Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics

JEF
Volume 8
2014
Number 1
J OURNAL OF ETHNOLOGY
AND FOLKLORI STI CS
J OUR NAL OF E T HNOL OGY AND F OL KL OR I S T I CS
ISSN 1736-6518 (print)
ISSN 2228-0987 (online)
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Studies in Folklore and Popular Religion
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Studies in Folk Culture
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J OUR NAL OF E T HNOL OGY AND F OL K L OR I S T I C S
Volume 8 | Number 1 | 2014
CONT E NT S
UL R I K A WOL F -KNUT S
Would I Have Been Beter Of There? Comparison, Need and Conduciveness in
Finnish Emigrants Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
T I I NA S E P P
Pilgrimage and Pilgrim Hierarchies in Vernacular Discourse: Comparative Notes
from the Camino de Santiago and Glastonbury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
ANDRE AS K AL KUN
Fasts and Feasts in Estonians Representations of the Seto Culture . . . . . . . . . . 53
MI CHE LE F I L I P P O F ONT E F R ANCE S CO
Of Grape, Feast and Community: An Ethnographic Note on the Making of the
Grape Harvest Festival in an Italian Town in Piedmont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
MAR I E CAS E N
Udmurt Identity Issues: Core Moments from the Middle Ages
to the Present Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
NOT E S AND RE VI E WS
Udmurt Animist Ceremonies in Bashkortostan: Fieldwork Ethnography . . . . . . 111
The 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 Tartu
ISSN 1736-6518 (print), ISSN 2228-0987 (online)
Vol. 8 (1): 322
3
WOuL D I HAV e B e e N B e T T e R Of f T He R e?
COMPAR I S ON, NE E D AND CONDUC I V E NE S S
I N A F I NNI S H E MI GR ANT S ACCOUNT
ULRIKA WOLF-KNUTS
Professor Emeritus of Folkloristics
bo Akademi University
20100 bo, Finland
e-mail: uwolf@abo.f
ABSTRACT
Processes 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 Maslows 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 NT RODUC T I ON
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
peoples lives. Paterns 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 frst case,
analogy and identifcation help us to accept a specifc way of living (see, for example,
Duton 2009: 21 on comparison and analogy). In the second case we revolt against it.
Consequently, comparison can have both a positive and a negative efect upon peoples
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
fnd my outcome here?, Do I fnd a companion for my life here?, Can I fll my needs
in diferent 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 diferent 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 fnd some kind of
signifcance 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 OUR NAL OF E T HNOL OGY AND F OL KL OR I S T I CS 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 difculties. However, in this case, when I
interviewed an emigrant who setled 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 signifcance
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?
MART 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 repeatedly
3
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 fnds 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 fnds
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 peoples 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
fnd 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 wifes 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: 2728) Martins story about why and how he decided to leave Finland for
other countries is my main feld 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 litle more than an hour. We had met before, so we knew each other, and
Wolf-Knuts: Comparison, Need and Conduciveness in a Finnish Emigrants 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 ofered 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 specifc
place meaningful in diferent 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-Bregenhj 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 fnd in South Africa that he did not fnd in
finland? How did he explain this to me? Certainly, in an interview about emigration,
place is a central concept.
T HE E MI GR AT I ON MODE 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 infuences 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
litle 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 peoples expectations for a good living stand-
ard. A large number of people left the countryside for the towns, where industrialisa-
tion intensifed (Pitknen 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 ones hands were
frozen and [carpenters] nails got stuck in ones fngers, 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: 3435)
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 beter 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 atention when I tried to answer questions con-
cerning by which means and strategies a person justifed 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 HE OR E T I C AL P E R S P E C T I V E S AND ME T HOD
According to Abraham Maslows now classic 1940s theory of human motivation, we
should count fve 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: 3558). Although Maslow has
been criticized for, among other things, having created an armchair model difcult to
apply empirically to a persons life narrative (see, for example, Sjberg 1999), I have
found his thoughts highly useful in the analysis of emigrants lives.
Maslow states that physiological needs are crucial for mans wellbeing. As an exam-
ple he says: utopia can be defned 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 persons 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: frstly, 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 ffth 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 fulfl 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 Maslows 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 fulflled the person can feel satisfaction. However, satisfac-
tion is not enough if one regards satisfaction as just fulflling a need or removing the
lack of something (cf. Dundes who, in 1964, introduced the concept of liquidated lack).
There are diferences in satisfaction: one can be more or less satisfed. A meal is fne
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, benefcial, valuable, advantageous, opportune, propitious,
encouraging, promising, convenient; (be conducive to) contribute to, lead to, tend to
promote, make for, facilitate, favor, aid, assist, help, beneft, encourage (Waite 2006:
160). Without doubt, conducive is a concept with positive connotations. However, the
path to conduciveness can be difcult and flled 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 signifcance 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 specifc goal in view.
The feeling of conduciveness is the result of comparison. It takes comparison to fnd
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: 5964; Duton 2009: 5556). 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 fnd a suitable living place?
I will analyse my interview along the lines of how Martin presented the diferent
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 signifcant and conducive to him in these
aspects. With the help of a method based on close reading (Nordbck 2009: 2839) I
want to conduct my analysis with the help of the concepts of comparison, need and
conduciveness as my analytical tools.
T HE I NT E RV 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 infnity, so to say. When we were siting
there speaking about Martins 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
(Duton 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 atention 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
(Nyns 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 siting room (Lefebvre 1991: 38f;
sterlund-Ptsch 2010: 198).
MART I N S DE C I S I ON T O L E AV E F I NL AND
The interview started with Martins 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 beter of 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 Maslows theory of needs, we fnd 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 fulflled 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 Martins 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 ofer. Perhaps he felt diferent 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 diferent kinds of
defciency in finland, in combination with a comparison with other, beter-of places,
made him think of emigration to another, beter 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 diference between site and place. According to him, a site
has width, depth and breadth, but it is empty: A site possesses no points of atachment
onto which to hang our memories, much less to retrieve them (Casey 2000: 186). A
place, he maintains, is flled 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 beter conditions (see, also, Byrne 2003: 34). He did atach 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 womans 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 infuence 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 frst and then only son. In this passage we can see that not
only did real factors play a role in Martins 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 Martins
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 Martins
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 fnd any clear uterance about need or conduciveness in the interview.
I asked Martin what he thought was the thing most difcult 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 fnd 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 admited: still today I have almost got
a bit of a guilt feeling for leaving her, although shes 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 fy 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 admited his bad
conscience. He also told me that it was difcult 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 fnd more of what he was looking for in terms of work and a life in a place
other than at home.
MART I N S E X P E C TAT I ONS AND I MP R E S S I ONS
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 frst impression of Cape Town was that it was beautiful and hot:
The frst impression, I came on a boat, which took four weeks from Gteborg
[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 frst 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 ones home country. How-
ever, if we regard work as one of the most important values in a persons life, or in
society, it is easier to understand how a shortage of work can infuence people to make
such a life-changing decision. The Ostrobothnian view of work has been obvious since
the 19th century. In Boken om vrt 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]: 204205). This book had an extremely signifcant
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
infuenced 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 ta (He who will not work shall not eat) (cf. 2 Thess. 3: 10), or Ltjan
r 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: 222223). 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 fnd a place where he could fnd
a life according to his ideals. In Maslows terminology, I see Martins 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 dont 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 diferent, conducive, form compared to what he was used to, can be regarded in
a positive way as facilitating adjustment to a new environment.
T HE F I R S T I MP R E S S I ON OF S OUT H AF 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 frst 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 fat 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
frst impression of Africa was positive.
However, right after this sentence, Martin continued: although the race relations
was a bit confusing to me. It was upseting at times, I didnt 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 didnt 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 mater 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 fnd 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 admited
his mental change.
Applying Maslows 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: 3637).
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 ofcial 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 wasnt right, it wasnt right, I felt, ah, from any kind of religious background or
upbringing you had, it wasnt right, it wasnt right. I must say it wasnt 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 flled 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 refect 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.
HOME S I C K NE 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, shes 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) diferent 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 beter than them, no, Im just diferent (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 diferent 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 beter
than the Finns, but then corrected himself with a more neutral concept, that is dif-
ferent. Maslows 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 maters
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 writen 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 fulfl, his intensely striven-for english was enough.
T He R e OR He R e ?
Now the interview came close to its end, and, at the same time, Martin presented me
with his defnitive 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 beter of there. Or have I been bet[ter of 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 beter 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 beter. 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 Ive learnt to know God since I came here, not that I havent, 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 Martins 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 later was the beter, 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 Martins 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. Gods interference in Martins life acted as evidence for Mar-
tins 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 shouldnt have done it, but even so, even so. Ja, Im
glad Ive 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 difcult 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 infuenced 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 (Nyns 2008: 159162). This experience was over-
whelming and it gave signifcance 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, fnally, to his spiritual world. The place where he met God was to
Martin his real place.
NE GOT I AT I ON
Typical for Martins 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 refexive enough and,
perhaps, even a bit nave. 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 refect on his own moral role. He was aware of the distorted state
of maters, 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 admited honestly that he got used to it. But in the
same sequence of the interview he ended his refections on this topic by saying, not
that I would have liked to live with any blacks, no, no, because were diferent, but the
way they were treated, I think it was upseting (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 diference 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: Im sorry, Ive got to pray in English because that, thats the way Ive 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 didnt 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
refected 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 litle surprised
himself, for he started to explain to me how peculiar it was that, during the frst couple
of years in his new country, he almost bloted out his language. He did not even write
leters to his family in finland:
[B]ecause you want to get on with your life, and you, you dont 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, its Why dont
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 ft 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 defciency. 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 refective 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 nger [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.
CONC LUS I ON
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 beter conditions with more dimensions. With the help
of Abraham Maslows theories about needs for action, I can demonstrate that Martins
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 fnd 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 utered thoughts about a conceived place in his dreams and
expectations of Africa and in his atacks of depressive homesickness, although, at the
same time, he admited 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 Martins 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 beter 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 fnd 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 defne needs that he could fulfl through his emigration
account. In the negotiation, he strived to fnd the right wordings when trying to create
a meaningful and signifcant image of himself as an emigrant. During the interview it
came clear that Martins 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 signifcant whole through the on-going process of negotiation that he presented.
According to Peter Nyns, places are shaped by memories, expectations and by stories
of real and imagined events (2008: 171). The analysis of Martins 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.
NOT 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 feldwork
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, Jef Todd Titon devoted an article to
the character of this new genre in folkloristics. According to him, the diference 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 later is a writen text emerging from oral speech (Titon
1980: 278; Svensson 2001: 39, who interprets the diference in a diferent 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.
Dgh 1975; Wolf-Knuts 2000; sterlund-Ptsch 2003).
3 Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhj (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 18211929 period as 2,250,000. For more information about Finnish migration
to South Africa, see Kupiainen 1991, especially the tables on pp. 377380, 403, 408409, 412413.
See also Olin 2000.
5 It is a well-known fact that men and women tell their emigrant stories in diferent ways.
Gender diferences also mater in the cooperation between interviewer and interviewee. (See, for
example, Hagstrm 2002; Byrne 2003: 35; Bnisch-Brednich 2008). This specifc feld 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 vrt 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 afrmation in Afrikaans and Swedish, and means yes.
S OURC E S
The Cultura Cultural Research Archive at the bo Akademi University
IF mgt 1998: 26
IF mgt 1998: 2728
IF mgt 1998: 3435
IF mgt 1998: 3637
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Vol. 8 (1): 2352
23
P I L GR I MAGE AND P I L GR I M HI E R ARC HI E S
I N V E R NAC UL AR DI S COUR S E :
COMPAR AT I V E NOT E S F ROM T HE
C AMI NO DE S ANT I AGO AND GL AS T ONB URY
TIINA SEPP
PhD, Research Fellow
Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore
Institute for Cultural Research and Fine Arts
University of Tartu
likooli 18, 50090 Tartu, Estonia
e-mail: tiina.sepp@ut.ee
ABSTRACT
This article is based on my feldwork 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 refect on the meaning of
the words pilgrim and pilgrimage. The co-existence of the diferent belief systems
of Christianity and New Age and the conficts 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 OC AT I NG T HE C AMI NO DE S ANT I AGO AND GL AS T ONB URY:
F I E L DWOR K ME T HODOL OGY
This article
*
is based on my feldwork 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 Funds 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 shell
1
and pilgrims passport. (See, for
example, Cofey 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 diferent countries
2

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 frst
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 palverndurid
(Estonian Santiago Pilgrims), which unites former and would-be pilgrims. That group
was started by Epp Sokk and Jane Vain, who belong to the Prnu-Jaagupi congregation.
Every summer they organise a 3-day pilgrimage in Estonia, starting on the weekend
closest to July 25, St Jamess Day. Filmmaker Andres St made a documentary (2011)
about his journey on the Camino; Maarika Traats journey on foot from Tartu to San-
tiago de Compostela in MayDecember 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 feldwork
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 frst Christian community, reputedly founded by Joseph of Arimathea.
3

On his arrival in Glastonbury, Joseph is said to have thrust his staf into the ground on
what is now known as Wearyall Hill, and according to legend this staf 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 atracts 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 diferent. Stout suggests that Glastonburys 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 frst 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 writen: Open to all people on all paths
providing support and information on your journey. Part of the pilgrims 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 briefy 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 feldwork 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 diferent 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 staf might atempt, with varying degrees
of success, to impose a single, ofcial discourse. This, in the fnal analysis, is what
confers upon a major shrine its essential, universalistic character: its capacity to
absorb and refect a multiplicity of religious discourses, to be able to ofer 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:
328348) has writen how beliefs about Arthur and Bridget, two signifcant fgures 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 infuences 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: 175176)
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 infuential 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 defnition 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 1921 August 2010 in Turku, pilgrimage was defned 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 (Ahlbck 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 signifcance and
those where this order of priorities is reversed (ibid.). Of the places where I have con-
ducted feldwork, the Camino de Santiago is an example par excellence of the later an
overwhelming majority of Santiago pilgrims say that the journey is more important
than the arrival, and Glastonbury qualifes as the former. It does not mater in the least
how one travels there, all that counts for most people is experiencing the powerful
energy of the place. Another diference between the Camino de Santiago and Glaston-
bury is that in Glastonbury people are moving in a myriad of diferent 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-
defned 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 feldwork and research
directly (and unintentionally) refects the history of pilgrimage studies (see, for example,
Hermkens, Jansen, Notermans 2009). When I started doing feldwork on the Camino,
one of the frst things that caught my atention 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 Genneps threefold structure of rites of passage).
even without knowing the theory, these were the things that I frst 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 diferent levels of society and walks of life form strong
bonds. About two or three years later I started to pay more atention 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 feldwork 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 JuneJuly 2003, NovemberDecember 2004, May 2005, November 2007, AprilMay
2008, and April 2010. In October 2008 and March 2012 I worked as hospitalera
7
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 feldwork 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 feld 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 feld 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 diferent aspects of Glaston-
bury pilgrimage. I found the contemporary religious pluralism in Glastonbury very
intriguing and unlike anything I had experienced before.
My feldwork 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
staf 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 defnes 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 geting the ofcial 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 fnd the concept of vernacular religion very suitable for my research. It has always
been difcult 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 (ofcial) 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.
DOE S T HE C AMI NO DE S ANT I AGO B E L ONG
T O T He C AT HOL I C S ONLY ?
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
atended that mass after completing my frst Camino in 2003, I thought that the priest
must be rather out of touch, as many of my fellow pilgrims had defnitely not walked
the Camino with that goal.
On the Camino de Santiago one is occasionally made aware of the confict between
Catholicism and New Age. People from both camps sometimes show suspicion of
each other. Already on my frst 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 refection 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 fnd its way to paradise once believed to exist
of 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 atributed 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 frst 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; Snchez Drag 2004). This subject has also given material to fction, 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-
lians 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 fnd 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 fnd 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 feld trips to the Camino I have met several people who have made it clear that
they are defnitely not on a religious pilgrimage. Some have recounted how difcult 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 ofered by
the Catholic Church: atending the pilgrims mass (misa del peregrino), enjoying Church
hospitality and obtaining a credencial (so-called pilgrims passport) and a compostela (a
document certifying the completion of the pilgrimage).
first, many (regardless of motivation) atend 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 authors pilgrims 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 Churchs 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 writen 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 Ofce 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 efect 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 atending a pilgrims mass
and sleeping in a church while on the Camino. One informant ofered an alternative
approach to the Camino-time versus ordinary life discussion where one of the aims is
to reconcile ones conscience about being anti-Church in real life and enjoying the ben-
efts ofered 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 Pilgrims Ofce 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 of 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 atitude 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 atraction and
repulsion towards Christianity felt by Mary Magdalene pilgrims visiting holy shrines in
france, with respect to the tension between their atraction 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-
cifc goal of the Church is to use the current popularity of the Camino to evangelize and
convert european youth (frey 1998: 127). On 2224 April 2013, the frst 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: Arent we sighing for more
young people in our parishes, movements and associations? Well, here we have them
in hundreds. (Luengo 2013: 239240) 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 ofcial 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.
GL AS T ONB uRY P I L GR I MS WI T HOuT P I L GR I MAGe ?
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 atendance, earth
energy-inspired jour neying, one-of instances of spiritually signifcant 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 feldtrips 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 fnd pilgrimage in Glastonbury. Instead, several
people pointed out to me that Glastonbury no longer has a well-defned pilgrimage. I
was not disappointed because I thought that a non-existing pilgrimage could ofer 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 diferent historical context: in
England, traditional Catholic pilgrimage activity ceased with the Reformation.
In 2011, Barry Taylor told me that their mission is to defne 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 atend 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 Taylors 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 atend an Anglican Pilgrimage to Glastonbury. During my frst
feld trip in the summer of 2011, I could not atend the Anglican Pilgrimage because it
was cancelled. A pilgrimage that can be cancelled must have a totally diferent 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 diferent 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 confict 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
ofered 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 Johns 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 theres a pilgrimage, she told me. She also said that the main
reason why St Johns 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 shouldnt 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 refect 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 leafets about
those? I found out that there are no leafets 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 atracted to Glastonbury for its healing
(see, for example, Prince, Riches 2000: 9298; 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 confrmed
numerous times during my feldwork on the Camino: I have met many pilgrims who
set out in order to fnd alleviation to the pain and sufering 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 diferently than on the Camino. On
the Camino, everybody wants to be called a pilgrim, no mater 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 pilgrims
15
who have setled 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 diference between self-identifying as
pilgrims, and others designating people as pilgrims. Marion Bowman (1993) has writ-
ten about the diferent 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 defnition: 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 atend 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 atitudes of the people
who go on pilgrimage to Glastonbury. He
said: Christians go because theyre 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 defne the pilgrimage in Glastonbury. I
must admit I am very curious to see what
the well-defned 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 Glastonburys 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, Whitings 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-profle
pilgrimage activity in contemporary Glastonbury (Bowman 2008: 257). She writes:
[...] the Goddess community is fghting 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 atending 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 cant 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 profle 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 infuenced by the Christian pilgrimages, the undeniable infuence and
inspiration cannot be downplayed; just because contemporary atendees 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 diferent spir-
itualities. Since 1924 there have been annual Anglican pilgrimages to Glastonbury; the
frst 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 Abbeys present status seems to be a litle
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 staf and asked: Who has the authority to forbid
people from dowsing on the Abbey grounds? The documentary Chenrezig (2013) made
by Glastonbury flmmakers 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 flm 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) feldwork 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 feld 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 moto Inspiring unity through Diversity. That new Centre will
also house a sanctuary, because, according to Morgana West:
Whilst many of Glastonburys indoor sacred spaces aford an open door policy
towards people from difering beliefs, they all have their roots in their own faith
or spiritual practice. Our plans to ofer a sanctuary in which all beliefs can come
together within their own framework, is unique in that we will be ofering 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 ofer our acknowledgement that spiritual beliefs and practices can
present complex and difcult challenges between diferent groups creating gaps
that are sometimes difcult to bridge. However, rather than focus on diferences
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 diferent.
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 identifcation 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 fnd themselves encoun-
tering and we shall continue to openly acknowledge and highlight the stages and
experiences of this ancient way, refective of our historical past in a congruent man-
ner appropriately mirroring Glastonbury of the 21st century.
C R E AT I NG AND MAI NTAI NI NG P I L GR I M HI E R ARC HI E S
Nancy frey has pointed out that discontinuities in defnitions 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 frst 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 ofcial and unofcial
level. On the ofcial 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 fnd a new bed more easily if the hostels fll up. By the unof-
fcial 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 writen a comparative article about foot pilgrims to
Santiago and backpackers, refers to the validity of Turners communitas theory for his
own research. He brings out two points: frst, 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 diferent level
to everyday life, for example in the foot-pilgrims or backpackers 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 difculty of the routing and the opti-
mizing of a minimal budget (ibid.: 307).
When I started doing feldwork 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 ofered 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. Afective 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 Chaucers 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 diferent sects which are basically gnostic, esoteric etc.; and those
who aim to live of 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 writen 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 botles.
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 superfcial, 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 atributed 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 diferently 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 frst feld 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 diferent 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 moto The tourist demands, the pil-
grim appreciates); and fnally, a hierarchy imposed by outsiders from above, accord-
ing to which proper Catholics have beter 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 feldwork 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: 4246). The police strongly recommended that I found myself
beter 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 Jos, 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, Jos 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 havent 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 puting 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 Jos 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. lo Valk (2012: 363) has
noted that medical discourse represents the authority of science and ofers strong argu-
ments against a supernaturalist worldview. In the case I am discussing, not only was a
psychiatric interpretation of my informants beliefs ofered, but also a critique of that
persons non-Catholic views: my Spanish contact emphasised that Joss beliefs do not
generally refect the Catholic belief system, thus Jos 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 difculty fnding them. Where could I have met a real Catholic pure, untainted,
not infuenced by any vernacular beliefs or personal interpretations of institutional
views? As I said, Joss communication with the divine was criticised by a Catholic
scholar with theological education. At the same time, Jos 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, Jos was an authentic pilgrim par excellence.
So far I have had my choice of interviewees criticised by two scholars. I already men-
tioned the frst 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 Jos, my contact was creating a hierarchy
of pilgrims, diferentiating between proper pilgrims and others. My feldwork 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 cant 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 maters concerning pilgrimage?
Ren Gothni (2010: 6061) notes that our preconceptions determine our interpreta-
tion and understanding of the subject mater. He writes:
The word pilgrim from Latin peregrinus (per ager) denotes walking and within
the Roman Catholic theology identifcation with the suferings of Christ (imitatio
Christi) through physical hardship. Hence our i.e. the Westerners 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)
Gothni 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 NE RGY
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 feld trips
to Glastonbury and the Camino de Santiago.
One of the most signifcant 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 afects people in profoundly
challenging, sometimes shockingly damaging ways. The oddest thing is that this
energy particularly seems to afect those that are called here, while it seems to have
litle or no afect 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 atacked. I could feel the fear. I decided I couldnt stay there.
I dont want to sleep in this area, I dont like this energy. [] Of all the places on
the Camino, the wine fountain
17
is here.
Another place on the Camino that is believed by some to be full of negative energies is
the fnal 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
ofered an explanation:
When people arrive in Santiago they are flled with their troubles and worries; on
fnishing the pilgrimage and leaving the city they also leave their burden behind,
thus adding to the citys 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 writen by a Brazilian pilgrim Antonella Zara:
I love you!
With your welcome and generosity I entered your forests, your
Valleys, your felds and your long long trails.
And, litle by litle, I began feeling the sensitivity and the art
With which you entered my veins, my bones, my blood, and the
Magical recesses of my very being.
Today you and I are lovers, and our love is forever, as all true
Love 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 frst 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 signifcant site of Goddess wor-
ship and is now frst 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
fnd 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 setle the
unbalance of Glastonburys 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 refect the competition between diferent 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.
CONC LUS I ON
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 defnition will be coined that everybody will agree with. The usage of
the words pilgrim and pilgrimage sometimes reveals the tension between diferent 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 signifcant 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 diferent 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 fnds its way to the academic world, as well. The fact
that many people fnd it necessary to emphasise that in spite of doing the Camino they
are by no means religious, shows how strong the infuence 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 diferent, competing narratives about pilgrimage in Glaston-
bury. Based on my (time-wise rather limited) feldwork 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 diferent levels of designation self-
designation, designation by others, designation according to diferent theological posi-
tioning, designation according to diferent 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 signifcance I suggest we
can also talk about the topicality of pilgrimage. When Anglican pilgrimage was popu-
lar and well-atended, 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 superfuous. The
fact that the Glastonbury PRC has dropped the P from their name, further refects 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 peoples perception of pilgrimage in its broader, non-Christian meaning.
The discussion about energy seems to refect the competition between diferent 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 Glastonburys 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 atitude 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 atitude shown by those in
power, those representing what used to be called high, institutional religion.
NOT E S
1 According to legend, one of St Jamess miracles was saving a drowning horseman who then
resurfaced covered in shells. The scallop shell is worn to identify ones 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 crucifxion. According
to another version of the Glastonbury legend, Joseph brought with him the chalice used at the
Last Supper.
4 When no specifc reference is given for a quotation, it comes from my feldwork 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 hospitaleros 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 Bunuels (1969) flm The
Milky Way (La Voie Lacte).
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 (pilgrims 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 atracted considerable academic atention 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 feldwork on the Camino
for eight years, so it was there that my ideas about pilgrims and pilgrimage were frst 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 Jamess 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 signifcant for the period when St Johns had a woman priest.
15 Bowman (1993; 2008) has writen about the belief among some in town in unconscious
pilgrims, and the terminological difculty of a pilgrim who stays.
16 Researchers of tourism (Buzzard 2001; Bendix 2002) ofer 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
FAS T S AND F E AS T S I N E S T ONI ANS
R E P R E S E NTAT I ONS OF T HE S E T O C ULT UR E
ANDREAS KALKUN
PhD, Researcher
Estonian Folklore Archives
Estonian Literary Museum
Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu, Estonia
e-mail: andreas@folklore.ee
ABSTRACT
Descriptions of Seto culture writen 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 confict due
to cultural diferences. 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 sacrifce with economy and religious feasts with criminal activities and alco-
holism. estonians measured the economic proft and loss of religious practices
and their efects 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 atack 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 diferences 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 Finlands 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 frst time in the second half of the 19th century, has never
been large, reaching roughly 20,000 in the frst 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: 5657). The Seto territory has been under the
Russian, and thus Orthodox, domain of authority and infuence. 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: 128129; Kuutma
2006: 6061). even in the frst 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: 190191;
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 countrys ofcial policy (see Luna 2003; Jts 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: 209210). 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,
litle by litle, estonians with double identities (Jts 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 HE S E T O AS OT HE R S : I S S UE S OF R E P R E S E NTAT I ON
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 writen culture as late as
in the frst 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 fagrantly
claiming that the Seto are either a hundred (Pldme 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 infuence. Their religious
practices have often been described in highly grotesque terms, emphasising this small
nations irrational and savage disposition.
Kalkun: Fasts and Feasts in Estonians Representations of the Seto Culture 55
Descriptions of Seto culture writen 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 flthiness 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 Hurt
4
carried out feldwork in the Seto region as a sti-
pendiary of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society and wrote a highly infuential
cultural description (Hurt 1904a).
5
According to Hurt, the most typical diseases afect-
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 litle 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 identifed 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 sacrifce, 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 infuence 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 womens lore, much as preparing
food was exclusively a womens 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 ofer 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 atempted to fnd the Setos own voice from the
texts held in the Estonian Folklore Archives.
6

S e T O R e L I GI OuS L I f e : f OR MAL T R ADI T I ON OR De e P fAI T H?
Regardless of the fact that the Christian mission and Christianisation had already
arrived in the Seto area of setlement 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: 192193) 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 Lords Prayer, as well as true belief from ones 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-
fcial 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 Vrska (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 (Luna 2003: 43).
At the end of the 19th century there were very few Seto who had atended 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 Jts 1998: 32). At the same time, several Rus-
sian-language church schools were established and the number of children atending
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).
FAS T I NG AMONG T HE S E T O:
Me DI C AL OR R e L I GI OuS S I GNI f I C ANC 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 Grumet, 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 dont
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 bafing practice. Jakob Hurt viewed fasting as a medical rather
than a religious phenomenon, and the Orthodox priest of Estonian origin Karl Usstav
(1908: 78), 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 mater. While clearly relying on Hurt, both mention that the poor diet
caused by fasting has had a devastating efect 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, fsh 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 (talsiphi) and Holy Saturday (lihavd).
14
Some households
even fasted on the eve of St. Johns Day, the feast of the Transfguration (paasapiv), 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 frst, 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 diferent 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 brothers 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 wouldnt
know where to run. I defnitely dont want to hear any partying during the fast.
My sister-in-law went to feed the horsethe 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; Grumet, Muers 2010: 48) 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 Mla 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 Christs life and passion (Bynum 1987: 255259). According to a Seto legend, the
Child Jesus refused to feed from Marys breast on Wednesdays and Fridays,
24
while the
Lenten fast represented Christs temptation in the Judean desert and his crucifxion.
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 crucifxion, 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. Wouldnt 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? Mustnt 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 sufer as Christ sufered for us and allowed himself to
be tormented. This is why we must fast and sufer and torment our physical body
for the burden of Christ. We dont know any other way to pray to God than by fast-
ing and sufering. 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 wouldnt go and hit anyone on the head because he glutons 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
defnitely an encouragement to keep the fast.
R I T uAL Of f e R I NG OR A WAS T e Of f OOD?
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 bafed 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 feldwork 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. Theres probably no need to mention that guests were ofered everywhere
the best and the fnest food. The hosts themselves mercilessly wasted the most
expensive foodstuf. It was funny to see them eating buter with a large spoon.
Often even a large heap of cotage cheese in the middle of the plater was covered
with an excessively thick layer of buter. Wasting buter 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, cotage cheese had been used up, buter churned in
summer had been used up long ago; there was no fsh, no sugar, even no tea. even
in large farms a guest was ofered nothing but rye bread. The contrast with what
was seen in summer was extreme. (Manninen 1924: 41)
In addition to the diferences 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 oferings 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: 8788). 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 sculptures lips with
buter, fat, blood and honey, and apart from ordinary candles and paper fowers sacri-
fced so much pastry, buter and cotage cheese at the sculpture that it could be barely
be seen underneath. In addition, next to the widely practiced egg sacrifce during easter
and Whitsuntide (Loorits 1959: 25), Setos fed the icon of St. Anna with muton on her
feast day (June 25) in the Pelsi, Sulbi and Viko-Rsna village chapels (Tammekann
et al. 1928: 90; Mgiste 1977: 168170; Saarlo 1996: 116). While in some village groups
people brought lamb heads and wool to the icons of St. Anna, in others Setos sacrifced
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, buter and cotage cheese, and on the Solemnity of St. Peter (July
12) some cheese to the church of Pankyavitsa. The oferings were placed in front of the
icons and heads were bowed in prayer (Truusmann 1890: 3940; Loorits 1959: 32). On
the feast day of St. John the forerunner (July 7) buter, curd cheese and cotage cheese
were taken to the St. Johns chapels in the Treski and Miikse villages, and because of
that these chapels came to be called dairy chapels (Valk 2011: 85). Buter was delivered
as a sacrifce at St. Paraskeva church in Saatse (on a friday after St. eliyahs Day, June
20) and after the ceremony it was left for the beggars (Loorits 1959: 27).
food oferings at icons or chapels were, in turn, associated with almsgiving to
priests, the monastery, poorhouses, widows and the crippled. The ofering 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, signifcance. 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 (Luna
1999: 64; 2003: 82). The estonian writen 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 relatives death, the Seto atached signifcance to the oferings
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 world
34
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 life
35
(Loorits
1959: 43). An important part of Seto funerary tradition was feeding the guests. Upon
someones death, a farm animal (sheep, calf, or rooster) had to be slaughtered in the
dead persons 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 sacrifcial rite even up to the mid-twentieth century.
Photo 1. Ritual feasting on graves on St. Paraskevas 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 persons 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 mothers grave
37

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 mothers good deeds, including raising
nine children, and mentions that her mother had, remarkably, always fed beggars and
the crippled and ofered 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 GI OuS f e AS T S OR DR I NK I NG B I NGe S ?
The active tradition of village feasts that is closely connected with church calendar in
the Seto region is still very much alive (Liv 2008). A feast day is celebrated in every
village or a group of villages on a church calendar holiday or on a saints feast day.
Setos themselves call these celebrations kirmask, kirmas or klpraasnik.
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 foated
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; Luna 1999: 6869;
2003: 111112) and the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. This met ferce opposition
even in non-religious institutions, let alone the conservative church (Luna 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;
Luna 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. Elijahs 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. Elijahs 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 writen press in the 1930s highlighted the diferences
in the work ethics and lifestyle of Seto and Russians from those characteristic of Estoni-
ans. The numerous Orthodox feasts and the major importance atached to celebrating
them seemed to confict 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; Luna 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 Vr-
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 1018 000 (E. 1933; Petserimaa 1933).
39

Below is an example of a hyperbolic and fgure-manipulating description from 1933.
196 gulyanyes on specifc 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 1012,000; Kulye with
24,000; Lavry with 78,000; Pechory with 34,000; Izborsk with 45,000; Tailova
with 810,000 and Pankyavitsa with 1018,000 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, well 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. [] Lets 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 dont 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, Pldme 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 fnished making hay (e. 1933;
Pldme 1938: 5). Newspapers also wrote about how estonian farm owners struggled
with their Seto workers, who rushed of 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. Vrska village, 1929. Photo by V. Sgi. 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 fghts
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, Tutervishoid (Racial Health) (Eesti
1924), and the gazete 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 efective 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: 89)
In the 1930s, the authorities intervened in the tradition of the Seto village feasts and
atempted 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; Gulnjed 1933; Rammul 1935: 49; Pldme
1938: 8). The spontaneous feasts that were not registered as ofcial 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 frst ofcially 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 setlement (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 Afairs 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 difcult to completely ban the traditional feasts in the region
because they are, after all, the customs of the local population. But they defnitely
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. (Prandaalustest 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 wont come together to start a fght 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 policeman
Bans your gulyanye feast
And strikes with his baton
When a fght 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,
Cant even crack a skull,
Oh, the good days of gulyanye are gone!
Whats a Seto party, right
When you even cannot fght?
You can drink ether, says the state,
But the cudgel has to wait.
Cause over you backside the baton comes,
And youre as quiet as a dove.
(Tulihnd 1933: 2)
HOW T O uNDe R S TAND T He fAS T I NG AND f e AS T S Of OT He R S ?
After the Seto areas were incorporated into the Republic of estonia, the diferences in
culture brought biter confict. 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 diferences in socio-economic situation and educational
background sources of confict, 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 conficts 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 sacrifce with economy and
religious feasts with criminal activities and alcoholism. People measured the economic
profts and losses of religious practices and their efects 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 atempt 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-identifcation, 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 of-
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 atempts 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 fnes 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 urnaal
(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 infuences of this century start to break through the walls that seemed
so impossible to penetrate, such as the feld 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 diferent 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 atack 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.
NOT 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 Jts 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 forgoten 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
efect of ether and its use to this day.
4 Jakob Hurt (18391907) was an Estonian folklorist and linguist and one of the leaders of the
Estonian national movement.
5 The report was published frst in Russian in 1903 and a year later in German in the authors
translation.
6 I am well aware that the texts stored in the archives have passed through the flter 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 Writen 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 afected consideration of the vernacular
and lived Orthodoxy to be a formal fulflment 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: 166167. 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 ofcial dogmas and rules, it does not
necessarily imply that religion was not taken seriously, see Heret 2008: 89.
9 See, for example, Usstav 1908: 78; 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 ofcial
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 Heret 1997: 71.
A detailed overview about fasting customs and the vernacular calendar in Russian Orthodox
Karelia has recently been made by Marja-Liisa Keinnen (2012).
13 The two later 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 Mereme 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 Heret (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 Vrska 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 Tht (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 infuenced 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; youll go blind if you eat buter or eggs, and so on).
32 In diferent cultures, fasting has been associated with exercising control over ones sexual-
ity; see, for example, an approach to the topic based on the example of Russian agrarian culture
(Heret 1997) or another on American culture (Grifth 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 Vabarnas 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
Matila 1999; Apo 2001: 20912.
S OURC E S
Manuscript collections of the Estonian Folklore Archives at the Estonian Literary Museum
ERA Folklore collection of the Estonian Folklore Archives (19271944)
H Folklore collection of Jakob Hurt (18601906)
L Folklore collection of Oskar Loorits (19001961)
S Seto folklore collection of Samuel Sommer (19221936)
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milj. senti. 7000 kr. eest viina vaesema valla peol. Postimees. Nr. 90 (19. IV): 4.
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75
OF GR AP E , F E AS T AND COMMUNI T Y:
AN E T HNOGR AP HI C NOT E ON T HE MAK I NG
OF T HE GR AP E HARV E S T F E S T I VAL I N AN
I TAL I AN T OWN I N P I E DMONT
MICHELE FILIPPO FONTEFRANCESCO
PhD, Post-doctoral Research Fellow
universita degli Studi Scienze Gastronomiche
Piazza Vitorio emanuele, 9 Pollenzo
12042 Bra, Cuneo, Italy
e-mail: m.fontefrancesco@unisg.it
ABSTRACT
This 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 defning the present forms of the rite.
KEYWORDS: Italy grape harvest festivals Fascist celebrations invented
traditions
I NT RODUC T I ON
As early as 1955, Claude Lvi-Strauss refected on how local cultural traditions a
favourite topic within Cultural Anthropology were disappearing with the advance-
ment of the modern world (Lvi-Strauss 1955: 3637). 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 dellUva, 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 frst introduced in
the late 1960s, represents an important moment in defning 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 commitee 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.
ME T HODOL OGY
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 fndings 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 communitys cur-
rent festival calendar. Research in Lu has been conducted by combining three diferent
methodologies: archival research, principally the archives of the local newspaper Al pas
dL; 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 foats.
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
LU
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 18612012) registered during the twen-
tieth century, the towns economy only underwent a signifcant change in the post-Sec-
ond World War period. Agriculture fourished 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 fnd 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 sufered mass emigration at the beginning of the twentieth century

(Guaschino,
Martinoti 1984), and did not sustain major damage during the Second World War.
Therefore, peoples lives continued to be infuenced by the agricultural seasons and the
liturgical calendar. As Gigi Busto, the frst president of the Pro Loco
3
association of Lu
that sought to promote Lu for tourists, and member of the organising commitee 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
LU S T WO F E S T I VAL S
As Gigi Busto highlights, the economic change in Lu led to a clear transformation in the
towns 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 infuenced 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 defning 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 famiglia
5
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 diferent
events with diferent 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
ffties, 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 towns 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 catle blessed: after the War the small
land-holdings with catle 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 atend 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 palcheto 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
palcheto, the most important [event] of the year. All the pesa [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 ffteen
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 fock 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 diferent and so beautiful before, when the young girls still used to
show of 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 beter 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 aford two festivals close
together as the town councillors can confrm because they wear out both the
people and the enthusiasm. [] If, in the immediate future, there will not be a town
commitee 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 shatered 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 Lus population was decreasing. Faced
with this worrisome fact, the question of how it would be possible to revitalise Lu
and atract new people to live there naturally followed. A celebration that would
atract 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 ofer a celebra-
tion capable of involving the young people in Lu again and to relaunch the town from a
tourism point of view. The defnition 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 fnd Aldo Capra, then
mayor, who had been that day in Milan to deliver some wine. On his return he saw
two posters advertising two diferent festivals, one was for peppers and the other
for asparagus, and he said: Why dont 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 frst 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 commitee had any memories of earlier grape harvest festi-
vals in the vicinity of Lu.
14
In order to create a festival that atracted 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 (Switerland). 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 foats, dedicated to the grape and the vine was the highlight: no other pro-
vincial festival ofered a foat parade outside the carnival period.
15
The Grape Harvest festival of Lugano was frst organised in 1933 and since the very frst
event, festival foats have been its main atraction. Virgilio Chiesa, in his book LOpera
della Pro Lugano, ofers the following description of the frst parade:
In the afternoon, the grape harvest foats would parade past, each time diferent
and always distinctive. The foats depicted typical images that refected our iden-
tity: a chalet, a mill, a winepress, a litle porch decorated with cobs of corn and
on the bench an old spinning wheel, the inside of a kitchen with a young mother,
siting next to the freplace, rocking her baby and kniting; a votive chapel where
a young girl confdes her deepest feelings to the Virgin Mary: a grape arbour in a
tavern courtyard and cheerful regular customers siting at the tables; a picture of
two fshermen busy with drift nets; a fountain and next to it two stout peasants
scouring copperware; and foats 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 foats, groups fle 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 fag in which people put their ofer-
ings for the Red Cross. (Chiesa 1949: 5657)
Over time, whilst remaining anchored in the traditional theme of the grape harvest,
the foats in the Lugano festival began to explore new combinations of themes, linking
the agricultural ideal with elements drawn from cinema, fashion, and current afairs.
Giampiero Rinaldi, one of the youngest members of the organising commitee of the
frst Grape Harvest festival in Lu, afrmed that the foats in the 1960s
[] looked like carnival foats, but with one diference: instead of Harlequin and
Pulcinella, there were bunches of grapes and botles of wine. everybody liked the
idea of building foats like those for our festival. A parade of foats in September
was something completely new, but at that time in Lu there were already people
including some of us [the members of the frst organising commitee] who built
the carnival foats in Alessandria and Casale every year.
16
The foat 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 foats, and the proven ability of at least some of the organising commitee
to design and build the foats. These elements combined to create a festival that was
wholly unique to the Alessandria region of the 1970s. In addition to the foat parade,
the ballo a palcheto 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 commitee
decided to give tourists a botle 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 foat named The Addams Winery during the parade of the Grape Harvest Festival in Lu.
11 September 2005. Photo by Davide Capra.
The frst Grape Harvest festival that took place in 1969 successfully atracted much
public interest that pushed the organising commitee to continue with the event and
add to the programme over the following years.
17
Year after year the foat parade con-
tinued to be the core of the festival and as Gianni Boccalate, the later president of the
Pro Loco, had reiterated many times over the years from the 1970s to the 1990s, the
foats are the Grape Harvest festival.
18
The 2005 parade was an example of the way in which the foats could combine
grapes and wine with themes linked to local tradition, current afairs or sport:
Here comes the primary schools foat The fountain of Youth with a wonderful
bubbling fountain (just a few litle 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 foat: a couple of botles next to a gramophone covered with
grapes.
Then comes the foat 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 foat. 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 Pais of the Sablot recalls the
old ways of the grape harvest. (Bo 2005)
Photo 3. The Herbie, the tipsy Beetle foat 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 foat during the parade of the Grape Harvest Festival in
Lu. 11 September 2005. Photo by Davide Capra.
A FAS C I S T C E L E B R AT I ON
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 foat parade, the ballo a palcheto, 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 foat 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 frst national day of the Grape Harvest festival was celebrated on 28th Sep-
tember 1930

(Cavazza 1997: 122125), turning this initiative of Arturo Marescalchi, the
then under-secretary of agriculture, into a reality. In fact, he wanted to fnd an efective
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 ofcial, fascism had already promoted and adver-
tised single-themed festivals, centred on specifc crop production, such as strawber-
ries, wheat and grapes. These proved to be efective tools to re-launch tourism and the
local economy (ibid.: 122). from 1930 onwards, based on these frst experiences, the
Regime enforced a vast national programme of grape harvest festivals in order to revive
the wine growing and producing sector that sufered from the recession of the entire
national viniculture market.

These festivals had to be organised by local commitees and
had to conform to certain criteria: provide a contest for the best ofer of grape sales
and set up a parade with people dressed up as traditional peasants and decorated grape
harvest festival foats, which represented themes linked to wine growing and agricul-
tural life (ibid.: 122123). The archive of the Luce Institute owns several video accounts
of some of the frst 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 foat representing a still life made out of a big bunch of black grapes in a wicker
basket, decorated with vines, a foat representing a steam boat with men and women
on its deck dressed as sailors giving out bunches of grapes to the crowds, and, fnally,
a foat representing a tavern where men and women dressed in traditional costumes
sang and played songs in dialect. This parade, with its festival foats 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 foats 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.: 122125). 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 dellUva 1957) adopted
the fundamental elements of the Fascist festivals: a market to promote local wine and,
above all, the foat 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 foat
parade as the central element of the Lus 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 patern 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.
CONC LUS I ON
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 Daz 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 efect 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 festivals 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 foat 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 unifcation 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 societys 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 atempt
of a community that is facing its disaggregation to counter the social efects of this
trend. In so doing, the passage from a religious feast to a mundane one is not just a
mater 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 atract new fnancial 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 fll 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 fnd 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 forgoten, that
existed locally just a few years earlier.
NOT 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 efects 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 villages two main festivals, namely the festival of the patron saint Valerio,
in addition to shots of Lu taken by the Rai flm team, the footage also showed images of the foat
parade, characteristic of Lus 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 palcheto 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 ofcially ceased to exist.
13 The atmosphere of these festivals is described in the last verse of the poem La vandmmiad
na vota of G. Parmiani in 1997 (Boto et al. 2003: 104), writen and performed for the annual lunch
for the members of the wine cooperative of Saint Giorgio Monferrato: A vandmmia fnija as fava la
curm / e a ca dal pardon iera da senna e da disn. / P i sunadur cun larmoni? e la ghitara, as btavu sun
/ e al divertiment? la comensipiava cun in bel bal. (Once the grape harvest is over the feasting began /
and at the masters 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.
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 palcheto, 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 dellUva 1977). Addi-
tional events were planned prior to the Festival that could extend the celebrations to the weekend
before that of the foat parade, for example in 1976 the exhibition of Wine and Silverware was
inaugurated on the 12th of September, the Saturday preceding the foat parade (Programma della
9a Sagra dellUva 1976).
With the progressive improvements in catering organised by the Pro Loco, the festivals began
to extend to the weekend preceding the foat parade. The frst two-week event took place in 1989,
as the programme of that year shows (Programma della 22a Sagra dellUva 1989).
The frst festivals to take place over two weekends, however, ofered a very limited pro-
gramme on the frst 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 frst 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 ofer a product that atracted 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 Boccalate, 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 frst 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 fritata 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 Pap 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 dellUva 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 defnitive role as
Mario Dealassi explains in his article (Dealassi 1982). Having bought feld 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
dellUva 2000).
21 A vast amount of visual documentation on the Grape Harvest Festivals in Italy is made
available on the Institutes 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: 1556)
23 Television and direct dialling are presented as tools for the unifcation of cultural circula-
tion in a country in which internal migration represents the main tool of cultural circulation, frst
of all in terms of physical mobility (Ortoleva 1997: 132).
S OURC E S
Interview with Gianni Boccalate, 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.
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Vol. 8 (1): 91110
91
UDMURT I DE NT I T Y I S S UE S : COR E MOME NT S
F ROM T HE MI DDL E AGE S T O T HE P R E S E NT DAY
MARIE CASEN
PhD Student
Department of Finno-Ugric Studies
Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO)
75013 Paris, France
e-mail: marie8575d.casen@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
This 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 frst section of the paper considers
the foundations of the Udmurt collective identity (linguistic family and the sig-
nifcance of the territory). The second section focuses on occasions when udmurt
identity markers were at stake as a consequence of ofcial policies or legal afairs
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 ofcial 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
I NT RODUC T I ON
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 redefning their identities. The efects 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 Latvias independence took place on 4 May 1990 and the
re-establishment of the State of Lithuania on 11 March 1990. Apart from these, other
atempts to restore national independence have led to war (see, for example, conficts
*
The author is grateful to Svetlana Edygarova (Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and
Scandinavian Studies, university of Helsinki), Mathew 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 ofcial recognition
and sovereignty. Such is the case for the Volga regions minorities, although the scope
of post-Soviet change is wide: the strong-minded Tatar minority obtained important
benefts, 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 defcit areas populated by non-Russian minorities into
wealthier regions
1
the aim of which was to regain regional control lost during the
1990s, the ethnic activists
2
pursued the process of redefning their identity through an
afrmation 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 informal
3
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. Scientifc rigor prevents non-native researchers from applying con-
cepts from our own scientifc tradition to people whose individual and collective con-
struction is not founded on the same conceptual basis. In some languages (for example,
French identit, English identity, Spanish identitad) this notion can refer to the entangled
factors (cultural, economic, social, political and historical) that afect 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 sam or the adjective asprtemlykse valasmurt can refer to the
personality of an individual
4
(in Russian lichnost). The dictionaries give us further def-
nitions: Udmurt kalykvyjy (in Russian natsionalnost) is afliation with an ethnic group
(Maksimov, Danilov, Saarinen 2008: 184). However, one can consider the Udmurt
notions of self-consciousness, asshdon or asvalan
5
(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 feldwork
6
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-identifed 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 (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 frst 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 HE F OUNDAT I ON OF T HE MODE R N U DMURT
COL L E C T I V E I DE NT 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 (Salnki 2004: 223), and morpho-
logically not very far from Finnic languages. From a political perspective, Finno-Ugric
peoples can be classifed into two sub-categories: peoples with their own titular state
(finns, Hungarians and estonians), and peoples who have always been submited to
an ethnically diferent group (Toulouze, forthcoming). The later 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 setlement has existed since much earlier than a titular administrative terri-
tory, about one ffth of ethnic udmurts
9
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 Oblast
10
) in 1920, at the same time as
the other Volga peoples gained their titular administrative units.
11
Although Udmurts have at present minority status
12
in the Udmurt Republic, this
ofcial 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 participation
13
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 ofcial 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
Republic
15
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 setled 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: 3136).
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 signifcant 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
ofered 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.
DE C I S I V E MOME NT S F OR U DMURT I DE NT 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 signifcance of pre-
sent day Udmurt ethnic activity. This demarche is analysed by Bruno Karsenti (2012:
1250) in his book about the signifcance 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 fctive
framework in which a society can recognise and constitute itself as a people.
The Tsarist Period
Between 1552
17
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 writen 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 fnding 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 destruction
19
and psychological pressure (constant
control of rituals by church ofcials), had notable efects. 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 Multan
21
Afair, which took place
in 1892. The Vuzh Multan afair was the frst 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 setlers did not meet demand and
the help of indigenous rural people became necessary. As a consequence, there was
more frequent contact between the frst inhabitants of Izhevsk and the recently arrived
population of Udmurt workers. In 1892, ten Udmurt peasants were accused of having
commited 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 frst 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 fled
a cassation application. As a result, the court of fnal 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 acquited.
(Vanyushev 1995: 141256) At the time, the Vuzh Multan Afair 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 Afair with a drawing beside
the text that represents a fre, the smoke of which rises in the form of a question mark, as
if the udmurts innocence remained unproven (Shkliaev, Toulouze 2001). In this afair
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 frst half of the 1920s, and dampened, as occurred between 1925 and the 1930s,
as shown by the SOFIN
22
Afair. The turning point occurred with a shift in orientation
of the partys 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 Krezci by Kuzebay Gerd in 1922 and Ashalchi Okis Siures
duryn in 1925), translations, and publications on contemporary issues, the advancement
of womens status, agricultural techniques and folk medicine (Toulouze 2001: 9698).
These works are the source of the frst 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 partys ideology. In the article Socialist construction among the
Volga region people, published in 1937 in the journal Sovetskaya Etnografya, unrelent-
ing atacks against the peoples of the Volga region were justifed like this: for the peo-
ple of multinational Russia previous history is over and the history of liberated people
begins (Lekomtsev 1937: 314; 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 Afair (19321934), was one of the frst 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 confrming an udmurt national identity. The burgeoning generation
of Udmurt intellectuals
25
from the 1920s, including Konstantin Yakovlev, Trofm 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 afrm udmurt identity was repressed with such violence that udmurt poetry
could not fnd its voice again until 1991, with Viktor Shibanovs book of poetry Bertisko
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 signifcant efects on the construction of identity for the youngest
generations.
T HE U DMURT S I N I Z HE VS 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
setlement 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 setled 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 setlers came and became workers in the factories
and forges. At the beginning of the 19th century, Tsarist Russia operated two weapon
plants that were signifcant 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 armys need
for frearms.
The predominance of the industrial sector persisted throughout the Soviet period,
when advanced technological military equipment was the regimes 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, Izhevsks 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:
424516). 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, refecting the assimilation process that continues to infict dam-
age on language competence. Furthermore, urban Udmurt is a standardised language
whose purifed 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 fnd 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 specifcally 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
ofcial 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 System
31
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: 9799). In the 1980s, legislation was introduced which
atempted to restore modern education in national languages
32
in that, apart from lan-
guage courses, study programs included the history and culture of indigenous peo-
ples. These measures were efective until the end of the 1990s, although the number of
national schools began to decrease again in the 2000s
33
(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 modifes or excludes the udmurt-specifc 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 ofer 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 scientifc ambitions. At the
Udmurt State University, the Department of Udmurt Philology, opened in 1993,
34
ofers
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 Commitee
for Youth Afairs 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 ofcial (such as sup-
port from the Ministry, for example).
T HE P OS T- S OV I E T U DMURT GE NE R AT I ON
udmurt ethnic activists can be classifed 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 diferences, 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 defned community by mak-
ing its members more visible in the public sphere and consequently atracting new
membership. The current Udmurt promo-groups are the only groups capable of bring-
ing together udmurt and udmurt-friendly people around unofcial 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 ofcial 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 infu-
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 frst 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, Kechjl zhyts,
40
organised events related to International Womens 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 womens 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 Internets signifcant advantages for the endangered minorities, sufering
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.
Sbastien 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 frst line con-
sists of the cultivation of the growing consciousness of a broader cultural heritage (the
finno-ugric family) that may help to fll 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 society
42
with elements of traditional
udmurt culture. This cultural integration fnds numerous expressions: evgeni Biku-
zins 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 ofer 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 skal
43
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 Bikuzins Street Art: Kuzebay Gerd. Photo by the artist in Izhevsk, 2012.
Photo 2. Evgeni Bikuzins 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-
sifcation) 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 atuned 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 commited 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 refects
a desire to place their culture on an equal footing with infuential 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 atention, but which is also indicative of this strategy, a recent udmurt flm
called Uzy Bory (2011),
44
was a resounding success in the Udmurt Republic. Unlike pre-
vious udmurt flms (for example, documentary flms or The Shadow of Alangasar, 1994),
Uzy Bory is a romantic comedy, a mainstream flm genre, and touches on universal
themes such as love, injustice, friendship and adolescence. However, the flm 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 efectiveness 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 flms audience was not udmurt and not even interested in udmurt culture.
People went to see the flm because it was good, entertaining, with beautiful pictures
of udmurtia. This flm 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).
CONC LUS I ONS
The atmosphere of terror of the 1930s subsided to some extent after Stalins 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 refected
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 infuential sectors (for example the political and economic sectors),
45

based mainly in Izhevsk. That is why, using the means ofered 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?
NOT 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 1018, 2013.
5 In Udmurt, and are always used with a possessive sufx.
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 efects 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
Partys newspaper Gudyri.
14 That balance was reversed in the second half of the decade.
15 In Udmurt: E (Udmurt Elkun).
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 diferent forms of local animist religion.
17 As a consequence of the occupation of Kazan by Ivan IV, the entire territory setled by the
Udmurt people came under Russian domination.
18 Toulouze presents the diferent 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: 100127)
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 sacrifced
according to Udmurt ritual, although it then received holy water and Christian prayers.
21 The afair 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 Afairs (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 1018, 2013.
29 The frst 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 childrens books, although the problem of the distribution system
operators remains unsolvable: there are no books in Udmurt in the towns 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 Peoples 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 litle people or nation with own traditions and culture, which lives under pressure
of greater peoples, lets 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 Kechjl zhyts means the nights of common sowthistle, a yellow fower (Sonchus) of the
Udmurt countryside.
41 It is easier to ban a speech at the individual level, but much more difcult in the global and
automatic context of the Internet (Cagnoli 2012: 12).
42 Globalisation is defned 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 afairs by linking together and expanding human activity across regions
and continents. A satisfactory defnition 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 specifc situation will
be analysed in another article.
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Notes and Reviews 111
NOT E S AND REVI EWS
I NT RODUC T I ON
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 litle theo-
retical framework and cultural meaning with
which to understand these rituals. Thus, what
follows is a thin description (Geert 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 atempt 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-fedged.
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 Bodya
1
(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 diferent,
and that the main rituals in Bashkortostan
are not precisely the same as in the Udmurts
core territory.
We did our feldwork 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 Vilgurt (Novye Taty-
shly) group
2
and ten in the Alga group.
3

UDMURT ANI MI S T CE R E MONI E S I N BAS HKORT OS TAN:
F I E L DWOR K E T HNOGR AP HY
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 vs) and
rituals associating several villages (mr vs).
In the past, between the gurt vs (one-vil-
lage) and the mr vs (ten-village) rituals,
there were three-village rituals (kuin gurt
vs), 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 Alga group and
is called the Bagysh vs
4
(Sadikov 2008:
206). Both village groups hold a mr vs in
December.
5
In spring the collective rituals
of these two groups are held with a difer-
ence of one week: frst the Vilgurt mr vs,
then the Algas. In winter, the Vilgurt mr
vs is held one week before the Bagysh vs,
and two before the Alga mr vs. This is
explained as intended to give the opportu-
nity for people to go visiting relatives and
atend both ceremonies.
The aim of these sacrifcial rituals is
to call for divine blessing on the commu-
nitys activities: to ask for rain in summer,
for health and prosperity all the time. The
prayers address is Oste, Inmare-Kylchyne. It
is difcult 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 fgure, a deus otiosus, whose interfer-
ence in human afairs 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 sacrifced 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 Vilgurt, 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 Alga, the sacral space is also bordered
by a fence, but it is more articulated than in
Vilgurt. 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 ofering participants protection from
the wind, rain and snow. The prayer house
is smaller than in Vilgurt, 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.
Alga 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 ofcials, as was the case
with the previous sacral area in Starokalmi-
yar (Sadikov 2008: 205).
The Bagysh vs, which gathered eight vil-
lages of the Alga 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 Kyzylyar village. It is a sacral area
with a huge fr 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 freplaces
in the middle people turn to the south to
pray and for animal sacrifce.
We have atended both village groups
spring mr vs and the two Alga groups
winter ceremonies. Therefore we have suf-
cient materials to describe how these rituals
are performed, taking into account the dif-
ferences connected to place and season.
T HE PART I C I PANT S
The people and the functions involved in
the ceremonies are the following:
The manager of the ceremony (vs
kuzo), who may be a sacrifcial priest
as in the case of the Vilgurt group or
a lay person as in the Alga 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 sacrifcial priest (vsas) 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 Vilgurt); 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 Alga 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 priests 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 sacrifcial animals entrails.
The village community: usually only
a few members of the village commu-
nity atend the ceremonies. usually
nobody except the people involved
atend 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 sacrifcial 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 OUS P R E PAR AT I ON
AC 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, buter, and money beforehand.
There are diferent traditions in each village
about who is to gather those oferings: in
some villages, as in Petropavlovka, women
are the ones who go from one house to the
other; in other villages, as in Balzyuga, it is
the task of young boys.
The village sacrifcial priest gathers all
the oferings. Among them, there may be
also diferent kinds of textile ofering: 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 vs kuzo must also fnd the ewe or
the ewes (for bigger villages) that shall be
sacrifced. 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 frst 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 HE OP E NI NG OF T HE
C E R E MONY: T HE S I Z I S KON
The siziskon
6
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 sacrifces, but
the modalities of its performance change
depending on local traditions.
In the Alga group, the siziskon 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 fre 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 buter, 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 fr (in winter)
branches; standing in front of the cauldron, he
makes three circles above the caldron with the
bowl held in his hands.
The vs kuzo, as soon
as the priest is fnished
making circles with the
bowl, throws a spoonful
of porridge thrice into
the fre.
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,
fr 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 ofci-
ating during the ceremony. While the priests
pray, in the siziskon 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 atending 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 frst
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 fre is kept
burning for the whole night, so that on the fol-
lowing morning it would be possible to light
the other sacral fres from it. This requires
some atention: thick logs are placed on the
fre, and somebody living nearby has to check
the fre once or twice during the night.
In Vilgurt, the siziskon is held early in the
morning of the proper day of the ritual (see
Photo 1). Thus, there is no need to maintain
the fre over night. The other fres are kindled
nearby. But, unlike in Alga, they make the
Photo 1. The frst prayer, siziskon, during Vilgurt (Novye Tatyshly) mr
vs, June 2013. Photo by Ranus Sadikov.
porridge with the same mixed crops as the
fnal 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 HE S AC R I F I C I AL P R AY E R
There are some activities that must be car-
ried out continuously during ceremonial
activities in the sacral area. As the fres must
be kept burning, some of the assistants deal
with chopping the wood and adding it to the
fres all the time. Another overall task, which
may be very demanding is fetching water. In
Vilgurt, horse-carts circulated between the
village and the sacral area bringing water. In
Alga and in the area for the Bagysh vs, there
is a spring in the forest nearby; in Alga, 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 fre for the collec-
tive ceremony. Usually,
there are as many fres as
cauldrons, and as many
ewes as priests praying
at the ceremony. The
priests are not chosen
(by the vs kuzo) accord-
ing to which village has
provided the ewes, but
according to other crite-
ria: for example in June,
the village of Balzyuga
provided a ewe (but we
do not know who paid
for it), although its young
sacrifcial priest was associated as assistant
but did not publicly pray.
When the fre is big enough, a cauldron is
put onto it (see Photo 2). The frst act is to pour
salt into the cauldron with a prayer, as it was
done in the siziskon, and only afterwards is
water added. At the same time, the assistants
prepare the ewes for the sacrifce. 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 siziskon. While
the priests pray, the assistants are working in
pairs or threes on the sacrifcial 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 animals blood on a
spoon and throws it into the fre. He must do
it three times. In the Vilgurt summer prayer
there were only two men; then, the one who
holds the knife also holds the spoon. When
Photo 2. The fve vsas praying during Alga mr vs, June 2013. Photo
by Eva Toulouze.
116
possible, the ritual slaughtering takes place
simultaneously for all the ewes.
8
During the
prayer, the atendants 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 fre.
T HE ME AT P R AY 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 cuting
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 fre. The
assistants mark ertain pieces of meat that the
priest will use for prayer. The hides of the
sacrifcial animals are placed in front of the
altar bench (Alga) or on sides of the altar
line (Vilgurt).
When they have fnished, they bring the
meat pieces in buckets to the cauldrons. When
there are only white ewes to be sacrifced,
their meat may be mixed.
When there are also black
sheep, the procedure is
somewhat diferent: they
must be isolated from
the others and their meat
is not to be mixed with
any other. Actually black
sheep are sacrifced to a
diferent deity, the earths
deity, Mu-mumy (Earth
Mother). Therefore a hole
is made in the ground
where the black ewes
blood fows as an ofering
to the earth
9
(see Sadikov
2008: 37). Its fesh 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 cigaretes (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 fsh 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
fre (in Vilgurt, the priest did it four times,
maybe because he had black ewes 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 fres with the cauldrons, behind
the fres 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 vsas praying during Vilgurt (Novye Tatyshly) mr
vs, June 2013. Photo by Eva Toulouze.
When the prayer is
fnished, the assistants
gather around the priests
with the meat and eat the
frst 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 frst villagers to atend
for them to nibble. On the other hand, there is
action around the cauldrons: frst, 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 buter (in Vilgurt, the
buter 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 fnal 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 buter, textile oferings
and bread. Those who aford to come person-
ally bring them. In Vilgurt, they just put the
oferings in specifc places: a horizontal pole
for the textiles, a low bench in front of the
praying priests for the bread. In Alga, the
tradition is diferent: the items are given to
a vsas, who blesses them with some words
Photo 4. Preparation of the porridge during Vilgurt (Novye Tatyshly) mr
and hangs them on a rope. If the people can-
not aford to atend the ceremony, they give
these items beforehand to the vs kuzo.
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 fnally ready.
Then, they take the cauldrons from the fre
(in Alga, 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) atend 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 HE C L OS I NG OF T HE
C E R E MONY
The closing of the ceremony consists of the
fnal prayer and the sweeping of the fre-
places.
118
In Vilgurt, the last prayer is the prayer over
the money oferings (dzhuget). Actually dur-
ing the ceremony, a plate or a special box is
put out, into which people are encouraged
to ofer 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 of 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 freplaces while the
audience leaves the ceremonial ground and
the other priests and assistants start washing
cooking utensils and packing things.
In Alga, 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
ofered, and an upturned
water botle is nailed
nearby, allowing peo-
ple to pour water on the
money (in winter money
is washed in snow).
In Alga the clos-
ing of the ceremony is
somewhat diferent than
in Vilgurt. While the
priests pray holding the
branches in their hand, some of the assis-
tants walk in circles around the freplaces, on
which the bones and the entrails have been
piled up to burn, they hold branches in their
hands and symbolically sweep the freplaces.
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 freplaces 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 atended 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 HE DI S T R I B UT I ON
The inhabitants of the villages, who have con-
tributed to the ceremony, generally do not
atend 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 Alga mr vs, June 2013.
Photo by Eva Toulouze.
ridge: this is their way
to participate. When the
sacrifcial 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 atitude 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 diferences and the repeti-
tive patern of these rituals. We consider that
atending four such rituals performed by two
diferent groups gives us enough justifcation
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 diferences 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 atend 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 freplaces during Alga mr
NOT 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,
Balzyuga, Mayskiy, as well as Verhnye, Nizhnye
and Novye Tatyshly (Sadikov 2008: 205).
3 Bigineevo, Tanypovka, Kyzylyar, Verhnye
and Nizhnebaltachevo, Starokalmiyarovo, Alga,
Dubovka, Petropavlovka, Utar-Elga (Sadikov
2008: 205206).
4 While according to Sadikov this ceremony
concerned only the three villages of Nizhnebal-
tachevo, Verhnebaltachevo and Kyzylyar, our
experience is diferent: it was atended in 2003 by
eight villages.
5 Actually this is a new tradition at least for
the Vilgurt group: it had been interrupted in the
Soviet period (Sadikov 2008: 212).
6 From siziskyny to promise, to devote, to
consecrate.
7 We noticed this action in the winter cere-
mony, while we had not fxed 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.
120
8 In the Bagysh vs, they discovered that knives
had been forgoten, 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 OGR AP HY
Geert, Cliford 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures:
Selected Essays. New York: Harper
Lintrop, Aado 1995. Pagan Sacrifcing Procedures
of the Udmurts. Mare Kiva, Kai Vassiljeva
(eds.). Folk Belief Today. Tartu: Institute of the
Estonian Language and Estonian Museum of
Literature, 270275.
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 Kiva, Kai
Vassiljeva (eds.). Folk Belief Today. Tartu: Insti-
tute of the Estonian Language and Estonian
Literary Museum, 331334.
Sadikov 2008 = , . -

(
). : -
, 2008.
Sadikov 2011a = , .
-
(
). (.
.). -
- -
. : -
. . . -
, 2011, 108133.
Sadikov 2011b = , .
-
(
). -

. : -
. . . -
, 2011.
Sadikov, Danilko 2005 = , -
; . . ,
(
). -
(.). -. -
-
. :
, ,
2005, 230233.
Eda Kalmre, The Human Sausage Factory: A
Study of Post-War Rumour in Tartu. Amster-
dam: Rodopi, 2013. 180 p.
Eda Kalmres 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. 1819), this material was largely
ignored during the Soviet period by special-
ists in the feld due to the political situation
at the time. This work uncovers an important
contemporary legend cycle and its connec-
tions to previously atested 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 efects 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 authors 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 (frst atested 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 19201940 led to the resurfacing of
this legend patern in the form of rumours
and stories about the human sausage fac-
tory. estonia sufered occupation by German
(19411944) and Soviet forces (19391941)
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 fourish. 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-
122
tury) to the representatives of Soviet power:
Estonian immigrants from Russia, Russians,
and Jews, all described as dark and shadowy
fgures 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 diferences in language and cultural
practice. In point of fact, many of them were
devoted communists and were veted by the
government and chosen to be resetled 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 resetlement practices from other areas of
the USSR. The Russian ethnicity, represented
at frst by soldiers and then by security ofc-
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 Tartus close
neighbour, Leningrad, which sufered from a
Nazi blockade. Tartu, like many post-War cit-
ies, sufered 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 beter 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 fnal 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 conficts 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 infuence 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)
NOT E S F OR CONT R I BUT OR 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.
Preparation of Manuscripts. Contributions may vary widely in length; research articles
should generally not exceed 30 pages, shorter pieces might include critical essays, commen-
taries, discussions and reviews of recent books. Submited manuscripts should be writen
in english and uploaded to the journals homepage in RTf, Microsoft Word, Open Ofce,
or iWork Pages document fle format. Please send tables, fgures, illustrations and text as
separate fles.
Submited research articles will be read by referees. Each paper should include a self-
contained abstract in English of a maximum of 150 words, summarising the articles main
points plus 5 keywords. The frst page should contain the name, afliation and address of
each author.
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 Signifcance of Food to Medieval
Women. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kirshenblat-Gimblet, 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, 4659.
The Royal Anthropological Institute. Report of the Strategic Review Working Group. htp://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 htp://www.jef.ee/index.php/journal/
about/submissions
Editorial address:
Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics
Estonian National Museum
Veski 32, 51014 Tartu, Estonia
E-mail: toivo.sikka@erm.ee or ergo-hart.vastrik@ut.ee
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.
UL R I K A WOL F -KNUT S
Would I Have Been Beter Of There? Comparison, Need
and Conduciveness in Finnish Emigrants Account
T I I NA S E P P
Pilgrimage and Pilgrim Hierarchies in Vernacular Discourse:
Comparative Notes from the Camino de Santiago and Glastonbury
ANDRE AS K AL KUN
Fasts and Feasts in Estonians Representations of the Seto Culture
MI CHE LE F I L I P P O F ONT E F R ANCE S CO
Of Grape, Feast and Community: An Ethnographic Note on the
Making of the Grape Harvest Festival in an Italian Town in
Piedmont
MAR I E CAS E N
Udmurt Identity Issues: Core Moments from the Middle Ages
to the Present Day
NOT E S AND RE VI E WS
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)
J OURNAL OF ETHNOLOGY
AND FOLKLORI STI CS
Volume 8 | Number 1 | 2014
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