ABSTRACT
In halls of learning and in humble cottages alike, published works like the Kalevala, Kanteletar, and other anthologies presented fixed, normalized versions of a “dying” tradition, reconstructing through emendation and assertion an earlier song tradition, one deemed more cohesive, more extensive, and more complex in the past. The subtle aesthetic system of the lyric itself, demonstrated in the songs of Larin Paraske, foregrounds aspects of peasant life, particularly the displacement of women through the custom of patrilocal marriage and the ritual roles of the women in the life cycle and village culture. Ingria as a cultural entity all but disappeared; the active song tradition survived only in remote areas of Estonia and Karelia. Through the activities of the cultural revivalists, however, the songs became the vehicles for subversive anti-Soviet protest in Estonia: a gesture of defiance against a repressive regime.
