Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

Using authentic material from inhabitants of Lithuania Minor, the article analyses the specific nature of the feast of Pentecost in this region, in terms of its chronological development (starting with the first written references up to this day), in order to reveal the most conspicuous stages in its development, and modern transformations of the customs and traditions. The article covers the main elements of the feast of Pentecost for the Lietuvininkai dating from the end of the 19th and the 20th century. These elements are then compared to the feast of Pentecost in other regions, in order to reveal structural and functional changes in calendar festivals.

The instrumental music-making tradition of Lithuania Minor was officially recognised as a valuable part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and included in the national register in 2022. In the 20th century, the way of preserving the instrumental music-making of the Lietuvininkai (the inhabitants of Lithuania Minor) typically used for folklore was not followed, and it would have ceased to exist. However, the folklore revival movement that emerged in the 1960s, along with the determined efforts of Antanas Butkus, a master instrument maker, to restore the folk music instruments of Lithuania Minor, and other favourable circumstances, gave rise to renewed interest and new directions for the development of the tradition. The purpose of this article is to explore the forms and development of this folklore tradition, and to identify the factors that had the most important impact on its decline, restoration and continuity.

The subject of this research is feminine gender roles in Kristina Sabaliauskaitė’s Silva rerum and Kerstin Thorvall’s The Story of Signe. The aim of the thesis is to identify the most common traditional and non-traditional gender roles of women in historical literary narratives by two women writers. The study identifies six gender roles of women: four traditional (mother and wife, daughter and care-giver/housewife), and two non-traditional (adventurer and competitor). The research shows that in historical literary narratives, despite the space-time of the novels, the main semantic axis remains the traditional gender roles of women. The failure to fulfil traditional gender roles determines the emergence of non-traditional gender roles, and a negative impact on the state of women in the novels.

From the earliest descriptions and studies, the Prussian Lithuanians, or Lietuvininkai, and their sung folklore have usually been treated as one unit. However, the ethnographic region of Lithuania Minor is a vast territory stretching over 200 kilometres from north to south. Two distinct areas of ethnic Lietuvininkai music can be identified within it. This article aims to investigate the musical features of the folklore that existed in the Klaipėda district, and to reveal its uniqueness in the context of Lietuvininkai sung folklore.

The goal of the article is to examine chronologically the specific nature of the Easter holiday in