Lietuvos etnologija / Lithuanian ethnology

This paper offers a reading of Mantas Kvedaravičius’ research findings from the perspective of visual anthropology. The paper describes the continuities between Kvedaravičius’ theoretical concerns on the anthropology of war and his filmmaking approach. These continuities imply an epistemological position that approaches research cinematically and proceeds to write from that position. Kvedaravičius’ work is illustrative of research that takes audio-visual ethnography seriously and works through the possibilities and limitations of different media to produce new stories on the human experience.

The aim of the article is to compare two original proposals for the exploration of Vilnius, depicted in the publications by the historian Adam Kirkor (1818–1886) Przechadzki po Wilnie i jego okolicach and the photographer Jan Bułhak (1876–1950) Pejzaż Wilna. The juxtaposition of both works highlights the difference between the perception of the city as a historical configuration of the urban layout and architecture ‘told’ from the perspective of historical events and the lives of famous inhabitants, and the city as a space combining the values of the natural environment, urban planning, architecture, and the living culture of its inhabitants.

Vidutė Gumbytė (1949–2021), who was known as Rožytė (Rosie) by residents of the city, strolled the streets of Vilnius for almost five decades. Her story was unique, her style of fashion was eccentric, her lifestyle was idiosyncratic. In this article, I analyse Vidutė Gumbytė-Rožytė’s story as a Vilnius legend. I argue that Vilnius residents were fascinated by her freedom from social norms, her unusual sense of fashion, and the mystique that surrounded her persona. Her story is a story about the city of Vilnius, which became freer, wealthier, and more tolerant of otherness in post-Soviet times.

In this article, using publications from the Jaunimo draugas magazine published in Vilnius and personal field research material, I seek to compare ethnographic material collected during field research and published ethnographic material and how these harmonise to reveal the particularities of youth leisure time in the historic Vilnius Region (1920–1939). After conducting a comparative analysis, it could be concluded that press publications cannot reveal all forms of youth leisure time, however, they do convey a strict diachronic perspective when identifying the modernisation of leisure time, which often omits the regional differences of this phenomenon. Having carried out this research, one can conclude that press publications can be important to ethnologists beyond just serving as an additional source that expands the limits of perception of field research data.

In this article, I seek to reveal the culinary traditions of Christmas Eve [Lith. Kūčios] dinner tables among Vilnius-dwellers, analysing the issue from the following aspects: Kūčios as a Christmas Eve cultural particularity in Lithuania and the classification of festive dishes; formation of the Kūčios dinner table among Vilnius-dwellers and villages in the Vilnius surroundings in the early 20th century and the ethnic specifics of Kūčių dishes; the uniqueness of Lithuanian Vilnius-dwellers’ Kūčių dinner tables in the early 21st century and changes during the quarantine period in 2020. This research showed that the Lithuanian Kūčios culinary tradition is still maintained in Vilnius, and that the hierarchical-value structure of festive dishes differs from neighbouring countries.

By applying the internal reconstruction and comparative methods, in this article I detail the ethnological discourse in the 1262 insert in the 6th-century Chronicle of John Malalas. I dispute earlier authors’ hypothetical claims about how the meaning markers 9 boar spleens, 9 gates of hell, etc. relate to the referents abundance and the inherent vitality of the defeated enemy or the sun’s annual movement across the heavens and the 9 gates of the city of Rethra, and others. These ethno-mythological symbols are interpreted harnessing factography from the Old and New Testaments, the Christian dogmatism of the deadly sins (9 [→ 8 → 7]), also detailing Evagrius Ponticus’ and Slavic apotropes, such as the spleen (↔ food of the dead) and their ritual tradition of placing food in gates/gateways for the spirits of the deceased.

Erysipelas, called rožė (‘rose’) in Lithuanian, is one of the very few diseases that still make patients turn to traditional charmers for help. Using narratives from the remote village of Musteika (in the Varėna district) and materials recorded elsewhere in Lithuania, the author attempts to establish the ethnomedical concept of erysipelas, and to what extent the treatment by charming can be effective. The research in Musteika allows for the conclusion that the ethnomedical etiology of erysipelas includes both physical and mental causes, and the disease might be a somatic expression of mental experiences. Traditional charming therefore serves as an effective treatment practice.

In Lithuania, research on folktales from an anthropological perspective is a new topic. This article aims broaden the research on traditional folktales. It highlights the methodological issues of ethnographic research of folktales as cultural heritage, and seeks to answer how ethnographic research of folktales could reveal the human phenomenon and the contexts that surround folktales. It examines the primary outcomes of ethnographic fieldwork: attitudes towards tales and perceptions of the tradition of storytelling, the role of context in defining the meaning of a tale, and the individual’s relationship to the tale, reflecting issues of interrelationship, community and identity.