Suhde vainajaan inkeriläisissä kuolinitkuissa

Authors

• Kaarina Koski

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30666/elore.78499

Abstract

Dirges have been meaningful to lamenters for several reasons. Culture-bound, religious explanations have functioned as a conscious motivation for performing dirges and have constituted a part of the local belief system. On an unconscious, psychic level dirges respond to the reactions of the intra-psychic mourning process: denial of loss, anger towards the deceased, and self-reproach. Ingrian lamenters make concrete and impossible requests (rise up, answer me, come and feed your children!) of the deceased - requests which would be improper in any other context than ritual (e.g. in belief legends). As traditional but variable verses, these requests function cathartically as a legitimate way of expressing emotions and unloading anxiety. Whereas Western psychoanalysis has emphasized completing the mourning process by a total decathexis from the deceased, lament culture en- courages keeping up ties with the significant dead. The ritual frame enables a close and confiding communication without fear.