Finno-Ugric Calendar 2005

© MTÜ Fenno-Ugria Asutus, Eesti Kunstiakadeemia

see also: exaples

The fifth Finno-Ugric Calendar, informing the user of the festive days, folklore and culture of the Finno-Ugric peoples, has been published as a result of the third joint effort of the Estonian Academy of Arts and the NPO Fenno-Ugria.

This time the central topic of the calendar is HOME, i.e. a person's everyday necessaries and environment. To quote Ingrid Rüütel's substantial text on the back cover: “Every culture is characterised by a dynamism of old an new elements. The dialectics of stability and change is reflected, among else, in words. As vocabulary is the most changeable part of language, there are not very many ancient words shared by the Finno-Ugric languages today. Kodu 'home' is one of the few. The kod-stem, whatever its modifications and semantic nuances (dwelling, cottage, summer cookhouse, building, even womb) is familiar to all Finno-Ugrians.”

Each page of the hanging calendar (size A3, with a spiral binding) is dedicated to a different Finno-Ugric ethnos, bringing folklorist and ethnographic information on the Udmurt, Mari, Komi, Estonian, Erzyan, Hungarian, Livonian, Mansi, Karelian and Vepsian peoples.

The back cover carries small calendars of 2006 and 2007, and a map showing the areas inhabited, among others, by Finno-Ugrians.

The calendar is illustrated by Kadri Viires's selection of the fieldwork drawings and photos made by students of the Academy of Arts, and some drawings from the Estonian National Museum.

The list of memorable dates and the accompanying texts were selected by Kristi Salve. The texts have been translated into Estonian by Kristi Salve, into English by Sirje Ainsaar, into Russian by Tatyana Nikitina, and into Finnish by Henni Ilomäki. The editing was done by Eha Viluoja, the design by Tiit Rammul.

The publication was financially supported by the Kindred Peoples Programme while some support is still expected from the Cultural Endowment. The calendar has been published in two language combinations: Estonian-English and Russian-Finnish. The total circulation is 2000.

Subscriptions should be filed with Elo Lutsepp (Estonian Academy of Arts, publisher) at tel.: +372 62 67 367; e-mail: elo@artun.ee, or with Eha Viluoja (NPO Fenno-Ugria) at tel.: +372 64 45 119; e-mail: eha@eki.ee.

The calendars will soon be available in bookshops and at national events such as the Song Festival, the Baltica Folklore Festival and the 4th World Congress of the Finno-Ugric Peoples. The compilers would be happy, if everyone interested could buy the calendar in their home country, whatever the quarter.