Marjatta Jauhiainen, The Type and Motif Index of Finnish Belief Legends. Revised and enlarged edition of Lauri Simonsuuri’s Typen- und Motivverzeichnis der finnischen mythischen Sagen (FFC No. 182). Folklore Fellows’ Communications No. 267. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia (Academia Scientiarum Fennica), 1998. 362 p.
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Type indexes which classify the structure and content of oral tradition can be thought of as the basic road-maps necessary for long-term and in-depth folklore research. By using them, it is possible to organise and compare vast amounts of source materials. Type indexes are thus bridges between different communities of researchers and different cultures. As informational channels, they run broad and deep, and the imaginative researcher can find in them many types of information. In addition to their own thematic sphere, the brief characterisations offered by type indexes provide insights into the entire realm of human culture, and delve deep into its history.
Type indexes are thus a kind of folkloristic encyclopedia, organised in a way which usually ensures that the further one probes into a given theme, the more interesting the search becomes. The background of the classification and indexing of oral tradition is the historic-geographic method developed by the “Finnish School” which was used from the 1880s onwards in an attempt to reconstruct the proto-form, provenance, and migratory paths of folklore items from as broad as possible a body of source materials.
This method drove researchers both into the field to collect more material and into the archives to study what had already been collected. There arose a need to create a comprehensive type and motif index to meet the needs of comparative research. In this task, the creator of the type system for Finnish folk tales, Antti Aarne (1867-1925), became an international pioneer whose work has been justifiably compared to the Linnean system of botanical classification. The folktale index created by Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson will probably continue to head the lists of references cited by folklorists for a long time to come.
This distinguished tradition within Finnish folkloristics has now been continued by Marjatta Jauhiainen’s extensive analysis of types and motifs within Finnish belief legends and memorates, based on Lauri Simonsuuri’s type and motif index of “mythical” legends which appeared in 1961 (Typen- und Motivverzeichnis der finnischen mythischen Sagen. FFC No. 182). In the decades following the latter’s publication, however, a significant amount of new material has accumulated in the archives, and the principles of analysis have changed. Jauhiainen has applied her classification system of types and motifs to an impressive body of 100,000 tales of encounters between humans and the world of the supernatural.
One guarantee of reliability in a work of this kind is the broad geographic and temporal scope of its source materials. In this respect, Finnish folklore collections offer a point of departure which is exceptionally promising but at the same time highly demanding. Jauhiainen’s index covers the folk belief -based narrative tradition concerning supernatural beings and forces. This tradition includes belief legends which are stereotypical but adapted and readapted to new places, characters and points in time, as well as memorates which tell of personal experiences of the supranormal. Jauhiainen emphasises that her index, constructed according to systematic, scientific principles, is intended as an aid for researchers using original source materials. At the same time, however, it is a multi-faceted source for wider application as well.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Jauhiainen’s index is not how the material is divided into belief legends or memorates, or into types and motifs, but how Jauhiainen strives in different ways to reveal broad thematic wholes. Laid out before the reader is the entire worldview conveyed by the belief legends, with its values, attitudes, emotions and historical layers. A broad system of cross-references guides the user who wants to explore related prose genres of folklore. In this way, the Finnish belief legends can be divided into 15 main categories: A. Omens and fate, B. Hauntings, C. Death and the dead, D. Seers, healers, sorcerers and witches, E. The Devil and devils, F. Taboo violations, G. Cultural place spirits, H. Supernatural beings which enhance wealth, K. Forest spirits, L. Water spirits, M. Trolls and earth-folk, N. Giants, P. Treasure, Q. Disease-demons and illness, and R. Supranormal animals.
Any compiler of an index must take care that the division into main categories does not occur mechanically, merely on the basis of belief entity terminology. On the other hand, he or she also has to pay attention to the fact that some of these entities tend to attract a large portion of the material to their own category due to the influence of interest or tradition dominance. Some supernatural beings are for various cultural-ecological reasons more attractive than others in certain areas. A thorough knowledge of her material and a skilful use of cross-references has allowed Jauhiainen to maintain control over a body of material which might have overwhelmed a less capable researcher. Thus is an index compiler led inevitably to the most fundamental questions posed by the field of folklore studies. And Marjatta Jauhiainen has in fact written an excellent introduction in which she lays out her points of departure, premises, and methods. She ponders the nature of Finnish belief legends, the history of their collection, their eastern and western features and what kinds of belief legends have been brought within reach of researchers by different collectors and types of narrators. Jauhiainen also analyses the principles underlying the creation of type indexes and their shifting popularity in the history of the discipline, posing the question of whether the type index represents a straightjacket or an informational link to the world.
In order for an index to be user-friendly, it is also essential that its terminology is clearly defined. The work does in fact include a list of the most important vocabulary relating to belief and narrative folklore. Of particular interest is the diagram of “Belief-centred Narrative Traditions” drawn up by Marjatta Jauhiainen and based on C. Scott Littlejohn’s (1965) and Lauri Honko’s (1989) visual schematics of the genre coordinate system for narrative traditions. Narrative themes clearly intersect each other within the diagram in many ways, but at the same time they clarify for the reader the writer’s conceptualisation of the interrelationships among the folklore genres in question.
Marjatta Jauhiainen reminds us how, in the founding stages of the now defunct Nordic Institute of Folklore in 1959, the first major project to be taken up was a pan-Scandinavian tale concordance. This was finally completed under the editorship of Vibeke Dahll in 1972. But by that time attitudes had shifted: researchers were interested in “living narration”, in performance, and many turned their backs on archival materials. Discussions concerning concordances and type indexes did in fact call for an exceptional amount of patience, as theoretical and practical viewpoints were not always in agreement. Alan Dundes has pointed out that researchers at that time could not seem to get away from endless collecting and hair-splitting debates over classification, thus missing an important opportunity, since, according to Jauhiainen, it is precisely belief legends which can offer a deeper understanding of human nature.
In her introduction to the type and motif index of Finnish belief legends, Marjatta Jauhiainen stresses that an index compiler must herself be as familiar as possible with living tradition. Only such a familiarity can aid the compiler in analysing the older archival texts in a more natural fashion, since the function of a type index is no longer that of a stamp collection but an in-depth en cyclopedia. Lutz Rörich predicted in 1980 that the era of indexing projects is by no means behind us, nor will it ever be. The Type and Motif Index of Finnish Belief Legends is a superb example of this.
From the practical point of view it would be good to know how one should refer to the type numbers now that the new edition obviously replaces the one 37 years older, at least for the user preferring English to German (the original German edition, reprinted in 1987, is still available). Neither the author nor the publisher ventures to give a recommendation in this respect: the running header of the English type-index does not contain Jauhiainen or Simonsuuri. In the famous “Aarne-Thompson” system (see the 1961 edition, FFC 184) the chronological order of authorial names in type references became established long ago but the running header of the volume in question gives only Stith Thompson. No librarian can find the book under Aarne-Thompson because it is systematically catalogued under Thompson. In the present case, it might be better to avoid the chronological order and construct the reference to a type, e.g. L521: Measuring the lake’s depth – a voice from the depths announces: “The lake is as deep as it is long”, on Jauhiainen-Simonsuuri L521 rather than on Simonsuuri-Jauhiainen, mainly because of its easier bibliographic identification. The decision in this matter, however, does not lie with the author, the publisher or the present reviewer. It belongs to the informed future user of the type index.
Pekka Laaksonen
Finnish Literature Society
Helsinki
FF Network No. 17
(June 1999): 23-25