Do You See What I See? The Mythic Landscape in the Immediate World

This paper approaches relationships between visual and verbal aspectsof performance in the rites of the tiet j , an ethnic ritual specialist, recorded in Archangel Karelia. The focus is on the manipulation of motifs in the activation of mythic images which utilize features of the natural landscape. It will take a ‘thick corpus’ approach, attempting to contextualize these rites as much as possible within broader systems of cultural activity. Two examples of ‘power’ gathering (luonto-raising) rites will be treated in detail, considering their relationships to ‘tradition’ and the understanding of the informant.