Paul Ariste ürgvadjaluse kontseptsioon ja Oudekki Figurova

Abstract

Paul Ariste initially visited Votia in the summer of war in 1942 and found there a vigorous generation who knew well the peasant-centred world where their ancestors had been living for long times. After World War II, Paul Ariste and his students explored Votia for many summers between 1947 and the end of the 1970s. Paul Ariste's postwar research on the Votic language and folklore was at the same time a testimony of a perishing nation. That the already empathic approach in his fieldwork diaries became nostalgia is therefore comprehensible. The epithet `primeval Votianism' was used by him during the last decades specifically to characterise the worldview and tradition of three older female informants - Maria Boranova, Olga Ivanova (Mati village) and Oudekki Figurova (Rajo village). Primeval Votianism was not merely an idea for Ariste - it was embodied in a certain social character or role. Oudekki Figurova remained his favourite mainly because of her peculiar habits, her status as a healer and a singer, and her somewhat tragic opposition to the contemporary worldview. Oudekki Figurova was born on March 14, 1891 in Jõgõperä village, Kunikvalla. Paul Ariste did not meet her until 1964. Ever since he visited her during all of his later expeditions.