With the new year, I embark on a new adventure: A storytelling series in collaboration with the Hungarian National Museum! I match storytelling programs to temporary and permanent exhibitions, telling to family audiences regularly. Since museum storytelling has always been one of my top favorite things to do, I was preparing for the inaugural event with a lot of excitement!


Since we planned to do the series in a vaguely chronological order, the first performance took place in the first, paleolithic hall of the museum's permanent archaeological exhibit. The question immediately arose: What should a storyteller do in the absence of "authentic" sources for caveman folklore? As much as I would love to know what tales were told to little cavemen thousands of years ago, I had to turn elsewhere to build my repertoire for the program.

Here is the thing: Even though we don't have tales from the prehistoric era, we do have tales all around the world about things that happened in those times. Humans have always wondered, and told stories, about how we got fire, how we made friends with the dog, tamed the horse, and many other things that happened too long ago to really remember. So, for my first show in the museum, I picked out a handful of these stories, and created a program titled Fire Thieves.

The program originally included a list of 10-12 stories, out of which 5 were told in the one-hour show (selected on the spot based on the audience's interests and reaction, as usual). I started out with the Ilocano Fire Thieves story from the Philippines, a classic teamwork tale where a trickster and animals work together in a running relay to get fire from two evil giants. The kids (5-10 years old) enjoyed the participation where they got to make animal sounds and mimic running. We also talked about how and when taming the fire probably happened in human history. Next, I told a Kamba folktale from the Congo about how Dog and Jackal used to be friends, until Dog wandered into a human camp, and decided to stay there. The kids were very enthusiastic in making desperate jackal sounds. Since w already tamed the dog, they obviously wanted to know about horses next - so I told them the legend of Sasruquo and the Wild Stallion from the Nart sagas, which not only contains a very interesting hero, but also an early real-life technique for breaking a wild horse by riding it into a river.
The last two stories of the show were both folktales about ancient clay pots being found in the ground. One was from Sabah on Borneo, about a large jar that turned into a mischievous mangas dragon, and the other from Papua New-Guinea that explained why people keep finding shards of pottery underground. The archaeologists present were greatly amused at both.

All in all, I had a great audience for the show. It was by registration only, and filled up very fast; we ended up with 25 people, give or take some museum staff and wandering visitors. The kids were mostly between 5 and 10 with some younger siblings, and they were not only interested and engaged in the stories - but also had some cool archaeological questions throughout the show. I was glad that I was able to use my (8 year old, mint condition) Archaeology MA in answering them.

Museum storytelling is still one of my favorite gigs to do. I am really looking forward to the next one.

Once again, I just got back to Hungary in time for Archaeology Day (the last weekend of May). Following the tradition of the past two years, I was invited to the Damjanich János Museum in Szolnok, to participate in their weekend events with a brand new storytelling program tailored to this year's theme. After Sarmatians in 2015, and Gepids and Goths last year, 2017 was the year of the nomadic cultures of the steppe - Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Avars, Hungarians, Cumans, and the Jász people. 

Archaeology Day takes place over the last weekend of every May. As an archaeologist-storyteller, it has become tradition for me to spend this event at the museum in Szolnok, a town in Hungary that sports a wealth of finds from the Migration Era. Last year I told Nart sagas for their Sarmatian theme - this year I was invited back to create a storytelling program for their Gepid exhibit.

I spent five days in Rome last week. It wasn't my first time in the City - I have visited regularly over college, both for university excavations and for storytelling - but it was the first one in 7 years, and the thought itself made me tear up a little.
(A lot, actually)

There were many new things to discover after 7 years. Of course I visited my ever-favorite places - the Palatine hill in spring bloom, the Etruscan museum in the Villa Giulia, the Ostia Antica archaeological park - but I also got to wander into sites I have not seen before. I especially paid a lot of attention to underground spaces, many of which have been made available to tourists recently, as excavations progress.
I found a very handy little book in one of the museum shops (god, I love museum shops): It is called Subterranean Rome, and it is available in a large-hardcover-fancy edition, as well as a pocketbook format (I got the latter). It lists little known, mostly underground archaeological sites that can take you on a literal walk through different periods in Roman history.
At the end of the 5 days, I did a quick count of how many of these underground, hidden corners of the City I managed to visit (and am happy that I did). Here is the list:

The Roman insula under Santi Giovanni e Paolo
This is the church on the Caelian hill behind the Colosseum. While the church itself, built in the 4th century, is very much worth visiting, the best part can be found under it. A separate little side door leads to a tiny shop where one can buy tickets to see the Roman houses the church has been built over. There are several wall painting preserved, as well as a portion of a Roman street and a house (kind of eerie to walk on a street underground, in dead silence), and my favorite part: a medieval well that has been dug through all this, and now looks like a brick column in the middle of the underground houses. There is also a tiny, but very modern museum underground, with finds from the excavations.
Note: Most churches in Rome are closed between noon and 3pm, or 3:30.

The crypt of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere
We walked into this church kind of by accident, after we found the Aventine rose gardens closed, and we wandered across the bridge into the Trastevere. It is a 5th century church dedicated to the martyr Saint Cecilia. Incidentally we found out the crypts were open for tourists. We wanted to joint a guided tour, but the tiny nun running the church shop sternly told us "NO! CRYPTA!" and ushered us down the stairs on our own.
It was kind of eerie to be down there all alone, but also very beautiful. Next to the Roman era buildings and spaces, there is also the crypt itself, build in neo-byzantine style with fancy columns and mosaics, to worship the saints whose relics are kept in there.
There was also a small side-chamber with shards of Roman pottery from the excavations, and a small lararium with a relief of Minerva in it. It was lit by a separate lamp, and that produced a very nice effect of the goddess' form illuminated while everything else was in shadows.

The Roman temples under San Nicola in Carcere
This church has been built on the Forum Holitorium (the Roman era vegetable and fruit market), next to Marcellus' theater, incorporating three Republic era Roman temples into its walls. It looks fascinating both from the outside and the inside. You can see the Roman columns in the walls, and if you make your way into the underground spaces (after paying 3 Euros per person to a very loquacious information lady), you can see the foundations of the temples, and parts of the Roman walking surfaces. A small tour, but very much worth making.
(In the picture: Roman column in the church wall, and the models of the three temples that got incorporated into the building)

Crypta Balbi
While one of the buildings of the Roman National Museum, it is probably the least visited. Doesn't sport any famous statues or paintings - but it has something much better: Layers. The Crypta Balbi is a building that arches through several centuries, from the Republic all the way to the middle ages, and due to its unique structure, it shows all of them. In addition, the three-story exhibition shows the history of late antiquity and the early middle ages in Rome, illustrating how old buildings decayed and were re-used. It is one of my favorite Roman museums, and it deals with an era that doesn't get a lot of attention, even though it is utterly fascinating. The exhibition includes a lot of models, reconstructions, and illustrations, that make it enjoyable and comprehensive.

Domus Aurea
Definitely the most amazing part of the trip, and a site I have never managed to see before - it is still very much an active archaeological dig, and they only let tourists in (in hard hats and with guides) on the weekends, to raise money for further work. But even the currently excavated portion of Nero's former place is absolutely stunning. It is cavernous in all senses of the word - the size itself is incredible, both in spaces and in the number of rooms already cleared (150+). It has been very well preserved, with many colorful wall paintings and all the structures intact. You can even see the holes in the ceiling where people in the 16th and 17th centuries dug in to take a look at the paintings in torchlight. The palace only stood for about 40 years before Traian had it filled in with soil and buried. It was a waste of a perfectly good palace.
Definitely worth the tickets, unforgettable experience.
Note: You have to reserve tickets in advance to get in; they only do tours on Saturdays and Sundays. I got my tickets here.

Domitian's stadium
The Piazza Navona is always crowded with tourists, but we barely saw any of them descend into the museum to see what the square has been built on - namely, Domitian's stadium for the Capitoline games. The museum is fairly new, and it's very well done; the audio guide is included in the ticket. The space is well-lit and easily walkable; it incorporates the main entrance of the former stadium, well below street level. There were 3 different exhibitions going on when we were there: The history of the stadium itself (with the guide), an exhibit of reconstructions of Roman and Greek helmets and other outfits (e.g. a chariot racer's), and a modern art exhibit using different colored pieces of marble. All of these blended really nicely together, and the museum had a really nice feel to it. I highly recommend it.

Honorable mentions: the San Paolo furi le mura is still one of my favorite Roman churches, and now it has a brand-new underground exhibit of the older structures of the basilica; the Castel Sant'Angelo is much worth visiting, since you can walk straight into Hadrian's tomb; and if you want the real, full, multi-level layer cake experience, don't miss the San Clemente basilica, complete with an underground mithraeum.

Happy travels!

The Guardian has gone and done it again: Fairy tales are Internet front page news, with Beauty and the Beast in the headline picture. I have not had my friends and acquaintances share a fairy tale - related article on my wall this many times since the notorious "Five hundred new fairy tales discovered in Germany" in 2012. And since I ended up blogging about those back in the day, I feel like this one deserves a post as well.

This time, the viral headline reads:
"Fairy tales much older than previously thought, say researchers"

The article is based on a study done by Sara Graça de Silva and Jamshid J. Tehrani, much less sensationally titled "Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales." Using methods evolutionary biologists apply, they traced common folktale types along the family tree of Indo-European languages to determine how old they really are, and came up with some surprising numbers: about 4000 years for Beauty and the Beast and Rumpelstiltskin, 5000 for Jack and the Beanstalk, and a staggering "Bronze Age" 6000 for the Smith and the Devil (6000 before today would actually put them pre-bronze age, btw).

While the numbers are really impressive, and storytellers around the world are happy to see tales in the news once again, here are a couple of things I have been musing about since I read the study and the article:
(DISCLAIMER: I am not a folklorist. I am a storyteller, trained in archaeology, who works with traditional tales, and learned to research them through methods used by folklorists)

1. The researchers state that they based their study on the Aarne-Thompson-Uther folktale catalog, everyone's favorite go-to fairy tale research tool. From the 2000+ folktale types listed, they narrowed their sample down to Tales of Magic (ATU 300-549) - commonly known as fairy tales -, claiming that they are the most widely shared folktale types, and have been in the center of the debate about how old traditional tales really are. 
While this is a completely valid way of choosing a sample, it also brings up some questions:

- ATU is far from complete. Most countries have their own folktale catalogs, using the same numbering system, some of which have been incorporated into the 2004 edition, but still, this volume doesn't represent the entirety of the European folktale corpus. Since the researchers coded their sample as "present/absent" for each tale type for each society, it is important to note that in their study, "absent" doesn't mean that tale type never existed in that tradition - it just means that it was never recorded, or it may have been recorded but never made it into the ATU.

- As a storyteller, I'd contest the idea that Tales of Magic (a.k.a. fairy tales) are the most commonly shared folktale type. They do have a prestige in most cultures - known as the "big tales" or "real tales" - and they are definitely the stars of popular culture and children'd literature (thank you Disney), but that doesn't mean they are the most widespread. Trickster tales, for example, most often fall under Animal Tales or Anecdotes and Jokes, while some well-known "fairy tales" can actually be found under Realistic Tales. Especially trickster tales seem to be wildly popular around the world in very similar forms, and they are also believed to be very old (e.g. the Panchatantra and the Jataka tales from India). I would love to see a similar study done with them.

2. The study states that they wanted to focus on the vertical transmission of tales (over time) as opposed to the more often researched horizontal transmission (exchange between contemporaneous cultures). They allow that both can happen at the same time, but very correctly raise the point that it is still interesting to see what tale types neighboring cultures might adopt or reject from each other. With that said, horizontal transmission is still a factor, and given how fast popular tales can spread, it is really hard to completely factor horizontal transmission out of the study. I would have to go back and read it again to fully understand how they did that, but it's definitely worth considering.

3. Archaeologically speaking, 4000-6000 years is not that old. Human societies existed way before that. And since storytelling is a very human trait, we can assume that tales were told way back then as well. Now, given the almost complete lack of written sources, we can't tell if they were the same tales at all, or whether the tales we know and love today already existed such a long time ago. 
Here is an interesting distinction between being a folklorist and being a storyteller: Storytellers generally (and enthusiastically) assume that stories are ancient. Even if we have no proof, we treat them as a part of an age-old tradition, with the knowledge that they may have been born millennia ago. I have seen multiple storytellers on social media responding to The Guardian article with "Well, duh."
The study and its findings are still impressive, though - especially for fairy tales, because people have been contesting that they are older than the 17th century. 
However...

4. The "folktale types" listed in ATU are the "bare bones" of a story. They break tales down to their most simple plot description, the skeleton that corresponds to other similar tales. Depending on the time, the culture, and the storyteller, the fleshed-out versions of the story can be vastly different from each other. Even within one culture and time frame, versions of the same tale type can have completely different meanings to each storyteller - for example, in some Hungarian versions of the Twelve (Seven) Dancing Princesses, the princesses live with their dancers happily ever after, while in others, they get executed for witchcraft. Same language, same time frame, same tale type, vastly different morals.
Long story short: The fact that the same tale types might have existed thousands of years ago doesn't mean they looked the same, tasted the same, or meant the same.

5. Why does it matter to us how old these stories are? I am not asking myself this because I doubt that it should matter; I know for a fact it matters to me. But I am curious: Why did this become instant viral news? What do people find appealing in the knowledge that Beauty and the Beast was told 4000 years ago?
(As for me, as a storyteller, I enjoy knowing that I am passing on a tradition that extends back thousands of years. I like the idea that someone, who might or might not have been one of my very distant ancestors, sat in a tent somewhere 6000 years ago and told similar stories.)

6. Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric language, in case anyone was wondering why we are a blank space on the map. I am sure you were.
(We are sitting at the cool kids' table with Finland and Estonia)

Now, hands up: Who else would love to hear what a Neolithic fairy tale sounded like?...

Every year in the spring Hungary celebrates Archaeology Day: Museums and other archeo-related institutions organize events for the public to make the occupation seem less mysterious. They open up labs and storage rooms, and educate people through letting them touch things they would normally only see through glass.
(Artifacts. I mean the artifacts.)

This year, since I got home in time to participate, I landed a gig with the Damjanich János Museum in Szolnok, who were planning a Sarmatian theme for their program. The city lies in a part of Hungary that used to be Sarmatian territory back in the good old Roman times, and pretty much any time someone puts a shovel down, Sarmatian stuff starts jumping out. I have always loved Sarmatians, and I had three good reasons to be excited for the gig:
1. I already had a period dress ready, courtesy of my Sarmatian SCA persona (follow the link for an awesome blog on the topic);
2. The gig involved telling Ossetian Nart sagas, on the account of the historical, ethnic and cultural relations between the Ossetians and the Sarmatians, and I freaking love those stories;
3. One of my best friends and former Archaeology classmate works at the museum, and I got a chance to see her.

I arrived to the museum with a pretty nasty cold, but my friend and the rest of the staff took excellent care of me. I got a place to rest, and tea, and food, and volunteers to usher people in and out of the storytelling space. Everyone was super excited for the stories, and they paid a lot of compliments to my dress reconstruction, which made me feel proud, since it came from people who deal with Sarmatian things on a daily basis. My friend, who presented the "Artifact Petting Zoo" portion of the program, even invited me to show the dress off to people as an illustration.
The first round of storytelling was the program for children titled "Giants, heroes, and tricksters." Since all the kids immediately got stuck at the "archaeology sandbox" digging feverishly for finds, the program started a little late. A little boy arrived first with his grandma, and was very shy; but once I started telling him a story, other flocked in too, and eventually I had a neat little audience of 15 or 20 people.  I told my favorite Nart story, in which the heroes dig up the bones of an ancient giant and bring him back to life to learn about how people lived in the past. If there has ever been a fitting story for Archaeology Day, this one was it. I also told the tale where the Narts go adventuring and they all get stuck in magical chairs, just to be rescued by Sirdon the Trickster before a bunch of giants eat them. I love this story not only for the humor, but also because it is a clear parallel to one of my favorite Irish Fianna legends, The Hostel of the Quicken Trees.

The second round was supposed to be stories for adults, but since it was still early in the afternoon, many people brought their kids with them anyway. I didn't mind. They were very well behaved, and sat in the front row with eyes wide, reacting to the stories with gasps and giggles and noises of wonder. The adult program was titled "The Time of Heroes," and it drew an audience of at least 30-40 people, including most of the museum staff.
This time I had more time, and an audience with a longer attention span (since I was the last program, they had nowhere else to rush). I first told the Birth of Soslan, and how he was tempered in wolf's milk (the incident I mentioned here). Then I told the story of how Soslan saved his mother Satana from the Lake of Hell and how he was accepted as the greatest hero of the Narts (ironically, not for saving her, but for failing to save her, because he stopped to help people along the way who were in greater need). I told the fun little bit about Satana and her husband Urizmag getting a divorce - a folktale type when the wife can take what's "dearest to her" from the household, and she takes her sleeping husband (this one is so popular they even used it in a movie). After this we circled back to Soslan winning a wife through a dance-off (also mentioned on the link above). The kids loved this one. At this point the audience stared asking for "one more story!" every time I finished one, which is the greatest compliment a storyteller can get. I told a short funny story about Sirdon the Trickster tricking the Narts when they tried to bully him.
In the end, I decided to jump into the tale of Alimbeg's Daughter - the sex-change story I posted about last week. The audience listened with keen interest, and the lyrical nature of the tale seemed to carry everyone along. They seemed more shocked by Alimbeg having seven wives (a man even muttered "poor guy") than his daughter turning into a man, actually. I chose option 3 from my musings - but the story, when told, needed a lot less tweaking than I expected. It also probably helped with the adults that I told them Hungarians have the same story in tradition - it sounded less foreign that way.

All in all, it was a dream gig. I got to tell stories that I love to people who appreciated them, and especially children who were completely enchanted. I got to do it in a museum that holds artifacts that appear in the stories, wearing a dress that evoked the people who probably told the same tales two thousand years ago.
And Night of the Museums is only three weeks away!