Introduction

This article explores the stratified history of the narrative poem known as The Golden Maiden (Est. Kuldnaine, Fi. Kultaneito) in the Estonian, Ingrian, Karelian, and Savonian-Finnish traditions. During the first half of the twentieth century, variants of this poem were studied with an emphasis on reconstructing its history. Research paradigms in folklore studies then shifted, with the result that the poem's background has not been examined the light of the most recent methods and theories of tradition transmission. Instead of trying to find or reconstruct the most original version, scholarly interest now focuses more on viewing traditions as part of society as well as trying to understand why the poems were important to their performers and audiences and how they have been used. The current paradigm tends to focus narrowly on local communities, as opposed to looking at relationships among all different forms of a tradition. Here, a brief overview of the tradition will be followed by a discussion of comparative methods that have been applied to it and an introduction to the historically oriented comparative method called the Parallax Approach (Frog 2012a) that will be applied here. A series of different features and associations of the tradition will then be reviewed in subsequent sections followed by a general overview assessment as a conclusion.

The Golden Maiden is a narrative constituted of particular motifs that belongs historically to Finnic epic poetry.