As a folklorist, I am interested in all aspects of traditional life, including narrative, music, customs, and material culture. My research has focused primarily on Finnish and Sámi materials, particularly in a wider Nordic context. In my most recent folkloristic work, Lyric, Meaning and Audience, I have sought to examine folklore in a regional sense, going beyond national or temporal borders. I am currently working on a study of religious wood carving traditions that takes a similar approach, looking at devotional carving from the medieval period to the present throughout the Nordic-Baltic region.

Books:

Lyric, Meaning, and Audience in the Oral Tradition of Northern Europe.  Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006.

co-authored with Leea Virtanen. Finnish Folklore.  Studia Fennica Folkloristica 9.   Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society in Association with the University of Washington., 2000.

Finnish Folk Poetry and the Kalevala. New York: Garland Publications, 1995.

return to portal

Selected Articles and Papers:

"Frithiof's Motley Cousins: On the Perils of Using Folklore to Create a National Epic" In The Nordic Storyteller: Essays in Honour of Niels Ingwersen. Ed. Susan Brantly and Thomas A. DuBois. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009. Pp. 178-210.

"The Little Song-Smith: A Printed Folksong Anthology and Its Reception among Ingrian Peasants, 1849-1900" In Folk Song: Tradition, Revival, and Re-Creation.  Ed. Ian Russell and David Atkinson.  Aberdeen: The Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, 2004.  Pp. 41-52.

“Dynamics and Continuities of Tradition—What a Finnish Epic Song Can Teach Us About Two Old Norse Poems” In Dynamics of Tradition: Perspectives on Oral Poetry and Folk Belief. Ed. Lotte Tarkka.  Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2003.  Pp. 233-247.

 “Narrative Expectations and the Sampo Song.”  Scandinavian Studies 73 no. 3 (2001): 457-474.

"The Kalevala  Received: From Printed Text to Oral Performance" Oral Tradition 11 no.2 (1996): 270-300.

"From Maria to Marjatta: The Transformation of an Oral Poem in Elias Lönnrot's Kalevala." Oral Tradition  8 no. 2 (1993): 247-288.