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108-639: Gribskov is usually divided into four sections: The northwest surrounding the small village of Maarum , the northeast on the banks of Lake Esrum , the southwest around the small lake of Gribsø and finally the southeast, enclosing the village of Nødebo on the southern banks of Lake Esrum. Only a thin strip of Hillerød town in the south separates Gribskov from many larger woodlands such as Store Dyrehave at 1,100 ha, Tokkekøb Hegn at 631 ha and several smaller woods. The Danish name Gribskov translates literally as Grib forest in English. The first part, 'grib',

216-502: A nunnery that once was here. The nuns showed more interest in the monks at Esrum Abbey than in God, so he opened up the ground and the chasm swallowed up all the nuns and the entire monastery. The monastery continued to sink and sink and that was how the lake was created. It is said that one can still hear the monastery's bells ringing down in the lake on quiet evenings. There are many small ponds, streams and lakes throughout Gribskov, but

324-463: A street culture outside the purview of adults. This is also ideal where it needs to be collected; as Iona and Peter Opie demonstrated in their pioneering book Children's Games in Street and Playground . Here the social group of children is studied on its own terms, not as a derivative of adult social groups. It is shown that the culture of children is quite distinctive; it is generally unnoticed by

432-432: A binary: one individual or group who actively transmits information in some form to another individual or group. Each of these is a defined role in the folklore process. The tradition-bearer is the individual who actively passes along the knowledge of an artifact; this can be either a mother singing a lullaby to her baby, or an Irish dance troupe performing at a local festival. They are named individuals, usually well known in

540-408: A child's birthday party, including verbal lore ( Happy Birthday song ), material lore (presents and a birthday cake), special games ( Musical chairs ) and individual customs (making a wish as you blow out the candles). Each of these is a folklore artifact in its own right, potentially worthy of investigation and cultural analysis. Together they combine to build the custom of a birthday party celebration,

648-489: A community. Many objects of material folklore are challenging to classify, difficult to archive, and unwieldy to store. The assigned task of museums is to preserve and make use of these bulky artifacts of material culture. To this end, the concept of the living museum has developed, beginning in Scandinavia at the end of the 19th century. These open-air museums not only display the artifacts, but also teach visitors how

756-659: A compound of folk and lore , was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms , who contrived the term as a replacement for the contemporary terminology of "popular antiquities" or "popular literature". The second half of the word, lore , comes from Old English lār 'instruction'. It is the knowledge and traditions of a particular group frequently passed along by word of mouth. The concept of folk has varied over time. When Thoms first created this term, folk applied only to rural, frequently poor, and illiterate peasants. A more modern definition of folk

864-432: A few incidences of trematoda plaguing swimmers in the summertime every year. The trematodes are a natural part of lake Esrums' aquatic life. Lake Esrum have a large population of European perch and Northern pike . Other species includes European eel , ruffe , bream , roach , tench and bleak . A smaller population of brown trout is living here, having adapted to the freshwater. The professional fishing for eel,

972-511: A large school situated in the old foresters lodge, Skovfryd (lit.: Forest-joy), from 1829 to 1830. Here forest engineers , landscape engineers and nature guides are educated. In the northeastern corner is the old Esrum Abbey . Gribskov has a long tradition for forestry of all kinds. In 1736, the German forester Johann Georg von Langen participated in restoring the Danish woodlands of

1080-705: A noisy colony of great cormorants has found a home. Cormorants can be a problematic bird to administer locally, but they are protected in Denmark and on list III in the Berne convention . The forest grows in a hilly terrain (by Danish standards), with lower lying areas in the east and west. The low-lying areas are dominated by beech and oak , but with several forest types mixed in, such as wood pastures or old coppice woodland with alder and ash . There are also numerous small ponds, bogs, swamps and springs, some enshrouded by myths, superstition or old folk tales. Gribskov

1188-516: A problem to be solved, but as a tremendous opportunity. In the diversity of American folklife, we find a marketplace teeming with the exchange of traditional forms and cultural ideas, a rich resource for Americans". This diversity is celebrated annually at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and many other folklife fests around the country. There are numerous other definitions. According to William Bascom major article on

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1296-605: A scripted combination of multiple artifacts which have meaning within their social group. Folklorists divide customs into several different categories. A custom can be a seasonal celebration , such as Thanksgiving or New Year's . It can be a life cycle celebration for an individual, such as baptism, birthday or wedding. A custom can also mark a community festival or event; examples of this are Carnival in Cologne or Mardi Gras in New Orleans . This category also includes

1404-509: A shift in purpose and meaning. There are many reasons for continuing to handmake objects for use, for example these skills may be needed to repair manufactured items, or a unique design might be required which is not (or cannot be) found in the stores. Many crafts are considered as simple home maintenance, such as cooking, sewing and carpentry. For many people, handicrafts have also become an enjoyable and satisfying hobby. Handmade objects are often regarded as prestigious, where extra time and thought

1512-426: A small sampling of objects and skills that are included in studies of material culture. Customary culture is remembered enactment, i.e. re-enactment. It is the patterns of expected behavior within a group, the "traditional and expected way of doing things" A custom can be a single gesture , such as thumbs down or a handshake . It can also be a complex interaction of multiple folk customs and artifacts as seen in

1620-450: A social event during the winter months, or the gifting of a quilt to signify the importance of the event. Each of these—the traditional pattern chosen, the social event, and the gifting—occur within the broader context of the community. Even so, when considering context, the structure and characteristics of performance can be recognized, including an audience, a framing event, and the use of decorative figures and symbols, all of which go beyond

1728-400: A swell in popular interest in folk traditions, these community celebrations are becoming more numerous throughout the western world. While ostensibly parading the diversity of their community, economic groups have discovered that these folk parades and festivals are good for business. All shades of people are out on the streets, eating, drinking and spending. This attracts support not only from

1836-572: A whole, even as it continues to be a point of discussion within the field itself. The term folkloristics , along with the alternative name folklore studies , became widely used in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves. When the American Folklife Preservation Act (Public Law 94-201) was passed by the U.S. Congress in January 1976, to coincide with

1944-492: Is "not idle speculation… Decades of fieldwork have demonstrated conclusively that these groups do have their own folklore." In this modern understanding, folklore is a function of shared identity within any social group. This folklore can include jokes, sayings, and expected behavior in multiple variants, always transmitted in an informal manner. For the most part, it will be learned by observation, imitation, repetition, or correction by other group members. This informal knowledge

2052-567: Is 8.4 km and its maximum depth is 22 m. Its principal drainage is Esrum Å , a 10-km stream which passes Esrum Watermill and the remains of Esrum Abbey on its way to the Kattegat at Dronningmølle . The western shore of the lake is dominated by Gribskov , one of Denmark's largest forests, and the small town of Nødebo . Fredensborg Palace , one of the official residences of the Danish Royal Family, with its extensive gardens,

2160-457: Is a distinct branch of folklore that deals with activities passed on by children to other children, away from the influence or supervision of an adult. Children's folklore contains artifacts from all the standard folklore genres of verbal, material, and customary lore; it is however the child-to-child conduit that distinguishes these artifacts. For childhood is a social group where children teach, learn and share their own traditions, flourishing in

2268-643: Is a lunch restaurant overlooking the lake. Egon ( Ove Sprogøe ) and Kjeld ( Morten Grunwald ) are quarrelling with Lake Esrum as a backdrop (in Nødebo Holt ) at 1:02:54 in the 1978 Olsen-banden film The Olsen Gang Sees Red . Folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people , culture or subculture . This includes oral traditions such as tales , myths , legends , proverbs , poems , jokes , and other oral traditions. This also includes material culture , such as traditional building styles common to

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2376-678: Is a social group that includes two or more people with common traits who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. "Folk is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family. " This expanded social definition of folk supports a broader view of the material, i.e., the lore, considered to be folklore artifacts . These now include all "things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)". Folklore are no longer considered to be limited to that which

2484-400: Is also transmitted within a group, remains a practical hygiene and health issue and does not rise to the level of a group-defining tradition. Tradition is initially remembered behavior; once it loses its practical purpose, there is no reason for further transmission unless it has been imbued with meaning beyond the initial practicality of the action. This meaning is at the core of folkloristics,

2592-485: Is as close as folklorists can come to observing the transmission and social function of this folk knowledge before the spread of literacy during the 19th century. As we have seen with the other genres, the original collections of children's lore and games in the 19th century was driven by a fear that the culture of childhood would die out. Early folklorists, among them Alice Gomme in Britain and William Wells Newell in

2700-538: Is designated as an Important Bird Area (IBA). Around 20% or c. 1,200 ha of the forest has been reserved as 'forest to be untouched', in an effort to preserve some of the few spots of semi-natural woodland (SNW) in Denmark and stimulate the growth of new. The birdlife in Gribskov is varied and of international importance. The forest is home to the largest populations of common goldeneye , green sandpiper and red-backed shrike in Denmark and near Nødebo at Lake Esrum,

2808-404: Is enmeshed in a multitude of differing identities and their concomitant social groups. The first group that each of us is born into is the family, and each family has its own unique family folklore . As a child grows into an individual, its identities also increase to include age, language, ethnicity, occupation, etc. Each of these cohorts has its own folklore, and as one folklorist points out, this

2916-541: Is found in an issue of the Journal of American Folklore , published in 1975, which is dedicated exclusively to articles on women's folklore, with approaches that had not come from a man's perspective. Other groups that were highlighted as part of this broadened understanding of the folk group were non-traditional families , occupational groups, and families that pursued the production of folk items over multiple generations. Folklorist Richard Dorson explained in 1976 that

3024-451: Is found in hex signs on Pennsylvania Dutch barns, tin man sculptures made by metalworkers, front yard Christmas displays, decorated school lockers, carved gun stocks, and tattoos. "Words such as naive, self-taught, and individualistic are used to describe these objects, and the exceptional rather than the representative creation is featured." This is in contrast to the understanding of folklore artifacts that are nurtured and passed along within

3132-427: Is in progress to re-establish a more natural waterflow and improved conditions for wetland areas. These measures have already enhanced the biological diversity and has had a direct positive influence on the living conditions for birds in the forest. There are several interesting bodies of water in Gribskov, seen both from a scientific and a folkloristic viewpoint. Store Gribsø (Large Grib-lake), or simply Gribsø ,

3240-559: Is intended to organize and categorize the folklore artifacts; they provide common vocabulary and consistent labeling for folklorists to communicate with each other. That said, each artifact is unique; in fact, one of the characteristics of all folklore artifacts is their variation within genres and types. This is in direct contrast to manufactured goods, where the goal in production is to create identical products, and any variations are considered mistakes. It is, however, just this required variation that makes identification and classification of

3348-424: Is more than 10,000 years old, dating from the end of the last ice age , but the forest bears the marks of an intensive plantation industry that accelerated from the late 1700s and peaked in the 1800s. Former wetlands were drained and many new tree species were introduced, especially European spruce . These practises have now stopped in Gribskov. Artificial ditches are being filled to allow a more natural waterflow and

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3456-470: Is not just any conversation, but words and phrases conforming to a traditional configuration recognized by both the speaker and the audience. For narrative types , by definition, they have a consistent structure and follow an existing model in their narrative form. As just one simple example, in English, the phrase "An elephant walks into a bar…" instantaneously flags the following text as a joke . It might be one you have already heard, but it might be one that

3564-411: Is old or obsolete. These folk artifacts continue to be passed along informally, as a rule anonymously, and always in multiple variants. The folk group is not individualistic; it is community-based and nurtures its lore in community. "As new groups emerge, new folklore is created… surfers, motorcyclists, computer programmers ". In direct contrast to high culture , where any single work of a named artist

3672-408: Is only a 10 ha lake, but is nevertheless the largest forest-enclosed lake in Gribskov. It is a so-called dystrophic lake and it is impossible to see the bottom in its dark waters, even though it is only 11 m deep. The lake has no outflows and it can be ice cold just beneath the surface, so care should be taken when bathing. Tradition says the lake is bottomless and was created when God angrily punished

3780-434: Is protected by copyright law , folklore is a function of shared identity within a common social group. Having identified folk artifacts, the professional folklorist strives to understand the significance of these beliefs, customs, and objects for the group, since these cultural units would not be passed along unless they had some continued relevance within the group. That meaning can, however, shift and morph; for example,

3888-562: Is situated on the southeast shore. Boat trips operate on the lake from Sørup, a village just south of the palace gardens. Like many of the surrounding forests, Lake Esrum was originally a royal domain. It was first administrated by Eentekammeret and later by Frederiksborg Amtsstue on behalf of the Danish government. Fishing in the lake was entrusted with a fishing master (Danish: fiskemester ) who resided at Fiskergården, located next to Slotsmøllen at Slotssøen in Hillerød. From 1864, fishing

3996-578: Is spent in their creation and their uniqueness is valued. For the folklorist, these hand-crafted objects embody multifaceted relationships in the lives of the craftspeople and the users, a concept that has been lost with mass-produced items that have no connection to an individual craftsperson. Many traditional crafts, such as ironworking and glass-making, have been elevated to the fine or applied arts and taught in art schools; or they have been repurposed as folk art , characterized as objects whose decorative form supersedes their utilitarian needs. Folk art

4104-403: Is still transmitted orally and, indeed, continues to be generated in new forms and variants at an alarming rate. Below is listed a small sampling of types and examples of verbal lore. The genre of material culture includes all artifacts that can be touched, held, lived in, or eaten. They are tangible objects with a physical or mental presence, either intended for permanent use or to be used at

4212-669: Is the complex balance of continuity over change in both their design and their decoration. In Europe, prior to the Industrial Revolution , everything was made by hand. While some folklorists of the 19th century wanted to secure the oral traditions of the rural folk before the populace became literate, other folklorists sought to identify hand-crafted objects before their production processes were lost to industrial manufacturing. Just as verbal lore continues to be actively created and transmitted in today's culture, so these handicrafts can still be found all around us, with possibly

4320-480: Is the imperative form of the verb for 'catch' or 'grab', but the actual meaning and etymology of the word go a bit deeper. 'Grib' refers to the Old Danish word for something 'without any specific owner', so 'Gribskov' actually means a woodland of common ownership. Gribskov and Lake Esrum are designated as EU habitat directive and Natura 2000 areas, as part of an even larger preserve. On top of that, Gribskov

4428-469: Is the largest lake in Denmark by water volume and the second-largest lake by surface area, after lake Arresø . It is situated in the central part of North Zealand (the northeastern region of Zealand ), straddling the boundaries of the municipalities Hillerød , Fredensborg , Helsingør and Gribskov , some 40 kilometres north of Copenhagen . The lake covers 17 km , Its length from north to south

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4536-540: Is used in discussions of material lore. Both formulations offer different perspectives on the same folkloric understanding, specifically that folklore artifacts need to remain embedded in their cultural environment if we are to gain insight into their meaning for the community. The concept of cultural (folklore) performance is shared with ethnography and anthropology among other social sciences. The cultural anthropologist Victor Turner identified four universal characteristics of cultural performance: playfulness, framing ,

4644-428: Is used to confirm and reinforce the identity of the group. It can be used both internally within the group to express their common identity, for example in an initiation ceremony for new members. It can also be used externally to differentiate the group from outsiders, like a folk dance demonstration at a community festival. Significant to folklorists here is that there are two opposing but equally valid ways to use this in

4752-842: The Bicentennial Celebration , folkloristics in the United States came of age. "…[Folklife] means the traditional expressive culture shared within the various groups in the United States: familial, ethnic, occupational, religious, regional; expressive culture includes a wide range of creative and symbolic forms such as custom, belief, technical skill, language, literature, art, architecture, music, play, dance, drama, ritual, pageantry, handicraft; these expressions are mainly learned orally, by imitation, or in performance, and are generally maintained without benefit of formal instruction or institutional direction." Added to

4860-619: The Halloween celebration of the 21st century is not the All Hallows' Eve of the Middle Ages and even gives rise to its own set of urban legends independent of the historical celebration; the cleansing rituals of Orthodox Judaism were originally good public health in a land with little water, but now these customs signify for some people identification as an Orthodox Jew. By comparison, a common action such as tooth brushing , which

4968-616: The Historic–Geographic Method , a methodology that dominated folkloristics in the first half of the 20th century. When William Thoms first published his appeal to document the verbal lore of the rural populations, it was believed these folk artifacts would die out as the population became literate. Over the past two centuries, this belief has proven to be wrong; folklorists continue to collect verbal lore in both written and spoken form from all social groups. Some variants might have been captured in published collections, but much of it

5076-566: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival celebrated each summer on the Mall in Washington, DC. A fourth category includes customs related to folk beliefs . Walking under a ladder is just one of many symbols considered unlucky . Occupational groups tend to have a rich history of customs related to their life and work, so the traditions of sailors or lumberjacks . The area of ecclesiastical folklore , which includes modes of worship not sanctioned by

5184-500: The American Folklore Society brought the behavioral approach into open debate among folklorists. In 1972 Richard Dorson called out the "young Turks" for their movement toward a behavioral approach to folklore. This approach "shifted the conceptualization of folklore as an extractable item or 'text' to an emphasis on folklore as a kind of human behavior and communication. Conceptualizing folklore as behavior redefined

5292-561: The History and Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society and concerned with the connections of folklore with history, as well as the history of folklore studies. Lacking context, folklore artifacts would be uninspiring objects without any life of their own. It is only through performance that the artifacts come alive as an active and meaningful component of a social group; the intergroup communication arises in

5400-537: The Second World War, folklorists began to articulate a more holistic approach toward their subject matter. In tandem with the growing sophistication in the social sciences , attention was no longer limited to the isolated artifact, but extended to include the artifact embedded in an active cultural environment. One early proponent was Alan Dundes with his essay "Texture, Text and Context", first published 1964. A public presentation in 1967 by Dan Ben-Amos at

5508-603: The United States, felt a need to capture the unstructured and unsupervised street life and activities of children before it was lost. This fear proved to be unfounded. In a comparison of any modern school playground during recess and the painting of "Children's Games" by Pieter Breugel the Elder we can see that the activity level is similar, and many of the games from the 1560 painting are recognizable and comparable to modern variations still played today. These same artifacts of childlore, in innumerable variations, also continue to serve

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5616-413: The artifacts and turn them into something else; so Old McDonald's farm is transformed from animal noises to the scatological version of animal poop. This childlore is characterized by "its lack of dependence on literary and fixed form. Children…operate among themselves in a world of informal and oral communication, unimpeded by the necessity of maintaining and transmitting information by written means". This

5724-423: The business community, but also from federal and state organizations for these local street parties. Paradoxically, in parading diversity within the community, these events have come to authenticate true community, where business interests ally with the varied (folk) social groups to promote the interests of the community as a whole. This is just a small sampling of types and examples of customary lore. Childlore

5832-457: The complexity of the interpretation, the birthday party for a seven-year-old will not be identical to the birthday party for that same child as a six-year-old, even though they follow the same model. For each artifact embodies a single variant of a performance in a given time and space. The task of the folklorist becomes to identify within this surfeit of variables the constants and the expressed meaning that shimmer through all variations: honoring of

5940-472: The continent is a single example of an ethnic group parading their separateness (differential behavior ), and encouraging Americans of all stripes to show alliance to this colorful ethnic group. These festivals and parades, with a target audience of people who do not belong to the social group, intersect with the interests and mission of public folklorists , who are engaged in the documentation, preservation, and presentation of traditional forms of folklife. With

6048-609: The custom, either as performer or audience, signifies acknowledgment of that social group. Some customary behavior is intended to be performed and understood only within the group itself, so the handkerchief code sometimes used in the gay community or the initiation rituals of the Freemasons. Other customs are designed specifically to represent a social group to outsiders, those who do not belong to this group. The St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York and in other communities across

6156-456: The defining features a challenge. While this classification is essential for the subject area of folkloristics, it remains just labeling and adds little to an understanding of the traditional development and meaning of the artifacts themselves. Necessary as they are, genre classifications are misleading in their oversimplification of the subject area. Folklore artifacts are never self-contained, they do not stand in isolation but are particulars in

6264-527: The developmental function of this childlore, the artifacts themselves have been in play for centuries. Below is listed just a small sampling of types and examples of childlore and games. A case has been made for considering folk history as a distinct sub-category of folklore, an idea that has received attention from such folklorists as Richard Dorson. This field of study is represented in The Folklore Historian , an annual journal sponsored by

6372-410: The established church tends to be so large and complex that it is usually treated as a specialized area of folk customs; it requires considerable expertise in standard church ritual in order to adequately interpret folk customs and beliefs that originated in official church practice. Customary folklore is always a performance, be it a single gesture or a complex of scripted customs, and participating in

6480-434: The extensive array of other legislation designed to protect the natural and cultural heritage of the United States, this law also marks a shift in national awareness. It gives voice to a growing understanding that cultural diversity is a national strength and a resource worthy of protection. Paradoxically, it is a unifying feature, not something that separates the citizens of a country. "We no longer view cultural difference as

6588-459: The extensive path structures laid out in different parts of the forests, especially near Nødebo, in the years 1680–90 by King Christian V . These are long straight lines, usually designed in star-patterns, merging and radiating from strategical points. They were constructed and used for running up and tiring the game (usually deer) in so-called parforce hunting , by horse and packs of hunting dogs. The same kind of layout and design also can be seen in

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6696-496: The first classification system for folktales in 1910. This was later expanded into the Aarne–Thompson classification system by Stith Thompson and remains the standard classification system for European folktales and other types of oral literature. As the number of classified oral artifacts grew, similarities were noted in items that had been collected from very different geographic regions, ethnic groups, and epochs, giving rise to

6804-461: The forest itself, while fallow deer were introduced at some point during the Middle Ages . The fallow deer population in Gribskov is the largest free roaming fallow deer population in Denmark, at 600-800 animals. There has been a long tradition of surface water draining by ditch-digging and natural waterflow regulation in Gribskov for various reasons, but these practises have now ceased and work

6912-411: The generations and subject to the same forces of conservative tradition and individual variation" that are found in all folk artifacts. Folklorists are interested in the physical form, the method of manufacture or construction, the pattern of use, as well as the procurement of the raw materials. The meaning to those who both make and use these objects is important. Of primary significance in these studies

7020-473: The group. Folklore also encompasses customary lore, taking actions for folk beliefs, and the forms and rituals of celebrations such as Christmas , weddings, folk dances , and initiation rites . Each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a folklore artifact or traditional cultural expression . Just as essential as the form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to

7128-404: The individual within the circle of family and friends, gifting to express their value and worth to the group, and of course, the festival food and drink as signifiers of the event. The formal definition of verbal lore is words, both written and oral, that are "spoken, sung, voiced forms of traditional utterance that show repetitive patterns." Crucial here are the repetitive patterns. Verbal lore

7236-417: The items were used, with actors reenacting the everyday lives of people from all segments of society, relying heavily on the material artifacts of a pre-industrial society. Many locations even duplicate the processing of the objects, thus creating new objects of an earlier historic time period. Living museums are now found throughout the world as part of a thriving heritage industry . This list represents just

7344-431: The job of folklorists..." Folklore became a verb, an action, something that people do, not just something that they have. It is in the performance and the active context that folklore artifacts get transmitted in informal, direct communication, either verbally or in demonstration. Performance includes all the different modes and manners in which this transmission occurs. Transmission is a communicative process requiring

7452-495: The lake brinks, hold many swan nests and in the southern end, a colony of the great cormorant have found a home, with several hundreds of nests. Lake Esrum is part of a larger 7,400 ha Natura 2000 area, comprising Gribskov and a few smaller woodlands nearby. It is included in the Kongernes Nordsjælland National Park . "Esrum Sø Bådfart" (Lake Esrum Boat Service) operates boat trips on

7560-515: The lake from Chaluphuset , a former royal boathouse located at Sørup on the south side of Fredensborg Palace gardens. Chaluphuset is also used as a venue from special events. Esrum Sø Bådfart also operates a café in Fendrikshus, a former forest worker's house in Gribskov on the other side of the lake. The café is open Friday-Sunday and can be reached by boat or on foot or bicycle through the forest. Skipperhuset, Chaluphuset's next door neighbour,

7668-501: The lake of Store Gribsø and south towards the settlement of Gadevang in the southeastern section. As the name implies, Swedish prisoners of war were used for this large project, ordered by King Frederik II . The ditch is just one part of a larger network of ditches dug since the middle ages, to supply the Frederiksborg Palace with running water, to exploit the water resource for watermills in earlier times and to drain

7776-408: The language of a folklore performance. Material culture requires some moulding to turn it into a performance. Should we consider the performance of the creation of the artifact, as in a quilting party, or the performance of the recipients who use the quilt to cover their marriage bed? Here the language of context works better to describe the quilting of patterns copied from the grandmother, quilting as

7884-403: The larger ones— Store Gribsø , Solbjerg Engsø and Strødam Engsø —all are situated in the southwestern parts. The latter two are the largest and attract a rich birdlife, but they are both on the edge of the forest. The most prominent landmark is perhaps Svenskegrøften (lit.: The Swedish Ditch) initiated in 1576. It is a 2–3 km long artificial canal, winding its way through the forest from

7992-617: The marked tree in Gribskov, he developed a very successful hybrid with Japanese larch , able to withstand the devastating fungal larch canker disease also known as Lachnellula willkommii . The hybrids also had a faster and healthier growth. The hybrid is known as Larix × marschlinsii or L. × eurolepis (discouraged name) and can also occur spontaneously, wherever European and Japanese larch grow together. Nowadays parts of Gribskov are used for seed production of species such as European spruce . The history of hunting in Gribskov also reaches far back in time. The most visible signs are perhaps

8100-496: The megalithic tomb are two round dolmens , one of which is heavily deteriorated. Another megalithic passage grave is situated in the southwestern part of the woods. This tomb is known as Mor Gribs Hule (lit.: Mother Grib's Lair) and of similar age and origin as Jættestuen. Tradition says that the notorious sorceress Mother Grib lived in the grave chamber. She used to whistle at wayfarers, leading them astray to be robbed and killed by her sons This story gives an entirely new meaning to

8208-470: The middle of the 19th century, the small village of Sørup on the southeastern shores of the lake was home to numerous laundries. The laundry was picked up at institutions and wealthy households in Copenhagen, Hillerød and Elsinore . When the industry peaked, Sørup was home to 20 laundries with some one hundred employees. The water quality of lake Esrum is considered good. Since 2002, there have been

8316-478: The most part self-explanatory, these categories include physical objects ( material folklore ), common sayings, expressions, stories and songs ( verbal folklore ), and beliefs and ways of doing things ( customary folklore ). There is also a fourth major subgenre defined for children's folklore and games ( childlore ), as the collection and interpretation of this fertile topic is particular to school yards and neighborhood streets. Each of these genres and their subtypes

8424-505: The name of Gribskov. Just northwest of Gribskov, the small woodland of Valby Hegn holds a total of seven long barrows from the neolithic. Gribskov is cut through by the Gribskov Line , an old railway line laid out in 1878, then offering the urban population a first-time opportunity to visit the forests. Near the village of Nødebo at Lake Esrum in the southeastern part of the forest is Skovskolen (lit.: The Forest School),

8532-402: The nearby woodlands of Store Dyrehave and Jægersborg Dyrehave , just south of Gribskov. They all are former royal game reserves. Gribskov still is used for hunting today—in particular deer —and some areas are not to be disturbed, but parforce hunting is illegal and has been since the year 1777. Lake Esrum Lake Esrum ( Danish : Esrum Sø , pronounced [ˈesʁɔm ˈsøˀ] )

8640-411: The necessary beat to complex physical rhythms and movements, be it hand-clapping, jump roping, or ball bouncing. Furthermore, many physical games are used to develop strength, coordination and endurance of the players. For some team games, negotiations about the rules can run on longer than the game itself as social skills are rehearsed. Even as we are just now uncovering the neuroscience that undergirds

8748-460: The next meal. Most of these folklore artifacts are single objects that have been created by hand for a specific purpose; however, folk artifacts can also be mass-produced, such as dreidels or Christmas decorations. These items continue to be considered folklore because of their long (pre-industrial) history and their customary use. All of these material objects "existed prior to and continue alongside mechanized industry. … [They are] transmitted across

8856-435: The next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain from a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts . Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another, either through verbal instruction or demonstration. The academic study of folklore is called folklore studies or folkloristics, and it can be explored at the undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. levels. The word folklore ,

8964-547: The past that continued to exist within the lower strata of society. The " Kinder- und Hausmärchen " of the Brothers Grimm (first published 1812) is the best known but by no means only collection of verbal folklore of the European peasantry of that time. This interest in stories, sayings, and songs continued throughout the 19th century and aligned the fledgling discipline of folkloristics with literature and mythology. By

9072-531: The performance and this is where transmission of these cultural elements takes place. American folklorist Roger D. Abrahams has described it thus: "Folklore is folklore only when performed. As organized entities of performance, items of folklore have a sense of control inherent in them, a power that can be capitalized upon and enhanced through effective performance." Without transmission, these items are not folklore, they are just individual quirky tales and objects. This understanding in folkloristics only occurred in

9180-506: The period of romantic nationalism in Europe. A particular figure in this development was Johann Gottfried von Herder , whose writings in the 1770s presented oral traditions as organic processes grounded in the locale. After the German states were invaded by Napoleonic France , Herder's approach was adopted by many of his fellow Germans, who systematized the recorded folk traditions and used them in their process of nation building . This process

9288-408: The rural poor as folk. The common feature in this expanded definition of folk was their identification as the underclass of society. Moving forward into the 20th century, in tandem with new thinking in the social sciences , folklorists also revised and expanded their concept of the folk group. By the 1960s, it was understood that social groups , i.e., folk groups, were all around us; each individual

9396-420: The same function of learning and practicing skills needed for growth. So bouncing and swinging rhythms and rhymes encourage development of balance and coordination in infants and children. Verbal rhymes like Peter Piper picked... serve to increase both the oral and aural acuity of children. Songs and chants, accessing a different part of the brain, are used to memorize series ( Alphabet song ). They also provide

9504-410: The second half of the 20th century, when the two terms " folklore performance " and "text and context" dominated discussions among folklorists. These terms are not contradictory or even mutually exclusive. As borrowings from other fields of study, one or the other linguistic formulation is more appropriate to any given discussion. Performance is frequently tied to verbal and customary lore, whereas context

9612-521: The self-representation of a community. Different genres are frequently combined with each other to mark an event. So a birthday celebration might include a song or formulaic way of greeting the birthday child (verbal), presentation of a cake and wrapped presents (material), as well as customs to honor the individual, such as sitting at the head of the table and blowing out the candles with a wish. There might also be special games played at birthday parties, which are not generally played at other times. Adding to

9720-444: The sophisticated world of adults, and quite as little affected by it. Of particular interest to folklorists here is the mode of transmission of these artifacts; this lore circulates exclusively within an informal pre-literate children's network or folk group. It does not include artifacts taught to children by adults. However children can take the taught and teach it further to other children, turning it into childlore. Or they can take

9828-403: The speaker has just thought up within the current context. Another example is the child's song Old MacDonald Had a Farm , where each performance is distinctive in the animals named, their order, and their sounds. Songs such as this are used to express cultural values (farms are important, farmers are old and weather-beaten) and teach children about different domesticated animals. Verbal folklore

9936-514: The spruce plantations are cut down, to be naturally and quickly replaced by alder , birch and willow in coming years. It is expected that Gribskov will comprise more semi-natural woodland of deciduous trees in the future. The forest of Gribskov offers a rare opportunity to observe free roaming deer of all the four species living in Denmark; namely the roe deer , sika deer , red deer and fallow deer , with roe and fallow deer being most common in Gribskov. Roe deer have lived here for as long as

10044-412: The study of a group: you can start with an identified group in order to explore its folklore, or you can identify folklore items and use them to identify the social group. Beginning in the 1960s, a further expansion of the concept of folk began to unfold through the study of folklore. Individual researchers identified folk groups that had previously been overlooked and ignored. One notable example of this

10152-405: The study of folklore is "concerned with the study of traditional culture, or the unofficial culture" that is the folk culture, "as opposed to the elite culture, not for the sake of proving a thesis but to learn about the mass of [humanity] overlooked by the conventional disciplines." Individual folklore artifacts are commonly classified as one of three types: material, verbal or customary lore. For

10260-470: The study of folklore. With the increasing theoretical sophistication of the social sciences , it has become evident that folklore is a naturally occurring and necessary component of any social group; it is indeed all around us. Folklore does not have to be old or antiquated; it continues to be created and transmitted, and in any group, it is used to differentiate between "us" and "them." Folklore began to distinguish itself as an autonomous discipline during

10368-428: The time by introducing European larch . Some of the first larch trees were planted in Gribskov in 1776 and they still can be seen there today in the northwestern parts, just east of Mårum . Known as Tinghuslærkene (lit.: The Tinghus-larches), one of the trees, now marked with a yellow ring and standing 36 m tall, was picked in 1935 by the Danish forestry geneticist Carl Syrach-Larsen for hybrid experimentation. From

10476-420: The topic, there are "four functions to folklore": The folk of the 19th century, the social group identified in the original term "folklore" , was characterized by being rural, illiterate, and poor. They were the peasants living in the countryside, in contrast to the urban populace of the cities. Only toward the end of the century did the urban proletariat (on the coattails of Marxist theory) become included with

10584-478: The totality of their customs and beliefs as folklore. This distinction aligned American folkloristics with cultural anthropology and ethnology , using the same techniques of data collection in their field research. This divided alliance of folkloristics between the humanities in Europe and the social sciences in America offers a wealth of theoretical vantage points and research tools to the field of folkloristics as

10692-464: The turn of the 20th century, the number and sophistication of folklore studies and folklorists had grown both in Europe and North America. Whereas European folklorists remained focused on the oral folklore of the homogenous peasant populations in their regions, the American folklorists, led by Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict , chose to consider Native American cultures in their research, and included

10800-432: The use of symbolic language, and employing the subjunctive mood . In viewing the performance, the audience leaves the daily reality to move into a mode of make-believe, or "what if?" It is self-evident that this fits well with all types of verbal lore, where reality has no place among the symbols, fantasies, and nonsense of traditional tales, proverbs, and jokes. Customs and the lore of children and games also fit easily into

10908-688: The utility of the object. Before the Second World War , folk artifacts had been understood and collected as cultural shards of an earlier time. They were considered individual vestigial artifacts, with little or no function in the contemporary culture. Given this understanding, the goal of the folklorist was to capture and document them before they disappeared. They were collected with no supporting data, bound in books, archived and classified more or less successfully. The Historic–Geographic Method worked to isolate and track these collected artifacts, mostly verbal lore, across space and time. Following

11016-483: The wetlands so the land could be used for plantations. There are an estimated 526 km of artificial ditches in Gribskov. There are several relics of the past in Gribskov. One example is the megalithic passage grave just outside Kagerup , a village south of Maarum in the northwest of the forest. It was raised at some point in the neolithic Stone Age , about 5–6,000 years ago and is referred to as Jættestuen , simply meaning The Passage Grave in English. Not far from

11124-460: Was 9 km long, 9 m wide and 1.5 m deep. The work was led by Adolph von der Recke and carried out by local peasants, soldiers and forced labour workers. A towpath ran on the banks of the canal and on the western shores of lake Esrum. The timber had to pass a 4-metre crater-like ramp called Væltningen , which connected the upper section of the canal to its lower part. The upper part of the canal passed two ponds. One of them, Storedam (Great Pond),

11232-438: Was carried out by private citizens and from 1907, fishing rights were sold at auction. Commercial fishing continued until 1989. From the beginning of the 19th century, Lake Esrum played a role in the transport of firewood from Grib Forest to Copenhagen. From 1802 to 1805, a canal was constructed between the north end of the lake and Dronningmølle . Here firewood was loaded onto large cargo ships and sailed to Copenhagen. The canal

11340-437: Was enthusiastically embraced by smaller nations, like Finland, Estonia, and Hungary, which were seeking political independence from their dominant neighbors. Folklore, as a field of study, further developed among 19th-century European scholars, who were contrasting tradition with the newly developing modernity . Its focus was the oral folklore of the rural peasant populations, which were considered as residues and survivals of

11448-509: Was previously substantial, but in 1997 the annual catch had fallen to 388 kg from a mere 14 tons. Nowadays, the lake is exclusively fished by anglers . The birdlife at the lake is varied. The common goldeneye was formerly a rare breeding bird in Denmark, but after a determined effort involving artificial nests, the species is almost a signature of lake Esrum. Other common birds here includes Eurasian coot , mallard , tufted duck , great crested grebe and mute swan . The reed beds along

11556-513: Was the original folklore , the artifacts defined by William Thoms as older, oral cultural traditions of the rural populace. In his 1846 published call for help in documenting antiquities, Thoms was echoing scholars from across the European continent to collect artifacts of verbal lore. By the beginning of the 20th century, these collections had grown to include artifacts from around the world and across several centuries. A system to organize and categorize them became necessary. Antti Aarne published

11664-535: Was the site of a watermill which was first used as backup for the gunpowder mill in Frederiksværk during the English Wars and later for the manufacturing of textiles for the army. Transportation of firewood on the canal continued until 1874 and it was later used for leisure trips. It has now dried out and been covered by forest, but Væltningen and other elements are still visible in the landscape. From

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