Young / Ermacora The Exeter Companion to Fairies, Nereids, Trolls and other Social Supernatural Beings

European Traditions
Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80413-105-3
Verlag: University of Exeter Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten

Reihe: Exeter New Approaches to Legend, Folklore and Popular Belief

Fairies, elves, and other magical beings… they’re so much more than just children’s tales.

For centuries, Europeans believed in a parallel supernatural realm inhabited by these beings who lived much like humans in their own communities. This ‘social supernatural’ world mirrored ours with troll weddings, pixy battles, nereid picnics, dwarf migrations, and the like. Social supernatural beings were thought to interact with the human world in profound ways: they whipped up storms, ensured good harvests, and healed (and, all too often, caused) illness.

The Exeter Companion to Fairies, Nereids, Trolls and other Social Supernatural Beings dives into the rich folklore and oral traditions around the social supernatural across Europe; in fact, it pioneers the term ‘social supernatural’ as a folklore and supernatural category. Bringing together eighteen experts, this is the first comprehensive Europe-wide look at these beliefs and practices. Through in-depth studies, the volume explores how diverse cultures from Ireland to Ukraine, and from Norway to Greece, envisioned their supernatural neighbours and how these parallel societies reflected human concerns and desires. Our authors employ ancient, medieval, modern and, in some cases, contemporary material to tease out the ‘hidden people’ from obscure and, all too often, forgotten sources.

The book resurrects captivating stories and traditions. For anyone fascinated by European folklore, magic, and mythology, it provides a rich research seam with up-to-date bibliographies for a dozen European countries. It will be of use to folklorists, historians, ethnologists, sociologists and also the general reader interested in the supernatural beliefs of traditional European societies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Young, Simon, Dr.

Young, Simon

Ermacora, Davide

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Volkskunde: Sitten, Traditionen, Mythen, Legenden
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Regional- & Stadtgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introducing the Social Supernatural Simon Young and Davide Ermacora

DOI: 10.47788/NIFG1335

2. Ireland: The Tribes of the Gods and the People of the Hills John Carey

DOI: 10.47788/OFEV8836

3. The Isle of Man: ‘They Call Them the Good People’ Stephen Miller

DOI: 10.47788/YFYX8175

4. England: Small Fairies Are Beautiful Fairies Jeremy Harte

DOI: 10.47788/ULSI6409

5. Iceland: The Elves of Strandir Matthias Egeler

DOI: 10.47788/MOTK2852

6. Scandinavia: My Neighbour the Troll Tommy Kuusela

DOI: 10.47788/LHEL2533

7. The Netherlands: Witte Wieven and Other White Apparitions Yseult de Blécourt

DOI: 10.47788/YXVN8515

8. Iberia: Moors, Gentiles and Encantadas José Manuel Pedrosa

DOI: 10.47788/HUME1621

9. France: Humanlike Societies and Spaces among the Fées Andrea Maraschi

DOI: 10.47788/WYMP2420

10. German-Speaking Europe: Moosweiblein, Wichtel and Nixen Janin Pisarek and Florian Schaefer

DOI: 10.47788/ZCJG8520

11. Hungarians: Heavenly and Earthly Fairy Societies Éva Pócs

DOI: 10.47788/JVJT2813

12. Western Balkans: ‘A Vila Like a Vila’ Dorian Juric

DOI: 10.47788/DDHP2327

13. Greece (and Italy): The Nereids, ‘Those from Outside’ Tommaso Braccini

DOI: 10.47788/NGJH2743

14. The Balts: Laume.s and Laime.s Francis Young and Saule Kubiliute

DOI: 10.47788/HYYU5632

15. Ukraine: Courtship Rituals and Legends of the Bohyni Natalie Kononenko

DOI: 10.47788/UMXX7077

Über Autor(innen)

Ermacora, Davide
Davide Ermacora holds a doctoral degree in anthropology from a dual program run between the University of Turin (Italy) and Lumière University Lyon 2 (France). His work explores religious history, supernatural beliefs, and folkloric traditions across different time periods. He is the author of numerous publications, including ‘Drinking Danger and “Giving Birth” to Snakes in Guðmundar saga D (and Beyond)ì and ‘Afterword: The Milk-Drinking and Milk-Suckling Snake Revisited’. He is currently completing a book on the midwife-witch stereotype.

Young, Simon, Dr.
Simon Young is Cambridge-educated with a doctorate from the University of Florence. He has taught at universities in Tuscany for some fifteen years. In 2023 he was runner up for the Katharine Briggs Prize and for the Wayland Hand Prize, and won the Brian McConnell Book Award in that year. In 2023 he also won a Curran Fellowship.

Simon Young, ‘the foremost chronicler of Britain’s fairies’, teaches at the University of California (Accent), Florence. He has published The Boggart: Folklore, Place-Names, History and Dialect (2023) with UEP and The Nail in the Skull and other Victorian Urban Legends with Mississippi, which was awarded the 2023 Brian McConnell Book Award.

Davide Ermacora earned his PhD in Anthropology at the University of Turin, Italy, and at Lumière University Lyon 2 in France. His research interests include the history of religions, supernatural belief systems, and traditional and contemporary legends. His first book, Monstrous Animal Siblings in Europe: From the Frater salernitanorum to the sooterkin, was published in 2022 in the Boletín de Literatura Oral series.