Mapping
While the original “historic geographic” method focused entirely on texts, and made scant mention of the collectors, the tradition participants, and the local social and economic forces that shaped the collections, a modern “historic geographic” method needs to consider each of these as part of the folkloric process.
It is incumbent on contemporary folklorists to extend the appreciation of historical and environmental forces that influence the development of tradition to include factors that are not considered in the original method. The visual representation of the interconnectedness of each of these relationships through maps as well as through what Franco Moretti labels graphs and trees (Moretti 2005), provides a far more accurate representation of the complex relationships that lead to a folklore recording than the simple maps of the earlier Finnish method. Maps that represent both the endeavors of collectors and the political dimensions of their endeavors—dimensions that are often reflected in the landscape—help us understand of the scope of the collecting and allow us to interrogate the ideology of that collecting. Maps that show where informants lived and how they moved during the course of their lives help us understand networks. Plotting these points onto historical maps from the time of collection can further reveal changes in land use practices that might signal shifts in class affiliation as well as changes in prior networks. Finally, maps that plot story points—places mentioned in stories—provide a visual representation of landscape features, both natural and man-made, that are refigured through the performance of those stories. Other types of maps—ones that chart linguistic relationships, or provide visual representations of relationships between texts, complete this picture.
Bringing all of these maps and charts together into one viewing environment, and allowing for different paths of discovery through this interconnected thicket, results in an ethnographically “thick” representation of folklore (Geertz 1973). Ultimately, this “thick” approach to exploring folklore collections allows for a far more meaningful visualization of the relationships that exist in any folklore collection.
Map Examples
Maps in this project are developed in ArcGIS, the industry standard application for GIS. The underlying geo-referenced historical maps have been provided by the Danish Cadastral Survey, and include three sets of maps, each with different scales. There are two sets of maps produced by Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab (The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences) in 1820, at scales of 1:100,000 and 1:50,000, and a second set of maps produced by the Cadastral Survey in 1880, at a scale of 1:25,000. These maps are used at different "zoom" levels. The maps will appear in a window in the presentation graphical user interface. In both the stand alone and web enabled interface, the navigational functionality, and the end user choices for showing various layers of information native to ArcReader or ArcExplorer will be available.
There are several map views that comprise the main mapping components of this project. These include maps showing fieldtrip routes, places visited, informant locations, places of biographical importance for an informant, and places mentioned in stories. Each of these maps, and their functionality is explained below.
Fieldtrip routes
These maps allow one to trace Tang Kristensen's field trip routes through Denmark. Layers that show routes, direction of travel, places visited, and informants visited can be turned on and off. Clicking on a place icon brings one to the "place view" for that place, while clicking on an informant icon brings one to the "informant view" for that person.
One can also overlay multiple fieldtrip routes on a single map.
Places and informant locations can be toggled on and off.
Informant related maps
There are two important types of maps related to informants: maps that show detail about places of importance in their lives, and maps that show places mentioned in their stories.
Clicking on a place related to a life event can, for example, bring up an image from the church book recording the event, or bring up the floor plans of a house.
Another map shows all of the places mentioned in an informant's repertoire. Each of the labels on the map links back to the storyview for a particular story.
An important feature of all these maps is that one can zoom in/out, and that different types of information become available at these different zoom levels. Similarly, the end user is empowered to choose the types of information they want to hide or reveal. Map study tools indigenous to the Arc platforms allow for various types of discovery, including measuring distances, on historically accurate maps. Finally, links in the map allow for navigation throughout the collection.