:00 Encountering the Tsar : Nenets Epic Singing as a Representation of Historicity Lukin, Karina Department of Cultures Faculty Common Matters (Faculty of Arts) Folklore Studies 2023-11-16T14:43:01Z 21 application/pdf http://hdl.handle.net/10138/567246 eng eng Suomen Antropologinen Seura 10.30676/jfas.115609 1 I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers and the editors of JFAS for their helpful and critical comments on this manuscript. This research was funded by the Academy of Finland (‘Imperialism in vernacular terms. Appraising the coloniality of folklore, tradition and heritage through and by the Nenets’, grant number 330374). Toivo Lehtisalo’s fieldwork and his premises for collecting and publishing Nenets folklore become understandable within the framework of folklorisation informed by Finnish nationalism and the colonial discourses embedded within it. His fieldwork was financed by the Finno-Ugrian Society, a scholarly community founded in Helsinki in 1883 in order to ‘spark patriotic spirits’ and offer financial help so that young scholars could continue the work of Matthias Alexander Castrén in studying what was called ‘the Finnish family’ (Salminen 2008: 10). Castrén had travelled extensively in northern Russia and Siberia, and his work is closely linked to the development of ethnography as well as comparative linguistics and mythology in imperial Russia and the Grand Duchy of Finland, a part of the Russian Empire (Branch 1968; Ahola and Lukin 2017; K. Lukin 2017; Salminen 2019). In mapping Russia, its minorities, and its history, Castrén’s activities and texts regarding the linguistic and cultural affinity of the Finns with several minorities in Russia served both Finnish nationalism and Russian imperialism. When working with tradition, folklorisation worked in these two directions. First, it looked for and discovered poetry linked to Finno-Karelian and would, thus, uncover the history of ancient Finnish poetry and its worldview. Folklorisation created temporal hierarchies between speakers of kindred languages so that Finns were situated as higher in civilisation than most other communities within the Finno-Ugric family (Anttonen 2005; Kuutma 2005). The Nenets, together with speakers of other Samoyed languages, were defined as residing within the lowest state of civilisation (e.g., Castrén 1857). Second, the work of Castrén produced knowledge about the cultural and linguistic variety of the Russian Empire within an ethnographic project framed as history. Castrén’s work was planned and financed by the Russian Academy of Sciences (Branch 1968). Accordingly, colonial tones of discourse were embedded within Finnish nationalism and the scholarly activities related to it from at least the nineteenth century onward. Lukin , K 2023 , ' Encountering the Tsar : Nenets Epic Singing as a Representation of Historicity ' , Suomen Antropologi , vol. 47 , no. 3 , pp. 18-38 . https://doi.org/10.30676/jfas.115609 ORCID: /0000-0002-4085-2721/work/146907509 85174807459 55660f0f-8f33-479b-baef-3f99ee8e2ceb http://hdl.handle.net/10138/567246 cc_by_nc openAccess info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess 5143 Social and cultural anthropology 615 History and Archaeology epic poetry folklorisation historicity imperialism Nenets traditionalisation Article publishedVersion 2023 ftunivhelsihelda https://doi.org/10.30676/jfas.115609 2023-12-14T00:10:19Z This article discusses Nenets epic songs, focusing on two texts collected at the beginning of the twentieth century in relation to the divergent historicities they represent. The process of gathering and publishing folklore is analysed as folklorisation, whereby the texts have come to represent a negation of the modern, but not giving voice to the singers or their communities. Nenets epic songs have served Finnish nationalism and Russian imperialism in creating hierarchies between Finns and their linguistic relatives and between different Russian ethnic groups, including Russians and the Nenets. The process of traditionalisation is discussed as a local strategy of recreating meaningful narration that relates both to tradition and other contextually relevant discourses. The songs discussed are shown to depict not specific past events, but rather Nenets historical experiences and understandings about their subaltern position and agency within the imperial context. Peer reviewed Article in Journal/Newspaper nenets HELDA – University of Helsinki Open Repository Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 47 3 18 38

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