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The aim of this overview study is to bring basic information on the system of safeguarding of selected elements of the intangible cultural heritage with an emphasis on the designation of products, while taking into account the geographical indication. It explains the current state related to the historical process of the origins and granting of protected designation to selected products in the former Czechoslovakia, in the Slovak Republic and the European Union. The study builds on the legal frameworks and definitions that are harmonised with industrial property protection, and observes the links between the categories of industry, intellectual property, and cultural heritage. For experts specialised in the safeguarding of the cultural heritage, it is important to know the historical development of this type of protection and its geopolitical dimension. They can thus analyse the strategies, functionality, and the impacts of safeguarding on the development of protected designations in the field of traditional folk culture and its functioning in society.

The contemporary world has inherited some evil spirits from mythical ideas and beliefs. Sleep demons are among the evil spirits that belong to this group and they have their counterparts in all cultures of the world. They are common products of the mythical age and the human mind. In this context, Turkish culture also has these demons. Bastırık, a sleep demon of the Caucasus, constitutes the central topic of this paper. Bastırık reflects the name, form and functions of Karakura, Karabasan or Albastı, which are believed everywhere in Anatolia without exception. However, it is not given much space in the sources. This study aims to reveal the cultural interaction by identifying other evil spirits and demons with the same or similar names based on the verb “to pressure (Turkish verb basmak)” in this entity’s name. Tablets, spell texts, incantations, prayers, and frescoes from a variety of cultures that have been preserved to the present day provide an opportunity for this comparison. The analysis of the materials revealed that “oppressing, crushing” is a common motif in sleep demons, and Bastırık belongs to the ring of mythological creatures rooted in “bas- (to pressure)”, which is reflected in Turkish folklore. Research has shown that through direct or indirect interaction in prehistoric times along with intracultural diversifications, a mythological creature belonging to the Turkish culture has been passed on to other cultures by preserving the root of “bas- (to pressure)”.

The idea of being in one place during certain times of the year and in another place during other times, although exhibiting changes in various dimensions such as name, content, form, and application area throughout historical processes, still continues as seasonal relocations. This change of place and the accompanying practices, depending on the content of the application, not only form a cultural structure but also serve as evidence of the existence of elements belonging to urban culture within the urban boundaries. Going to a summer house, one of these practices, both creates a cultural circle with the practices that arise around it as an example of seasonal relocation and becomes a research area for urban folklore due to the majority of summer houses being located within the boundaries of urban areas today. In this paper, I examined summer houses and the groups residing in these houses, referred to as summer residents, within the framework of their cultural meanings. I explored the impact of the changing urban perception on this practice and investigated how summer houses have undergone historical changes. In the literature review related to the subject, I noticed that literary genres such as memoirs, rather than scientific studies, would provide sources for this research. Although there are scientific studies acceptable in fields such as tourism, architecture, and economics, genres like memoirs, biographies, and opinion pieces have offered clues for this folklore perspective. Within this framework, I attempted to focus on the cultural meanings of summer houses and summer residents.

Social memory refers to the collective knowledge and understanding produced by society through various cultural, material, and immaterial elements. Folk music is one of the most important expressions and carriers of Turkish culture and social memory. The life and works of Âşık Veysel, a key figure in the continuation of traditional Turkish culture, play a multifaceted role in the context of social memory and the transmission of cultural heritage. This study aims to examine the elements that play a role in preserving social memory in terms of its external dimensions, within the context of the interview Âşık Veysel gave to the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) in 1969. Social memory is addressed based on the theoretical approach of Jan Assmann, one of the leading theorists of cultural studies, and the auditory and visual elements related to Âşık Veysel are analyzed through a semiotic lens in terms of four different dimensions of memory defined by Jan Assmann: mimetic memory, object memory, communicative memory, and cultural memory. The findings suggest that through his life and works, Âşık Veysel has contributed to the preservation of belief systems, value structures, modes of living, human relationships, and individual experiences within Turkish cultural memory, thus ensuring the continuity of social memory across generations.

The story of the raising of Lazarus, as narrated in the Gospel of John (11:1-4), one of the four canonical Gospels of the New Testament, occupies a pivotal position in Christian theology and is identified with the resurrection of Christ. Similar to other miracles performed by Christ, this narrative has been extensively depicted in literary and artistic works. In Byzantine art, the scene of the raising of Lazarus is typically illustrated with compositions that include Christ, Lazarus, Lazarus’ sisters Martha and Mary, and witnesses to the event. This visual representation effectively encapsulates the narrative from the Gospel of John. In the marginal Psalters (Septuagint LXX) from the Middle Byzantine Period, an allegorical figure representing the underworld is incorporated into the scene of the raising of Lazarus. This depiction demonstrates the influence of the Ancient Period on Byzantine art. The miniature of the raising of Lazarus in the Barberini Psalter (Barb. gr. 372, Vatican Apostolic Library) is particularly significant in this context. Unlike other manuscript miniatures, the scene in the Barberini Psalter features a dog-headed, human-bodied figure, identified with Cerberus, the hellhound from ancient texts. This study explores the relationship between the literary sources and the miniature of the raising of Lazarus in the Barberini Psalter, underscoring the importance of ancient literary sources in the iconographic analysis of Byzantine art.

This article gives an overview of wolf extermination endeavours in Soviet Yakutia as part of state ideologies of human dominance over nature in the process of modernisation of the Russian North. The proclaimed wolf extermination was a large-scale operation planned and launched by state authorities in Yakutia involving bureaucratic, finance and human contingents, as well as the available infrastructure. Based on ethnographic research among game managers, wolf hunters and Eveny and Evenki hunting-herding communities, as well as archival materials on Soviet Yakutia, we demonstrate how state goals to eradicate wolves were sometimes unsystematic in practice due to the misuse of state resources as well as the difficulty in accomplishing this objective in remote and difficult to access taiga landscapes. Furthermore, while being involved in wolf eradication campaigns Indigenous communities also retained their vernacular notions of wolves as nonhuman persons with whom they were inclined to maintain neighbourly relations rather than pursue extermination.

Tradition has been claimed to be a keyword in the folklore lexicon. Yet the word has not proved central to the thinking of many folklorists. More often, the term is simply used to mark territory. By characterizing certain songs, tales, dances, or customs as traditions, such expressions and behaviors are declared to be part of the discipline’s proper subject. But the term is usually theoretically empty. It is rarely defined, and it raises no critical questions. In this essay, tradition is defined, the critical questions evoked by this definition are specified, and some of the ways that folklorists might go about answering these questions are delineated.

The text is based on a qualitative survey with stakeholders directly or indirectly engaged in fish farming in ponds of Blatná or Blatensko region, Czech Republic. The dialog between them and academicians is directed to the fishery culture, its tradition, present, problems and possibilities of increasing the quality or prosperity of production. Stakeholders’ answers are essentially narratives, and the text is constructed as a compilation of individual narratives, which are summon by researchers who have tried to share the story with local inhabitants. The text contains basic information about the history, current production trends in fish farming, a methodological sub-chapter, and a summary of the responses of individual stakeholders. The article structure copy peoples’ narratives, as described, for example, by William Labov, but the aim of the text is not the narrative as itself. Narratives and their interpretations are a methodological tool for obtaining adequate information on the interests, aspirations, and strategies of key people in the region in the field of fish farming. The conclusion of this text is basically a metanarration composed of the views of individual actors, including the interpretation of the academics who created or commented this text.

The Nordic Institute of Folklore, internationally well known by its abbreviation NIF, left a lasting imprint on the history of Nordic and international folkloristics despite its relatively short operation period of less than four decades. The present article, first in a series of forthcoming articles on NIF, examines Lauri Honko’s directorship in the 1970s and 1980s and focuses on the changing of the institute’s field of operation from folkloristics to ‘tradition science’. The term ‘tradition science’ (traditionsvetenskap in Swedish, perinnetiede in Finnish) was never clearly defined in NIF, but was used – and it has continued to be used in folkloristics and ethnology in Finland – in three meanings: an approximate synonym for folkloristics, a joint term for folkloristics and ethnology, and (in plural) an umbrella term for an unspecified number of fields in the study of history, vernacular religion, and culture. The possible earlier history of the term is beyond the scope of this research, but there are indications that the term came into use in both Finnish-language and Swedish-language folklore research in the early 1970s, while the similar term ‘tradition research’ (traditionsforskning in Swedish, perinteentutkimus in Finnish) has a longer history. The term ‘tradition science’ was adopted into NIF’s statutes around the same time as the Nordic Council of Ministers – through which the inter-governmental funding of NIF was administered – initiated the expansion of NIF’s profile to cover folk culture “in its entirety”, suggesting specifically the extension of NIF’s field of operation to include ethnology. Whether NIF implemented this expansion or not, and to what extent, is a matter of debate, and the topic of this article.

Fikret Demirağ holds a very important place in Turkish Cypriot poetry. In Turkey, he became acquainted with İkinci Yeni Şiir (the Second New Wave Poets), and as one of the prominent representatives of abstract poetry, he introduced this poetry movement into Turkish Cypriot literature. In his poetry, the prominent themes were built upon social distress and the social and cultural structures of the community he was living in. In this study, we will examine the folkloric elements found in the poetry of Demirağ in his book entitled Hüzün Ana (Mother of Sorrow). Turkish Cypriot poetry gained a new discourse and a new wave with the poetry of Demirağ, after years of being under the influence of the nationalist poets who had penned their works in the distressful environment of a two-community island during the 1960s. The painful memories of the past continued to be the theme of the artists, even after the new process began in 1960 with the foundation of the Republic of Cyprus. Although Demirağ expressed that he tried to remain above the fray of those kinds of discourses, it is possible to find the soul-shattering traces of those painful days in his poetry. In his book Hüzün Ana, he decided to use the voice of the mothers in his narration, as he believed that they were the most affected by the ugly truth of war. Along with the incorporated pattern of rich cultural vocabulary, the poet frequently used various folkloric and cultural discourses integral to the everyday life of a Cypriot. It is obvious that cultural accumulation can be gradually lost through the modernization of economic and social life, or that cultural richness can be limited in terms of practices. However, taking advantage of being a small community, the Turkish Cypriots are able to maintain a great deal of their traditions, customs, beliefs, and practices. This study examines the traces of these folkloric elements in the works of Fikret Demirağ by employing the descriptive research method for the analysis of his poems. In the poetry of Fikret Demirağ, it is clear that he employed both the folk speech and the manner of life of his community. He widely used folkloric elements such as folk beliefs, proverbs, sayings, prayers, and maledictions in his poetry.