We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Arkeologia ja narratiivit virolaisten alkuperästä.
- Authors
Alenius, Kari
- Abstract
Humans typically make sense of the world as a variety of narratives, for which there can always be found a beginning, development and ending. Narratives are stereotypical in nature, i.e. they are simplified and portrayed in undiscerning terms. The narratives on the origin of the Estonians are not exceptional in this sense: they have always been constructed as wider mental conception entities, where archaeological findings and interpretations based on that specific kind of source material have played a significant role from the late 19th century to the 2000s. The first theory and narrative were born in the 1870s, presented by Constantin Grewingk, Professor of Geology at the University of Tartu. Grewingk assigned the stone graves found Estonia to the Goths and created a picture of the prehistory of the Eastern Baltic where Germanic peoples had been the majority and the maintainers of culture, while Estonians and other Finno-Ugric peoples were depicted as savages and later newcomers in the area. An elementary change in interpreting archaeological material took place in the interwar period, after Estonia had become independent. In the eyes of the leading Finnish and Estonian archeologists, Professors Aarne Tallgren and Harri Moora, archaeological material no longer supported the theory presented by Baltic German scholars. Mainly on the basis of the development perceived in Comb-Ceramics they suggested that Estonians had constituted a majority in their "home country" for approximately 2,000 years at least. The new hypothesis and narrative prevailed practically uncontested until the 1990s, after which two different narratives have existed. The main narrative underlines the multiple nature of the formation of peoples and gradual processes behind it. According to the contesting narrative ethnic Estonians are the first inhabitants of their country, an aboriginal population that has survived and to a considerable extent maintained their language and culture unchanged.
- Publication
Faravid, 2017, Vol 43, p21
- ISSN
0356-5629
- Publication type
Article