Cultural Intimacy and Othering through Narrative Culture: Folktales about the Finnish Roma

Abstract

Abstract:Records of folk narratives from the past are available in large part through collecting and archival practices which saw pioneering efforts in nineteenth-century Finland. At the same time, archival decision making was not free of the ideological parameters of early folkloristic paradigms. In examining narratives about the Kaale—the Finnish Roma—in the archives of the Finnish Literature Society, this article pursues two goals at once: by outlining the contours and contents of the sparse, archived narrative material about the Kaale told by rural Finns, it is also possible to reconfirm the nation-building focus of nineteenth-century Finnish folklore, collecting which included this minority only through derogatory and ridiculing narratives by the majority population.