Klaipėdos universitetas

During my anthropological fieldwork in Estonia in 1996–97 I approached various folkloristic traditions and practices at several occasions. My meeting with folklorists and their practices can be described as a ‘clash’ between academic disciplines. As an anthropology student I obviously reacted to how folklorists related to their research material. It is probably often so when people from different disciplines meet, that disagreements will arise about how research is done and fieldwork material is interpreted. Somehow we have to accept these differences, but sometimes it is also inspiring to get to know what people from other disciplines think about your own discipline. I want to give an account of folkloristic practices as seen through the eyes of an anthropologist. And it is related to a particular time and place: Estonia in the 1990ties at the time of my fieldwork. I guess, and I know, that changes have occurred since then, but I still hope that these reflections can be of interest.

Among the barrows attributed to the local Slavic population in the area of the left bank of the Upper Oka and right bank of the Upper Desna are barrows where the burial rites differ from the local inhabitants’. Different types of burials, a man’s burial with weapon and a horse, a horse’s burial, a horse’s burial with a man’s or animal’s cremation, a man’s burial with weapons, a man’s burial with a bird’s burial, a man’s burial under a rectangular stone barrow, were typical burial customs of Baltic and Finno-Ugric inhabitants in the 11th to 13th centuries AD.