Koolipärimuse kogumisest Noarootsis ja Vormsis 2006. aasta kevadel

• Main Author: Piret Voolaid
• Format: Article
• Language: Estonian
• Published: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum 2007-01-01
• Series: Mäetagused
• Subjects: Åland; Gotland; school lore; children’s lore; Noarootsi; Vormsi; fieldwork
• Online Access: http://www.folklore.ee/tagused/nr35/kogumine.pdf

The article reviews the project of collecting school lore, instigated by Nordens Institut på Åland (the Nordic Institute on Åland) which aim was to collect school lore from Åland (Finland), Gotland (Sweden) and the former regions of coastal Swedes in Estonia in spring 2006. The collected material was published in a Swedish-language joke anthology Det var en ko och det var poängen (’Once there was a cow - and that’s it!’), in which the Estonian material is presented in two languages. In Estonia, the fieldwork for the project was carried out in April and May, 2006, in two general education schools in West Estonia: in Noarootsi School (with 138 pupils) and Vormsi Basic School (21 pupils). I undertook the three-day field trip to Noarootsi on my own, whereas on the two-day trip to the Vormsi Island I was accompanied by Alar Madisson, photographer of the Estonian Literary Museum, and Astrid Tuisk at the Estonian Folklore Archives. The choice of these two rural schools for folkloric fieldwork was made by our Swedish partners, who argued that these remain in the former settlement areas of the coastal Swedes and were particularly interested in the contemporary school lore of this particular region, which has been inhabited by Estonian Swedes for nearly eight centuries. The same fieldwork methods were applied in Noarootsi and Vormsi. First, the schoolchildren responded to questionnaires under the supervision of teachers. The questionnaires were based on one used in the 1992 major collection campaign for collecting school lore in Estonia. The children were asked to write down 1) jokes; 2) riddles, conundrums and trick tasks; 3) proverbs, truisms and set phrases/quip words; 4) horror tales and absurd tales; 5) parodies, songs, verses; 6) various predictions; 7) the repertoire of verse books, notebooks and friendship books; 8) various hobbies, customs and tricks; 9) games; 10) information on using the Internet. This was followed by in situ interviewing of children: 29 children from grades 4-6 (ages 10-12) were interviewed in Pürksi and children from four mixed year classes in Vormsi (ages 8-15, the total of 16 pupils). In addition to directed interviews, participation observation was used. The fieldwork expedition resulted in 90 pages of archive material, consisting of questionnaire responses from the Noarootsi School and 15 pages of responses from the Vormsi Basic School, constituting over 5 hours of audio-recordings, 1.5 hours of video-recorded material and 335 photographs. The selection of material published in the anthology is only a small part of the lively tradition of the children of Noarootsi and Vormsi: the material reflects only a moment in the folkloric process with a focus of specific children. The material collected at fieldwork refers to traditions and innovations, the global and regional phenomena in the children’s lore of a small area. All traditional folklore genres were represented: the responses to the questionnaires as well as oral interviews included mostly jokes and conundrums, minor forms, games, as was expected, and quite surprisingly also religious and local legends. The material largely reflects the all-Estonian tradition, which is known on Vormsi Island, in Noarootsi, and elsewhere in Estonia (jokes about Juku, lore connected with dating portal www.rate.ee, counting-out rhymes, games, etc.). However, the region’s lore also reflects the global migration and characteristic features can be found with the lore of other countries (blonde jokes, etc.). The older Estonian children’s lore (jokes about Juku, Chukchi jokes, certain games) is largely of eastern origin, although the proportion of western and international tradition is increasingly growing. Estonia continues to be the area with a highly unique fixed children’s lore between the east and the west. The collected material displays less regional characteristics. The peculiarities of West-Estonian lore are manifest in the names of certain games, and summoning the White Lady with an Ouija board (this may be explained by the close location of the town of Haapsalu, in the castle window of which the figure of the White Lady is seen, but the phenomenon may also be culture-specific - e.g. the Russians summon pikovaia dama, or the Queen of Spades). The local colouring is added by ghost or horror tales, which are created by the children or which they have heard from their parents, but which are based on a traditional plot (e.g. in Noarootsi, the tales are about the pig farm, the school building and the dormitory, in Vormsi about the former local border guard station). Compared to the earlier school lore, the contemporary tradition is being increasingly spread through new channels (WWW, mobile phone communication). The active lore tradition is also expressed in the communication between children, in which old plots and forms are altered and adapt to new environments.