Gardeła, Entangled Worlds Archaeologies of Ambivalence in the Viking Age.pdf

Approaching Methodology

Edited by Frog and Pauliina Latvala

A Special Issue of RMN Newsletter

№ 4

May 2012

RMN Newsletter is edited by

Frog

Helen F. Leslie and Mathias Nordvig

Published by

Folklore Studies / Dept. of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies

University of Helsinki, Helsinki

ISSN/ISSN-L: 1799-4497

www.helsinki.fi/folkloristiikka/English/RMN/

C ONTENTS

A PPROACHING M ETHODOLOGY

Preface and Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... 5

Opening Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue: A Virtual Workshop on Methodology .............................. 7

Frog in collaboration with Pauliina Latvala

Part I: Method in Practice

Method in Practice: An Introduction ............................................................................................. 20

Method and Fieldwork in a Hermeneutical Perspective ................................................................ 23

Espen Suenson

Building a Visual Vocabulary: The Methodology of ‘Reading’ Images in Context ..................... 31

Jill Bradley

The Parallax Approach: Situating Traditions in Long-Term Perspective...................................... 40

Frog

The Ghost of Methodologies Past: Untangling Methods, Methodologies, and Methodologists

in Black Studies ............................................................................................................................. 59

Sonja Peterson-Lewis

Part II: Constructing Data

Constructing Data: An Introduction............................................................................................... 72

Qualitative Research and the Study of Language Use and Attitudes ............................................ 75

Francisco Martínez Ibarra

Dialogic Methodology and the Dialogic Space Created after an Interview .................................. 80

Venla Sykäri

Editing Skaldic Verse and the Problem of Prosimetra................................................................... 88

Erin Michelle Goeres

Ethnographic Questionnaires: After Method, after Questions....................................................... 97

Dani Schrire

Part III: Culturally Sensitive Reading

Culturally Sensitive Reading: An Introduction............................................................................ 105

The Anglo-Saxon Charms: Texts in Context ............................................................................... 108

Rebecca M.C. Fisher

The Sensitive Interpretation of Emotions: Methodological Perspectives on Studying

Meanings in Written Life-Historical Narratives .......................................................................... 126

Pauliina Latvala and Kirsi Laurén

Design Poiesis: An Inquiry on Outcomes in the Use of Method and Methodology ................... 136

Thelma Lazo-Flores

Younger Icelandic Manuscripts and Old Norse Studies .............................................................. 148

Helen F. Leslie

Ferocious Beast ( óarga dýr ) between North and East ................................................................. 162

Fjodor Uspenskij

Part IV: Function, Structure and Statistics

Function, Structure and Statistics: An Introduction..................................................................... 169

Categorising Christ within an Age- ǋld Paradigm: The ‘Kenning System’ and Shifting

Cultural Referents ........................................................................................................................ 172

Emily Osborne

Poetic Formulas in Late Medieval Icelandic Folk Poetry: The Case of Vambarljóð .................. 181

Haukur Þorgeirsson

A Method for Analyzing World-Models in Scandinavian Mythology ........................................ 196

Mathias Nordvig

A System of Techniques and Stratagems for Outlining a Traditional Ethnic Identity ................ 209

Vladimir Glukhov † and Natalia Glukhova

C OMMENTS AND C OMMUNICATIONS

Conferences and Seminars

Conference Report: Old Norse Folklorist Network Meeting....................................................... 217

Mart Kuldkepp

Conference Announcement: VAF III: Identity and Identification and the Viking Age in

Finland (with Special Emphasis on the Åland Islands) ............................................................... 219

Joonas Ahola and Frog

Meeting of the Retrospective Methods Network’s Old Norse Scholars ...................................... 221

Helen F. Leslie

P EOPLE

Research Reports

Frog

Shamans, Christians, and Things in Between: Riddles of Cultural Transition in

Medieval Karelia .................................................................................................................. 222

Natalia Glukhova

Systemic Reconstruction of Mari Ethnic Identity ................................................................ 223

Mart Kuldkepp

Travel and Holy Islands in Eireks saga víðförla and Eiríks saga rauða ............................. 223

Ilkka Leskelä

Within and between Languages: Spheres and Functions of Different Languages in

Written and Oral Practical Communication in the Late Medieval Baltic Sea Region......... 224

Sonja Petrović

The Battle of Kosovo (1389) in Oral Epic Tradition: Story Models, Forms, Ideologies..... 225

Published Articles

Frog

Circum-Baltic Mythology? – The Curious Case of the Theft of the Thunder Instrument

(AT 1148b)........................................................................................................................... 226

Triin Laidoner

The Flying Noaidi of the North: Sámi Tradition Reflected in the Figure Loki

Laufeyjarson in Old Norse Mythology ................................................................................ 227

Helen F. Leslie

‘The Matter of Hrafnista’ ..................................................................................................... 227

Eila Stepanova

Reflections of Belief Systems in Karelian and Lithuanian Laments: Shared Systems of

Traditional Referentiality? ................................................................................................... 228

PhD Projects

Leszek Gardeła

Entangled Worlds: Archaeologies of Ambivalence in the Viking Age ............................... 229

Svetlana Tsonkova

Charms, Prayers, Amulets: Verbal Magic and Daily Life in Medieval and Early Modern

Bulgaria ................................................................................................................................ 234

C ALLS FOR P APERS

Would You Like to Submit to RMN Newsletter? ........................................................................ 236

on the level of metaphoric or formulaic

language and expressions; and 3) on the level

of motifs employed in funeral laments. The

traditions of Karelian and Lithuanian laments,

as well as Lithuanian and Latvian folk songs,

share numerous similar features. These

features occur on all levels, from the

elementary aspects of poetic language (their

stylistic and grammatical features, poetic

images and metaphors), to larger motifs and

more comprehensive aspects of ritual

activities. This shows that although the

language of the tradition was different in each

culture,

similar systems of traditional referentiality.

These systems of traditional referentiality are

necessarily rooted in the history of each

tradition, drawing on its past in applications

of “word power” in the present. Moreover,

these traditions reflect common conceptions

of death and the otherworld, where the

ancestors of the community meet the newly

deceased. If the sources accessible to me

prove to be generally representative of the

tradition, then the Karelian and Lithuanian

laments appear to share certain significant

features of mythology, worldview and beliefs,

which are unlikely to be accidental.

they

were

utilizing

remarkably

PhD Projects

Entangled Worlds: Archaeologies of Ambivalence in the Viking Age

Leszek Gardeła, University of Aberdeen

Dissertation defended for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Archaeology at the Department of Archaeology,

University of Aberdeen on the 21 st May 2012.

Supervisors: Professor Neil S. Price (University of Aberdeen) and Dr Peter Jordan (University of Aberdeen).

Opponents: Professor Andrew Reynolds (University College London), Professor Stefan Brink (University of Aberdeen).

During the last decade, the research

paradigms in Viking-Age scholarship have

undergone a significant change. Textual

scholars and archaeologists have begun to

collaborate more closely than before,

engaging in an open yet critical dialogue,

which among other things has opened new

possibilities in examining the notions of belief

and ritual practices and their practitioners in

the past.

Today, it is frequently argued that the

Scandinavian societies of the late Iron Age, in

a perceptual sense, lived in what could be

regarded as an ‘ensouled world’ where the

‘sacred’ could manifest itself in a wide range

of forms – in places, beings and objects. With

the assistance of textual sources (mostly in the

form of Old Norse written accounts, but also

other comparative evidence from other areas

of the early medieval world), archaeologists

are trying to get a more detailed

understanding of those archaeological

remains from the Viking Age that seem to be

material reflections of the multivariate beliefs

people held at that time.

In recent years, there has been an

increasing interest, especially from

Scandinavian scholars, in the archaeology and

anthropology of early medieval ritual

specialists. 1 This thesis is intended to be a

new contribution to the debate on the social

role and especially to the social perception of

such individuals. On the basis of the available

textual accounts, as well as broad

archaeological evidence, it is argued that the

approaches to and the multiple understandings

of these individuals, as well as the different

forms of tools of their trades were, and are

bound to be today, suffused with the notion of

‘ambivalence’.

229

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