Alternative, folk, and state medicine services intersect in the spheres of voluntary assistance and joint financing, donation medicine, charity movement, and solidary charity. Voluntary activity involves many people in different age groups and with different opportunities, and is wider than changes in lifestyle and an inherent turn to local activities and stances. The global trend remains in the transitional area of different domains, yet its deeply humane message, joint assistance to people in an emergency situation, constitutes the continuation of traditional means of assistance in today’s society. Charity medicine has opened up new topics for humanitarian studies. The article discusses the state and local institutions’ supportive activities for health care and, for example, for the coping strategies of people with severe health damage, as well as the support provided by different media channels for people with health issues, and voluntary help based on personal free will. The article focuses on the following questions: What is the status of solidarity in today’s medicine and welfare services? What are the characteristics, approaches, and results of charity medicine in Estonia? What questions are raised by charity? Do we deal with only medical and health issues or with human fractals?
The article traces changes in human cognitive and social development using the example of the only domesticated insect, the bee. From the 13th to the 20th century, forest bee-keeping spread, using live trees as beehives, and later also log hives on the ground. The ways of keeping bees changed fundamentally in the 19th century with the introduction of new types of hives, and they also consolidated beliefs in relation to bees. Bees had numerous special names, euphemisms were used when talking about them and in incantations, in which bees were called men/workers or other kinship terms were used, and they were also called domestic animals of the guardian fairies. The article presents beliefs about bees as soul animals and various mythical stories that were associated with the journey of the soul, as well as the popular belief about the connection between the death of the owner and the bees. While earlier on honey denoted an abundant and ideal life in the minds of people, the bee represented a hardworking, loyal person, and bees were the epitome of the motherland in texts expressing national identity. In the foreground is the search for balance between human and other beings, human and the environment, which is expressed, e.g., by the declaration of the rights of bees and the development trends of urban representation.
The article elaborates on Dunn’s views on cosmopolitan medicine and broadens the term by applying it to a neighbouring field – cosmopolitan hereditary medicine. An overview is given of the movement’s contemporary trends, including esoteric teachings, homoeopathy, yoga, Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, music therapy, flower and aroma therapy as well as herbal medicine making use of new herbs – all of which have been introduced to Estonia via cultural cosmopolitanism. An outstanding feature is the attention given to a person’s holistic aspect, development of mentality and health behaviour. There is ongoing institutionalisation of traditional and complementary medicine practice, while educational courses and healing seances have moved from the city to rural health and tourism centres. One of the key values attributed to knowledge is its age, its ancient nature enabling the combination of different trends. Opportunities offered by local (vernacular) medicine are emphasised and new cultural interpretations are added. Mainstream trends are as follows: a) local complementary or alternative medicine as a segment of local folk medicine; b) health behaviour, lifestyle preventing or warding off disease (sauna culture, herbal medicine, release from city stress in natural surroundings, original music therapy, etc.); and c) introduction into the alternative worldview, mental self-development, and pluralistic folk belief.
The use of euphemisms is a characteristic of everyday language use today. However, substitute names and euphemisms were widely used in incantations, where euphemisms were tightly interwoven with taboos. In incantations euphemisms are used in various situations: healing the sick, coping with animals and natural phenomena, creating social relationships; coping with core rituals of human life (primarily birth and death); retaliating for theft, murder, and infidelity; promoting one’s work. Euphemisms represent an important pole in the use of verbal magic, and they are different from references to dysphemisms, that is, using vituperation, cursing, profanity or hexing to cut off contact or to achieve one’s goal. This article discusses general principles for the use of euphemisms and examines which euphemisms are used in which functions, using examples of certain belief rituals and values (fishing), symbolic animals (the wolf and the raven) and cockroaches. The results demonstrate that there is no direct appeal in 11% of texts concerned with wolf words, in 10.9% of texts about ravens, and 58% of texts about cockroaches; and euphemisms are used in 66% of texts concerned with the wolf, in 19,5% of texts about the raven, and 32,2% of texts about cockroaches, whereas dysphemisms are used in 32% of texts about the raven and in 3% of texts about cockroaches.
Belarusian and Estonian mythological and legendary narratives, especially aetiologies, share a number of similar motifs and characters, despite the fact that Estonian and Belarusian belong to different language families and share no common borders. However, some matches in the motifs are so complete and expressive that they, we believe, cannot be explained by typology or universals. Since the topic of ties between Estonian-Belarusian folklore is relatively unexplored, along with their historical contacts, the aim of this article is to point out the similarities in the motifs of Estonian and Belarusian legends regarding the first people in the context of Slavic and Finno-Ugric legends, as well as to represent some of the original Estonian and Belarusian aetiologies. The motives under examination are the recreation of humans, the skin of the nails, creation of a woman, the death of the first people, the motifs of the snake, eel, and weather loach, the cross of Christ, and others.
Folklorist Elmar Daniel Päss (1901–1970) was one of the first researchers who was educated in folklore at the University of Tartu: the Chair of Folklore started work in the autumn of 1919, and Elmar Päss entered university in the autumn of 1922. Already as a student, he attracted the attention of folklore professor Walter Anderson with his study about drinking in Estonian proverbs and folk songs, submitted for a students’ competition in 1924. There was no unified folklore archive in Tartu at the time (it was established in 1927). The study by Päss testified to his diligence (he examined collections of Estonian folklore both in Tartu and in Helsinki) as well as his ability to systematise and analyse voluminous material. He elaborated this study and defended it as his master’s degree in 1926. After a year in military service, he started work as a folklore assistant at the University of Tartu. In 1933 he became a scientific grantee, to work on a dissertation about Estonian and Ingrian Martinmas songs. Although the first version of the manuscript was completed in 1935, he did not defend the thesis. On the one hand, new material on Martinmas customs was constantly piling up, on the other hand, the defence seemed to be postponed due to economic difficulties. The establishment of the Soviet rule in 1940 and the following war further distanced Päss from research work. In 1947 the Institute of Estonian Language and Literature was founded at the Academy of Sciences, and for three years he worked there as a folklore researcher. However, his main occupation was a schoolteacher. So his most fertile scientific career remained in the 1920s–1930s. Three different intertwining directions can be distinguished in Päss’ scientific work: a comparative study of songs, customs related to calendar, wedding, and work, and the lore of border regions. Against the more general background of folkloristics, Päss’ research approaches are up to date: on the one hand, comparative and international research prevailing in the first decades of the century, on the other hand, considering the syncretic and functionalist viewpoint of lore that emerged in the late 1920s and in the 1930s. His studies of the customs and songs of Shrovetide and Martinmas could be part of classical Estonian folkloristics.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.