Bronislava Kerbelyte
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2015.

I: Genres and Tale Types. II: The Classification and Index of Elementary Plots and Their Types. The classification system of the types of folk tales published by Antti Aarne in 1910 was a much needed and courageous project. Bronislava Kerbelyte has classified more than 40,000 variants of Lithuanian folk tales according to the international catalogue by Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson (AT). She has concluded that it is necessary to improve the classification system. Kerbelyte has determined elementary plots (EP) as structural elements for narratives and created the structural-semantic method for analysis and description of texts on several levels. The classification of elementary plots and their types contains much information about folk tales and about people. FF Communications No. 308 & 309 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Art Leete
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2014.

This monograph is aimed for discussing the views of the character of the Khanty, Mansi and Nenets by authors of different periods. Changes of general ideas about the inhabitants of the Arctic has had a remarkable, albeit often concealed, role in the development of the research on northern peoples. The author examines the image of northern peoples beginning from ancient Greek and Roman accounts of peoples, medieval sources, modern travel journals and ends up with the analyses of contemporary scholarly writings. The book is an attempt to explore the general background of ideas and the scientific methodology that frames changes in this knowledge about the peoples of the North. The theoretical framework of this monograph is related to the dialogue between modern theories of identity and the historical modes of description. FF Communications No. 306 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

G. A. Megas; Anna Angelopoulos; Aigli Brouskou; Marianthi Kaplanoglou; Emmanouela Katrinaki
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2012.

The collected texts cover a period of more than a century of recordings (from the second half of the nineteenth century up to the mid-1970s) and geographically cover not only the entire Greek territory and Cyprus but also other areas where Greek populations live(d) and Greek cultures thrive(d) (Asia Minor, Pontus, Cappadocia, Southern Italy). Georgios A. Megas drafted the first catalogue, gathering and indexing all published and unpublished Greek folktale versions, so that the number of texts finally exceeded 23 000. A group of specialists continued for nearly 30 years carrying this project, consulting, classifying, and commenting G. Megas’ handwritten card indexes, and finally editing this rich material, scattered in public and private archives. FF Communications No. 303 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Alexandra Bergholm
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2012.

This study charts the ways in which Buile Shuibhne has been interpreted in twentieth-century scholarship, by paying particular attention to the religious allegorical readings of the text. This examination of four prevalent interpretative frameworks ‒ historical, pre-Christian, and anthropological ‒ relates theoretical conceptions of literary theory, comparative religion and historiography to the study of medieval narrative material, by considering the nature of different methodological presuppositions that have guided the scholars’ understanding of the tale’s meaning. The integration of issues relating to text, context, and interpretation raises the issue of communally shared reading strategies in the explication of interpretive variety, thereby highlighting the importance of asking not only what a text means, but also how it means. FF Communications No. 302 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Merrill Kaplan
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2011.

A stranger appears at the court of a Norwegian king known best for bringing Christianity to the North. Variations of this scene appear four times in the fourteenth-century manuscript Flateyjarbok. Thou Fearful Guest analyzes how these episodes create meaning by their connections to custom, law, myth, discourses of historical and spiritual truth, typological understandings of time, and the historical context of the manuscript in which they appear. Thou Fearful Guest explores how and to what end medieval Icelanders thought about tales of heathen gods and heroes. FF Communications No. 301 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Nils-Arvid Bringeus
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2009.

Nils-Arvid Bringeus provides a detailed analysis of the founder of folklore research in Sweden, Professor Carl Wilhelm von Sydow (1878-1952). We are introduced to a fascinating personality and able to follow his persevering struggle to gain acceptance for a new academic discipline. Von Sydow took a highly active interest in international cooperation, not least within the field of folktale research. He taught at both Lund and Uppsala universities, establishing a taxonomy within the study of folklore that has been of great importance. FF Communications No. 298 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Carme Oriol; Josep M. Pujol
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2008.

The Catalan language is spoken over a large area divided among four states (Andorra, Spain, France and Italy), with a total population of 13.5 million inhabitants. Catalan culture has a large body of literature as well as a rich and extensive tradition of folklore studies. Catalan folktales were ignored by the Types of the Folktale until the second edition (1961), which included only references to the collection published by Joan Amades (1950). The present Index of Catalan Folktales brings together the work of some seventy collectors working along 150 years and for the first time gives a faithful and complete image of the Catalan contribution to the world´s folklore heritage. FF Communications No. 294 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Isabel Cardigos; Paul Correia; J. J. Dias Marques
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2006.

In the old Aarne / Thompson, Portugal was virtually non-existent, appearing in the bibliography of just three folktales. In 2003, the author of The Types of International Folktales stretched his hand to the first manuscript of the Catalogue of Portuguese Folktales and included them in 700 types of his own manuscript. The Catalogue of Portuguese Folktales is now the first regional index that takes into account the classifications of the new ‘ATU’. But it displays its difference by electing its own affinities with old ‘AT’ numbers, with regional catalogues, or even by offering new numbers. We can see a new face of the European folktale emerging, with a strong Mediterranean flavour. FF Communications No. 291 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Outi Lauhakangas
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2000.

From 1965 to 1974 Matti Kuusi was editor-in-chief of the famous journal Proverbium and invited proverb scholars to contribute to this forum. During this period he began to keep a card index of literature references to proverb types and made his first experiment in the thematic classification of international proverb materials in the 1970s. This volume is a study of the development of this type system. Outi Lauhakangas attempts to show how her father’s practical dream of a common international reference code came to be realised. The reader will find a list of some 700 global or almost global proverb motifs and can access the database via the website of The Finnish Literature Society. FF Communications No. 275 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Maarten Kossmann
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2000.

This book studies the structure and style of orally transmitted fairy tales from Eastern Morocco in Berber and dialectal Arabic. Drawing on materials collected in his own fieldwork and other sources, the author pays special attention to the aesthetics of the fairy tale as understood by Max Lüthi and to the analysis of tale-specific formulae. Two hitherto unpublished Figuig Berber fairy tales are appended, as is a comparison of two versions of an Eastern Riffian story which, though collected independently at an interval of 60 years, show remarkable similarities. FF Communications No. 274 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Heda Jason
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2000.

The present manual describes in detail methods and procedures for classifying (indexing/typing) folk literature. It has been prepared by an ethnopoetician at the suggestion of colleagues engaged in philological-historical research and is written on the basis of the author’s experience in both compiling indices for oral folk literature and using indices compiled by others. The Manual describes concepts, methods and working techniques. Three kinds of indices are described: indices for literary motifs, indices for tale types of oral and folk literatures and indices for ethnopoetic genres. FF Communications No. 273 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Marjatta Jauhiainen
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1998.

Lauri Simonsuuri’s Typen- und Motivverzeichnis der finnischen mythischen Sagen (FFC 182), published in 1961 and reprinted in 1987, became a classic among the national legend catalogues. Marjatta Jauhiainen’s work not only updates and brings into English the catalogue, it is a thorough revision and enlargement of the classification system itself. In the introduction she surveys the history of collecting and the progress of belief-legend cataloguing on the international scene providing a concordance with Reidar Th. Christiansen’s The Migratory Legends (FFC 175, 1958/1992). A clarification of key terms, a subject directory and a map displaying tradition areas in Finland help the reader to orientate in the exceptionally rich store of belief legends and memorates. FF Communications No. 267 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Christine Goldberg
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1997.

Folkloristic analysis of The Tale of the Three Oranges, tracing its narrative structure, motifs, and cross-cultural variants. FF Communications No. 263 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Satu Apo
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1995.

Finnish fairy tales represent the northern branch of the Western European fairy-tale tradition. Although Finnish epic folklore and mythology have been objects of great research interest, Finnish fairy tales have been studied surprisingly little. This study answers not only methodological but also the most important empirical questions, such as: what are the themes, plots and characters which have been able to entertain both fairy-tale tellers and their listeners from one generation to the next? How can these contentual elements be understood and interpreted within the framework of traditional Finnish folk culture? /// The methodological issues dealt with here include the question of how to approach traditional folklore material recorded in the 1800s, of which there is an enormous amount but very little accompanying contextual information. In order to analyse the contents of the tales, this study suggests the use of several semantic levels of abstraction as well as the systematic analysis of variation; only then is it feasible to present macrocontextual, interpretive hypotheses in which narrative and cultural structures are examined side by side. FF Communications No. 256 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.