Textualising an Oral Epic – Mission Completed

Abstract

In this article the author briefly examines three cases that represent Lauri Honko’s views on the textualisation of oral epics. Furthermore, these examples offer an insight into the concept of the paradigm, which was a key concept for Lauri Honko in the field of folkloristics and in the study of religion. The three case studies are as follows:1. A literary folk epic based on an oral tradition: the ‘singing scribe’ Elias Lönnrot, who compiled a number of versions of his Kalevala on the basis of Kalevala-metric folk poems.2. An epic based on multimedia documentation/ fieldwork: the Siri Epic, sung by Gopala Naika. He was an erudite singer, who used to perform the epic on ritual occasions or in the work-song context.3. An epic based on an archived oral tradition: the long epic of the Setu female singer Anne Vabarna, who produced a twin epic with the encouragement of the collector Armas Otto Väisänen, who dreamt about writing down such an epic.These three examples all belong to the ‘second life’ category of folklore in the sense that all of them have been produced outside the ‘system of communication’ which maintains an item of folklore in its original setting.

Keywords

• Honko, Lauri, 1932-2002
• Folklore, Finnish
• Finland
• Epics
• Kalevala
• Oral tradition