E-mail: tvpashkova05@mail.ru
Tel.: +7 (8142) 71-32-08
33, Lenin str., Petrozavodsk, Republic of Karelia, 185910, Russian Federation
DSc in History, PhD in Philology, Associate Professor, Head of Department of Baltic-Finnic Philology, Petrozavodsk State University
This article deals with Karelian folk medicine, namely the use of one of the elements — fire — in medical practice. Archaic ideas about the causes of diseases play a role here: disease can be caused by natural elements as well as all kinds of spirits and demons. The material considered consists of various kinds of linguistic material including samples of Karelian speech, dialect dictionaries of the Karelian language, and folklore texts. These sources reveal the ambivalence of this element’s semantics and functioning in ethnocultural space. On the one hand, fire had a sacred meaning in Karelian folk medicine, on the other, it was a source of disease in the Karelians’ mythological thinking. The article applies comparative historical analysis to cultural, mythological and linguistic aspects of Karelian, Vep and Russian culture. This is the first comprehensive consideration of the element of fire in the context of Karelian traditions, rituals and beliefs.
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