folkloristics
subject field
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Analysis of the Distribution of Estonian Runo Songs Related to Grains
We are working with the Estonian runosongs' database, which contains runosong texts and the metadata associated with them. The aim of the project is to study the geographical distribution of work songs containing references to cereals and to analyse which cereals are mentioned most frequently in different regions. Through the analysis, we aim to identify possible regional patterns and examine how and whether runosongs might reflect historical agriculture.
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Analysis of Tale Type 0567A in the Corpus of Seto Folk Tales
This workflow describes the aim of analysing tale type 567(A), the tale of the magic bird, in a dataset of Seto folk tales, in order to understand how and to what extent the variants of this type differ from one another. Gretta Nikolajeva was responsible for the qualitative analysis, while Aleksander Amos Nigesen was responsible for data processing in R.
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Analysis of Regional and Temporal Patterns in Estonian Instrumental Folk Music
This workflow enables the analysis of the regional and temporal distribution of instruments and instrumental tunes in a dataset of Estonian instrumental folk music. During the workflow, the metadata of the archival dataset are cleaned, instrument and place names are standardised, and broader analytical instrument categories are created as needed. The frequencies of instruments and folk tunes are then calculated by county and time period. The results are presented as frequency tables, diagrams, and maps, which help make visible patterns that would be difficult to detect by looking at individual records.
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Tunes of the World map: Exploring Estonian and Ukrainian Folk Song Heritage
The project aims to create an interactive digital map for exploring Estonian and Ukrainian folk-song traditions through geographical, thematic, emotional, and structural perspectives. Developed during the HUM Hackathon 2026. The current prototype focuses primarily on Ukrainian folk-song materials, while future versions will integrate Estonian datasets and enable cross-cultural comparison. The workflow combines digital humanities methods, natural language processing, cultural heritage data management, and interactive visualisation. Two large folk-song corpora 85,550 Estonian songs and 56,726 Ukrainian songs were prepared, harmonised, analysed, and transformed into a searchable map interface. Users can navigate from ethnographic regions to individual singers and complete song texts, explore emotional and thematic patterns, and investigate the geographical distribution of oral traditions.
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Spatial and Temporal Patterns of the Photograph Collection of the EFA
The aim of this workflow is to study the spatial and temporal patterns of the photograph collection of the Estonian Folklore Archives (EFA) and to make a large and difficult-to-grasp dataset easier to explore through an interactive visualisation tool. The project focuses on the first 10,000 black-and-white photographs from the EFA photograph collection, which contains approximately 88,000 photographs in total, together with their metadata. On the basis of this material, the distribution of photographs is analysed across time, space, keywords, collection projects, persons, and photographers.