Silencing the Other’s Voice?

Abstract

Kalevalaic runosinging is a Baltic-Finnic tradition of metered oral poetry. In Finland, runo singing and the national epic Kalevala based on this tradition are often seen − especially in public speech − as nationally significant symbols of Finnishness.
 In this article, I examine how the idea of the Finnishness of traditional runo songs has been constructed in the changing paradigms of studying and performing folk music and oral poetry in Finland across the last hundred years, and how the concept of cultural appropriation relates to this. I will concentrate on early Finnish folk music studies as well as on the contemporary Finnish folk music scene; I tie these fields together by following the circulation of an Ingrian runosong theme called Oi daiafter it became part of archived folklore collections in Finland in 1906.

Tradition and ownership

“…Yet, many scholars highlight the complexity of the concept (e.g. Young 2005;Matthes 2016;Haapoja-Mäkelä 2020;Bucar 2022). First, it embodies the risk of cultural essentialism, that is, understanding cultures as stable and permanent en tities connected to rigid ethnic formations.…”