Pre-Modern Seminar No 19: Ülo Valk

On Monday November 26th Ülo Valk will give a talk called:

"Thunder and the Devil: History of a Folk Belief"

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The seminar will take place in the library of Skandinavistika (Ülikooli 17, 3rd floor, room 305) at 18.15.
 

Ülo has sent us a short presentation of the lecture:

“The motif of thunder (pikne, äike) chasing the Devil (kurat, vanapagan) who is killed by lightning appears in different genres of Estonian folklore. This is the most popular Estonian folk explanation for the phenomenon of thunder. It is a widely spread international belief that thunder is a celestial deity who destroys evil powers. It has been traced to proto-Indo-European mythology and obviously belongs to the oldest layers of Finno-Ugric beliefs. The paper will discuss the persistence and transformation of this belief in the context of spread of Christian worldview, education and literacy in Estonia. It will shed light on genre dynamics and hybridity of Estonian folklore during the last centuries, when study-books of nature and ideas of national romanticism transformed the more traditional vernacular beliefs of rural communities. Sources of the Estonian Folklore Archives appear as a heteroglot body of heritage, where religious beliefs coexist with neomythological and materialist discourses.”

Everybody is welcome!