Conclusion: The mapping of the post-war period

A period from the end of World War II until the decline of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s brought the division of the research of Latvian mythology into several parallel trajectories. While in interwar period Latvia it was consolidated under the same political circumstances and mainly centred around two research institutions: the University of Latvia and the Archives of Latvian folklore, resulting in variability of mythological reconstructions only along the lines of theoretical trends preferred by scholars, each with his or her own personal background and agenda, the outcome of World War II resulted in a previously unseen variety of totally different approaches to the same subject matter, now differentiated not only by theoretical position but also by juxtaposed political ideologies, themselves containing historical dynamics. With knowledge production institutionalised at the level of the second half of the twentieth century, institutional basis became the dominant factor shaping research according to corresponding state ideologies. Several variations of re-constructions of Latvian mythology and mythological space, produced within this period, tend to contain isolated circles of references; thus, allowing us to speak about the existence of parallel, unconnected research traditions.

First, maintaining both positive and critical continuity with the research done in the interwar period is a discourse on Latvian mythology created by exile scholars who left Latvia at the end of the war. From a certain perspective it might be supposed that the cases of Kārlis Straubergs and Heralds Biezais, as analysed above, reflect different strategies of psychological and intellectual coping with displacement. Reflected in the choice of the research themes, they manifest in two juxtaposed sets of works on Latvian mythology: on death and the netherworld by Straubergs and on celestial deities and Heaven by Biezais.

At the same time, Straubergs continued his own research, made during the interwar period, adjusting it to the new setting of knowledge production by emphasising broader parallels to the subject matter in the history of European culture, while Biezais consolidated and revised all prior Latvian mythology research in the light of a comparatively new discipline: the comparative history of religion. Notable is the fact that works of both scholars were published in German and other European languages, thus making the subject matter accessible to a wider circle of scholars. Nevertheless, these academic versions of mythology in the exile environment were contested by a continuing trend of lay writings bearing strong national romanticist connotations.

Relationships with the past were differently maintained in the newly established academia of Soviet Latvia. After centralised reorganisation of the research and teaching institutions, an uncompromising critique of the scholar-ship of the interwar period served as a tool with which to build new disciplinary identity along with the All-Union invention of a new research object – Soviet folklore. Here scarcity of the works on mythology-related subject matters by scholars was paralleled by active ideological mythmaking and construction of

new collective identity in the public sphere, adopting models developed earlier in the Soviet Russia. The absence of studies on mythological space marks a particular theoretical disposition: the exclusion of religious scholarship from academia, and the conceptualisation of folklore as a narrative of class struggle and manifestation of working people’s spirit. Under the aegis of Stalinism, the first decade of Soviet Latvian folkloristics show straightforward dependence of methodology and theoretical approaches on centrally defined ideological posi-tions; this mechanism was also implemented by the censor and vice director of the Folklore Institute Jānis Niedre.

Research into Latvian mythology acquired a new dimension in Western scholarship in the post-war period. Within the globally changing academia it became more often encountered within the comparative studies of Indo-European mythology or Baltic mythology. The former, informed by Saussurean linguistics, recovered from being discredited by Arian discourse, which, derived from earlier large-scale comparative projects, was enthusiastically exploited by ideologists and scholars of interwar Germany. Since the end of the war it was to a large extent tuned by Dumézil’s discovery of tripartite Indo-European ideology. Particularly interesting is the version of Latvian mythology as a part of Baltic mythology conceptualised by Maria Gimbutas. In this regard, the analysis of two temporarily and geographically distant editions of the same book demonstrated the changes of knowledge production shaping the subject matter on two different levels: as determined by introduction of new theoretical trends and development of the discipline, and as determined by political contexts influencing editorial practices.

Comparative research on Indo-European mythology, including its Baltic and Latvian parts, was articulated in a particular form by the scholars of the Moscow-Tartu school of semiotics. Here, mainly in works of the leading researchers Ivanov and Toporov, folklore and linguistic data relating to Latvian mythology was integrated into reconstructive research on Indo-European proto-myth, in a way creating a timeless perspective of textual study. In this way a unique version of the systematisation of Baltic mythology according to seven levels was produced. This direction of research, developed in the 1970s and 1980s, continues today bearing a high level of credibility despite its origins in a now-defunct totalitarian state. Comparison of this trajectory with that of Soviet Latvia highlights the hierarchical relationship of the centre and the periphery in disciplinary history.

CONCLUSION

Writing of any history is an action of selection and interpretation, possible only from a certain distance: therefore there is no history of today, while yesterday already becomes an object of history writing. This is also the reason why this thesis defines its subject matter temporally bounded to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, covering the most recent developments only in the form of overview. When writing a disciplinary history, distance allows us to separate trends and define key personalities related to the establishment and maintenance of these trends or patterns, whether they would be theory-related, marking a particular style of reasoning, or constituting a legitimising rhetoric. Similarly, writing about the past is always writing for the present and future. From this point of view, this thesis is intended to explore the determination of scholarly practices, showing how the object of research was historically constructed and embedded in broader intellectual, institutional, and textual contexts.

The realms of mythology

Often overlapping, interest in mythology-related subject matters and research on mythology are separated by the institutionalised nature of the latter, as well as the presence of particular means of creating the scholarly authority within the academic context. Both modes of investigation serve various agendas and supplement each other. Narratives on mythology have special epistemic status due to their composite sources, blurring of disciplinary boundaries in construc-tion of the research subject, and involvement in political and, recently, lifestyle agendas. This makes mythology a highly contested realm of lay and expert knowledge. With no direct and systematic evidence regarding the hierarchy of ancient Latvian gods, mythical topography, economics of divine patronage and other categories of scholarly reconstructions, the latter are completely based on the indirect textual representations of lay knowledge.

The earliest historical documents were of secondary derivation, shaped by agendas of other people rather than the subjects of mythology – crusaders, Christian clergy, or travellers – interpreting the beliefs of local inhabitants.

More recent records represent the contesting Enlightenment and Romanticism ideas, while the late nineteenth century folklore collections were shaped by particular editorial practices favoured by patriotically inclined enthusiasts on the eve of national awakening. Consequently, the source material for Latvian mythology research is a partial representation of lost beliefs and ritual practices.

Since the emergence of institutionalised research into Latvian mythology these sources have been applied selectively to the construction of expert knowledge, depending on disciplinary affiliations or personal careers, current theoretical trends or ideological agendas. The most prominent principle appears to be the changing interpretation of the theory of folklore genres, which delineated the preference for particular folklore materials in reconstructive practices. Data of

historical reconstructions or comparative mythological research were often verified against the statements of comparative philology, another powerful actor in the construction of Latvian mythology as a field of expert knowledge.

However, these scholarly constructions have been contested by popular opinion, negotiated within different agendas, and applied in a selective way.

First of all, expert knowledge has been indirectly and directly utilized in identity discourses from national identity to the construction of contemporary marketing and sub-cultural images; it also plays an important role in neo-pagan religious movements serving for purposes of reinventing ritual practices. This impact of established expert knowledge is evident in the practice of festivities as well as in fine arts. On the other hand, this recent lay interpretation of scholarly knowledge contests the latter on grounds other than the oppositional intellectual trajectories in academia. Lay perception in this field relates to expert knowledge in the same way as vernacular religion relates to official church doctrine. It is a juxtaposition of the on-going construction of public opinion based on different, often acronychal sources of archival knowledge and re-constructions created by scholars of past and present.

Timeline

The scholarly construction of Latvian mythology as a self-contained realm of knowledge was shaped in the early twentieth century, further evolving and changing in different political contexts and in response to prevailing ideological agendas. Still, the historical records which served as secondary sources for this construction, dates back to ancient Rome, growing in number in the Middle Ages, when descriptions of heathen religion became a part of mapping the borders of the Christian world and, consequently, advocating the necessity of expansion. Several publications from the seventeenth century already feature catalogues of Latvian deities, extended by each subsequent author until the introduction of the primary source of mythology research, namely folklore collections, in the nineteenth century. The same nineteenth century is also characterized by the widespread ideological movement of cultural nationalism, acquiring its particular expressions in each country but united by common interest in language and history, as well as by other similarities in culture building processes. In this mode, Latvian mythology simultaneously became a discovery for intellectuals interested in the ethnographic and historical defi-nition of emerging Latvian nation, as well as a source of creative inspirations for writers and poets. Needless to say, these two groups often shared the same personnel; thus, the discovery and invention of mythology were inseparable.

The last decades of the century faced more socio-political articulation of the national movement; consequently, interest in mythology was no longer among the main arguments proving the nation’s ancient history and rights to exist.

Simultaneously with the developments of comparative mythology in other parts of Europe, Latvian mythology became an object of more academic interest,

taking shape according to one or other current theory. At the same time, increasing collections of folklore material allowed the introduction of new modes of scholarly authority, based on the newly created methodologies of research and interpretation of folklore materials. Fragmentary, interested only in particular deities or phenomena, scholarly discourse on Latvian mythology formed until World War I. Establishment of the independent nation-state in 1918 coincided with the publication of the first comprehensive monograph on the subject matter, describing Latvian mythology as a system.

The interwar period was the time of the institutionalisation of the discipline by establishment of the national research and education institutions and formation of local academia, resulting in comparatively large number of publi-cations touching the subject matter from various perspectives. This period also brought the first discussions and publications on Latvian mythological space, a constituent of the Ancient Latvian worldview. International by circle of references and national by construction of research object, the scholarly interest in Latvian mythology at this time shows a strong correlation with national identity discourse and politics; often also featuring politically active scholars (among them two government Ministers of Education). Despite the ideological similarities, the period is characterised by the diversity of theories applied to Latvian source material. The latter was interpreted in light of totemism (Švābe) and animism (Bruņenieks), from the points of view of the phenomenology of religion (Adamovičs, Rumba, and Maldonis) and a hard to define mix of cultural history and comparative mythology (Straubergs). Šmits laid the foundations of the new disciplinary identity by uncompromising critique of all previous mythographies, especially those inspired by national romanticism, as well as by defining the role of comparative linguistic analysis for the research on Latvian together with Lithuanian mythology. Models of mythological space, proposed by scholars of this time, appear to be dependent on preferences of folklore genres by each author writing on the subject matter. Generally speaking, the research into mythology occupied the space in academia between folkloristics and the history of religion, with representatives of the both sides interpreting the same sources according to their research agendas.

Research into Latvian mythology took several parallel trajectories after World War II: first, in the Latvian exile community the idea of a national research object was shaped by new institutional and intellectual contexts, as well as being influenced by researchers’ personal responses to the exile situation, echoing in continuities and breaks with the previous research. Thus, the chthonic realms of Latvian mythology were integrated into the pan-Euro-pean comparative framework (Straubergs), while the celestial spheres were analysed in the light of the history of religion (Biezais); at the same time, on margins of the academic discourse, the construction of Latvian mythology and mythological space continued in the mode of national romanticism (Polis), once again stressing the role of mythology in the conceptualisation of national uniqueness. Apart from this, research into Latvian mythology showed a

tendency of integration into the broader subject matter of Baltic mythology (e.g.

Gimbutas and Vėlius). The scholarship took rather the opposite direction within the research and education institutions in post-war Latvia, i.e. in the LSSR. In line with the new political regime’s antipathy towards religious ideas, as well as according to new institutional setting, studies of mythology were exclusively subordinated to the field of folkloristics. The latter, in its turn, was defined roughly as the oral literature of the working class and its predecessors. At the same time, contemporary Soviet ideology-laden folklore was positioned as the central object of collection and analysis. In this setting, the mythology-related research was possible only as an exception, resulting in a couple of articles and a few fragmentary notes. However, this clearly shows the new regime of truth and specific Soviet modes of legitimisation of knowledge: the construction of a new disciplinary identity by means of political critique, the establishment of a single correct interpretation, and a specific, hierarchic quotation culture. Slight changes to the political regime after the death of Stalin, as well as the complex interplay between the centre and the periphery in Soviet academia allowed the emergence of the so-called Moscow-Tartu School of semiotics. With one of its major branches developing towards semiotic and structural studies of culture, the school also embraced studies of Latvian mythology within the circle of its interests. However, the subject matter here was utilised as source material for broader-scale comparative reconstructions rather than explored for its own sake.

Here Latvian mythology added significantly to the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European culture (Gamkrelidze and Ivanov) and clarification of some motifs of Indo-European proto-myth (Ivanov and Toporov), also being conceptualised from both Baltic and Baltic-Balkan perspectives. The most recent cluster of knowledge production involving the subject matter might be located in the late 1980s and 1990s, characterised by the merger of all previous research traditions; again, the disciplinary identity underwent the process of re-positioning. On the one hand, on-going research continued, and due to censor-ship the unavailable works from the interwar period and the exile researchers were discovered and celebrated, on the other hand, the new national idea demanded the revision and critique of previously written works, as well as the new market economy and system of education and research demanding the reshaping of publication and research practices. In sum, the density of similar factors allows us to separate several clusters of Latvian mythography along a timeline that is characterised by on-going disciplinary identity construction, based on the dialectics of continuity and critique of the past. Ironically, here the Eliadean idea of ethereal return, characterising the nature of myths, might also be applied to the study of mythology.

Northern parallels

If the knowledge production process shapes the object of knowledge, not vice versa, then because the conditions of this process are similar, the outcomes too

must be similar. Latvian mythology, as stated by almost any researcher of the subject, has the same, relatively recent origins as Lithuanian mythology;

multiple similarities point towards a common Baltic mythology, part of the lived experience before the separation of Prussian, Latvian and Lithuanian tribes. Such similarities and common origins are promising for object-focused research. At the same time, Latvia and Estonia had similar or closely parallel historical processes for several hundred years, as well as similar social structures, a common historical Baltic-German elite, etc. Indeed, as is shown in comparative Appendix III of this thesis, the similar conditions and socio-political contexts of knowledge production also generated a significant volume of similarities in the scholarly practices and their relation to the dynamics of power. At the same time, objects of inquiry – Latvian and Estonian mythologies – had always remained different by content and distance under the researchers’

gaze. Therefore, the additional comparative study of knowledge production highlights the importance of the process-focused instead of object-focused approach to writing the disciplinary history.

Recognition of the local peasants’ languages, beliefs, and customs in both countries was inspired by the same Enlightenment and Romanticism related ideas, manifested in the works of Herder and Merkel. Similarly, the interest in such phenomena and legitimation of it as culture was introduced by members of a local, non-native-speaking (mostly Baltic-German) elite; this played a rather similar role in articulation of the national idea to that played by the Swedish-speaking elite in the Great Duchy of Finland (cf. Anttonen 2005). The abolition of serfdom contributed to the emergence of a new, upwardly mobile, native-speaking middle class and intelligentsia, showing similar patterns of networking and organisation in learned societies and publication ventures. The universities of Dorpat (Tartu), St. Petersburg, and Moscow became intellectual centres for both Latvians and Estonians. Distribution of identical calls for the collection of folklore introduced this form of activity as a tool for mobilising the masses towards the formation of national consciousness. Until World War I, a significant amount of folklore material was collected and published in both countries, paralleled by the emergence of national literature merging the realms

Recognition of the local peasants’ languages, beliefs, and customs in both countries was inspired by the same Enlightenment and Romanticism related ideas, manifested in the works of Herder and Merkel. Similarly, the interest in such phenomena and legitimation of it as culture was introduced by members of a local, non-native-speaking (mostly Baltic-German) elite; this played a rather similar role in articulation of the national idea to that played by the Swedish-speaking elite in the Great Duchy of Finland (cf. Anttonen 2005). The abolition of serfdom contributed to the emergence of a new, upwardly mobile, native-speaking middle class and intelligentsia, showing similar patterns of networking and organisation in learned societies and publication ventures. The universities of Dorpat (Tartu), St. Petersburg, and Moscow became intellectual centres for both Latvians and Estonians. Distribution of identical calls for the collection of folklore introduced this form of activity as a tool for mobilising the masses towards the formation of national consciousness. Until World War I, a significant amount of folklore material was collected and published in both countries, paralleled by the emergence of national literature merging the realms