The creation of Latvian mythology: International relationships

International relationships

There is probably not, and has never been, such thing as “a local discipline”, even if the subject matter of research is exclusively located in a particular geographic, linguistic, or ethnic area. The discipline of folkloristics proves this statement. Although in each particular case it is involved with the local or national culture, language, oral poetry, customs, etc., its methodological and ideological dimensions were developed within the international network of intellectuals all across Europe since the eighteenth century (cf. Leersen 2006).

Moreover, regarding the Baltic region, it is rather problematic to speak about national research before the establishment of national states which emerged in margins of the declining Russian Empire only as an outcome of World War I. In

addition, the comparative dimension of folkloristics and mythology, defining particular units of comparison according to formal (concerning the discipline’s involvement with comparative linguistics) or historical (defining cultural groups rather independently from the gridline of geo-political maps) criteria, is hard to localise on the map of nation-states. However, folkloristics’ relationship to national agenda suggests the projection of local or national subject matter of research on the disciplinary status of the scholarship. Academic research into Latvian mythology was formed in the age of empire states, with related intellectual centres scattered across the continent from Vladivostok to St.

Petersburg and from Helsinki to Berlin. The situation is no less easy to conceptualise after World War II, when ‘national’ signifies a displaced research subject within the exile community on the one hand, and is a sovietised science of the USSR on the other hand. While the disposition of research on Latvian mythology in these pre-national and post-national periods has been outlined in the corresponding sections of this thesis, the study below is intended to characterise the international connections and influences in the interwar period, i.e. during the first Republic of Latvia (1918–1940). Starting to develop between the newly established research and education institutions already in 1920s, partially maintaining the old connections in new situations, partially building new networks of international cooperation on the strong basis of national specialisation, the 1930s was indeed a decade characterised by a strong will to cooperate in terms of scholarly exchange, organisations and publications (cf. Rogan 2008).

Researchers of Latvian mythology during this time worked for the most part at two local institutions, the Archives of Latvian Folklore, and the University of Latvia, at either the Faculty of Theology or the Faculty of Philology and Philosophy. Scholars like Kārlis Straubergs (1890–1962), Pēteris Šmits (1869–

1938), Jānis Alberts Jansons (1892–1971), Alma Medne (1907–1950) and others, during their studies and later professional careers, established both formal and informal relations with colleagues and institutions of other European countries (Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Germany, etc.). Correspon-dence, research trips, and presentations at international conferences were the most common forms of communication apart from the visits of foreign scholars to Latvia and publications in foreign languages targeting an international audience (cf. Treija 2010). The more intense relationships between Latvian and Northern – Estonian and Finnish – folklorists was maintained by Anna Bērzkalne, student of Walter Anderson and founder of the Archives of Latvian Folklore. Methodology and praxis developed by Finnish folklorists were exemplary both for her research activities and the initial years of the LFK. Like many other Latvian scholars, Bērzkalne studied at the University of Tartu in Estonia. Her supervisor, Anderson, introduced her to eminent Finnish folklorist Kaarle Krohn (1863–1933), authority of the blooming Finnish (cultural-geographic) school of folkloristics (Vīksna 1996). Well-established Finnish folkloristics became a kind of an etalon for the discipline in Latvia. Head of the

Estonian Folklore Archives Oskar Loorits (1900–1961) later writes that employee of the Archives of Latvian Folklore Alma Medne will someday become the Latvian Aarne⁵⁸, while Anna Bērzkalne will become the Krohn (ABF 7, 58; quoted according to Treija 2010). Indeed, the LFK was established according to the agenda of the Finnish school and used the latter’s methods of collection, systematisation and storage of folklore materials (Bērzkalne 1925, Treija 2010). Bērzkalne also visited corresponding institutions abroad – in Helsinki, Berlin, and Freiburg. She promoted the achievements of Finnish and Estonian folklorists in the popular press, praising the work of Jakob Hurt and Matthias Johann Eisen (Bērzkalne 1926). Illustrating one mode of cooperation, Bērzkalne had extended correspondences with at least 43 foreign folklorists, many of them from Finland, such as Kaarle Krohn⁵⁹, Martti Haavio (1899–

1973), Elsa Enäjärvi-Haavio (1901–1951), Viljo Johannes Mansikka (1884–

1947), and Uuno Taavi Sirelius (1872–1929) (cf. Treija 2010). A more than two-decade cooperation and friendship relates her to contradictory Estonian scholar Oskar Loorits (Treija 2009). Otherwise, the main influence of Finnish folkloristics, although no longer on a personal level, comes from the fundamental editions of folktales and legends: the international standard established by Antti Aarne was exemplary for publications by Švābe (1923–

1924) and Šmits (1925–1937), as well as Medne (1940). Naturally, the tale-type index of Latvian folktales was also arranged according to the same approach (Arājs and Medne 1977).

The next Head of Archives of Latvian Folklore Kārlis Straubergs similarly maintained intense international relationships, but on a slightly different level – in close cooperation with the state elite and according to dominant political ideology. Straubergs’ extensive involvement in politics and foreign affairs is analysed in the next chapter (p. 126–130); as a scholar he made several short journeys abroad, for example, he participated at the ethnographic congress in Rome in 1929, together with students attended the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, and greeted Kaarle Krohn at his seventieth birthday in Helsinki in 1933, etc. Probably, his activities in this field allowed him to more easily adapt to changes of working conditions after World War II, when Straubergs continued his scholarly career in Stockholm at the same Nordic Museum (cf.

Straubergs 1995).

Similarly to Bērzkalne, folklorist and teacher Jānis Alberts Jansons (1892–

1971) also obtained his doctoral degree abroad. Although he has not shaped the process of institutionalisation of the discipline, and mythology was never a central subject of his research, the life history of Jansons well illustrates another

58 Antti Aarne, researcher of folktales.

59 Funds of Academic Library of the University of Latvia store 27 of Kaarle Krohn’s letters to Anna Bērzkalne, showing his support and willingness to help with advice regarding various questions. Krohn twice visited Riga and sent the most up to date literature to the Archives of Latvian Folklore. In turn, Bērzkalne wrote an introduction to a publication of Krohn’s research on Finnish charms in Latvia (Krohna 1930).

trajectory of international relationships. His contribution to the research on Latvian mythology is part of the unique study relating to Latvian masks and mummery, Die lettischen Maskenumzüge (1933; in Latvian: Jansons 2010). In this study, based on his doctoral thesis, Jansons applied the methodology of cultural-historical ethnology, or the so-called theory of culture circles, the German Kulturkreislehre school. Initially, Jansons studied Germanistics in St.

Petersburg (1913–1917), then acquired a master degree in Baltic philology at the University of Latvia (1926). During his studies in Latvia, Jansons developed an interest in Latvian ethnography and mythology, to a large extent thanks to the guidance of Pēteris Šmits (Karulis 1992: 53). Jansons also attended a course on the general history of religion at the Faculty of Theology by Prof. Immanuel Benzinger (1865–1935), who also raised an interest in Latvian religion in Ludvigs Adamovičs and Eduards Zicāns – the most productive researchers of Latvian mythology from the perspective of studies of religion (Jansons 2010:

37). Among Šmits’ acquaintances was German philologist and folklorist Adam Wrede (1875–1960), with whose help Jansons met his future supervisor Julius Lips (1895–1950), the director of the ethnological museum of Cologne and associate professor of ethnology at University of Cologne (Plaudis 1977: 32).

Lips had been a student of Fritz Gräbner (1877–1934), one of the establishers of the Kulturkreislehre school. So, from 1927 to 1929 Jansons studied at the universities of Bonn and Cologne, and defended his thesis in 1934 with the above mentioned monograph on Latvian masks (Jansons 2010). In short, the theory of culture circles proposed the mapping of locations from whence ideas and technology subsequently diffused over large areas of the world⁶⁰. It was supposed that a limited number of Kulturkreise developed at different times and in different places, and that all cultures, ancient and modern, resulted from the diffusion of traits from these centres of innovation (cf. Kulturkreis 2011).

During his studies in Germany, Jansons also visited Lithuania for several months in 1927, acquiring knowledge of the Lithuanian language and culture that later served for the comparative purposes in his research (Plaudis 1977).

It is as impossible as unnecessary to categorise institutional developments strictly along the division of national and international fields; however, the above outlined life histories illustrate the dynamics of international relationships in the formation of the national discipline: the personal rather than formal connections of Anna Bērzkalne behind the establishment of the central research institution of the field, the political cum academic activities of the next head of this institution Kārlis Straubergs, and route from personal acquaintances to unique scholarly career by Jānis Alberts Jansons. Since describing international connection of every Latvian folklorist is neither the place nor the purpose of this thesis, it can be certainly stated that research into Latvian

60 The twentieth century German school of anthropology was closely related to the Diffusionist approach of British and American anthropology, and basically developed from the nineteenth century theories of unilineal cultural evolution.

mythology was positioned in the international arena not only on the theoretical level, with references to various schools and authorities, but also at the level of personal mobility and connectivity. In its turn, this justifies the attention given to individual agents in the writing of the disciplinary history. However, as the activities of agents are to a large extent determined by the existing power structures, before analysis of other personal histories a contextual map must be drawn to locate and relate these personal histories.