About the Employee
Folklore is like the air we breathe
I began working at the Archives of Latvian Folklore, which at the time was called the Folklore Department, in the autumn of 1983 after completing my studies at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Latvia. The Soviet-era routine was replaced by the time of the National Awakening, during which folklore and folkloristics held significant importance, so it felt as if we were at the center of events. At that time, I was writing my doctoral dissertation on the spatial mythological structures of funeral folksongs, which I defended in December 1992.
Key turning points for me included several months of study in Germany as a DAAD and DFG scholarship holder in 1994, a growing interest in contemporary folklore since the early 1990s, and an engagement with the ideas of storytelling. Folklore is all around us—in conversations, jokes, and stories, which we now increasingly see on screens, in images that help us make sense of the world... Folkloristics is a wonderful science that helps us understand not only the past but also the present and our path toward the future.
As I am the great-great-great-nephew of Anlīze, the sister of “the father of Latvian fairy tales,” Ansis Lerhis-Puškaitis, the desire to contextualize his work led me to research that now encompasses the history of publishing Latvian fairy tales and legends from the earliest times to the present, as well as new fieldwork in the Džūkste parish. In 1987, I met storyteller Alma Makovska in Vandzene—listening to her resulted in more than 100 hours of audio and video recordings. Observing her and other storytellers sparked the desire to tell these stories myself and to more consciously work on preserving the oral storytelling tradition—this led to participation in storytelling competitions for children, the UNESCO Latvian National Commission’s “Story Libraries” network, and the organization of storytelling festivals.
Unfortunately, I have not turned quite a few conference presentations and research ideas into publications… I still hope to be of use in some new research and cultural projects.
About the Research Field
Areas of Expertise
History of Latvian Fairy Tales and Their Publications
75%
History of Latvian Folkloristics
40%
Traditional and Urban Legends
50%
Storytellers and Storytelling in Latvia
70%
Latvian Funeral Folksongs
40%
Folklore on the Internet
30%
4
Projects
31
Publications
9
Books
Projects
Member of Projects
Research Activities
Publications
Scholarly Editions
