The database comprises a collection of texts containing information about various characters in Karelian belief narratives (bylichki). This collection includes mythological narratives about figures associated with Karelian festive traditions. These comprise texts about Kegri, an ancient Karelian deity associated with ancestor worship and the liminal period marking the turn of the year, as well as belief narratives about two mythological figures associated with the winter Christmastide period: the South Karelian Syundy and the North Karelian Epiphany Old Woman.
The structure of the database enables both researchers (folklorists, ethnologists, and linguists) and a wider audience (local historians, museum staff, tour guides, etc.) to identify and analyse various aspects of traditional folk culture. For example, users can examine the characters of Karelian belief narratives, their spatiotemporal settings, their functions, and the purposes and means of their interaction with humans. The database also makes it possible to relate belief narratives about Kegri, Syundy, and the Epiphany Old Woman to other texts in VepKar, such as ethnographic accounts of festive traditions or texts dealing with similar themes.
The primary purpose of the database is to make archival folklore materials accessible and to enable researchers to analyse the texts from linguistic, folkloristic, and ethnographic perspectives. The database is open to all interested users with a wide range of interests and purposes.
The collection is accompanied by a scholarly index of the principal plots and motifs/themes in belief narratives about Kegri, Syundy, and the Epiphany Old Woman. The index is based on texts of Karelian mythological prose identified in the Sound Archive of the Institute of Linguistics, Literature and History of the Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences and is published here for the first time. It was compiled by L. I. Ivanova. At this stage, the number of archival references in the index (references to individual archival units held in the Institute’s Sound Archive) exceeds the number of belief narratives included in the collection, indicating considerable potential for its expansion. The resource can be supplemented both with previously recorded texts held in the Institute’s Sound Archive, including those subsequently added to the index, and with new materials of mythological prose that the Institute’s researchers continue to record during field expeditions.
The collection was developed by V. P. Mironova, Candidate of Sciences in Philology and Senior Research Fellow in the Folklore and Literary Studies Section of the Institute of Linguistics, Literature and History of the Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences; L. I. Ivanova, Research Fellow in the same section; and N. B. Krizhanovskaya, Lead Research Engineer at the Institute’s NORDICA Interdisciplinary Research and Education Centre.
Total number of texts: 74