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« 2022. # 6 (168)

The Ethnology Notebooks. 2022. № 6 (168), 1332—1349

UDK 392:[728.6:[644.36:628.9.04]](477:292.452)”18/19″

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/nz2022.06.1332

ILLUMINATION OF FOLK DWELLING IN THE UKRAINIAN CARPATHIANS AT THE END OF THE 19TH — FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY: DEVICES AND METHODS OF PRODUCING FIRE AND IGNITION MATERIALS

SYVAK Vasyl

  • ORCID ID: https:/ /orcid.org/0000-0002-6444-0705
  • Ph.D. of Sciences in History,
  • research worker in the department of the Historical Ethnology
  • of the Institute of Ethnology
  • of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine,
  • 15, Svobody Avenue, 79000, Lviv, Ukraine,
  • Contacts: e-mail: suvakvasul@gmail.com

Abstract. Fire, water, earth, air belong to one of the main components of the structure of earthly life. We consider fire in several planes, from one it brings death, incinerates everything that happens in its path, and from the other it gives light and heat, and therefore life and existence on the planet.

The study of hand-made fire based illumination, which was used, with different intensity, by the Ukrainians of the Carpathians, as well as by residents of other ethnographic regions and districts of Ukraine (according to the current zoning in the late 19th — the first half of the 20th century), to this day it is relevant for Ukrainian ethnographic science. The purpose of the research is to collect, analyze, systematize available source, archival and published materials of researchers of different periods on the researched topic. The object of the study is the means and devices for obtaining fire, and the subject is various materials for kindling and maintaining fire, methods of obtaining, beliefs and customs related to the cult of obtained «alive» fire. The general scientific principles of historicism, systematicity, and scientific objectivity became the methodological basis of the research, which made it possible to carry out the necessary scientific analysis of the researched topic in general, as well as its individual aspects. To date, the specified problem has not been a separate object of research. The territory of the study covers three ethnographic districts of the Ukrainian Carpathians — Boikivshchyna, Hutsulshchyna and Lemkivshchyna. For a broader comparative base, materials from the published works of Ukrainian researchers representing other ethnographic regions and districts of Ukraine, as well as the works of foreign scientists, were used. The chronological boundaries of the study cover the end of the 19th  the first half of the 20th century. The source base was formed with the help of stationary and route ethnographic expeditions, during which field materials were recorded using photography, measurements, sketches, and oral interviews of respondents, so a significant part of the work is the author’s field materials.

Primitive devices and methods of obtaining fire and materials for arson were often used by Ukrainian highlanders throughout their lives, regardless of the type of housing and the duration of centuries, which is characteristic of the entire ethnic territory of Ukraine. Along with this, in the context of our study, certain devices, fire-making methods, beliefs and customs associated with the cult of fire bear local specificity, which is characteristic only for each of the ethnographic groups of the Ukrainian Carpathians — Boikos, Lemkos and Hutsuls.

Keywords: Ukrainian Carpathians, Boikos, Lemkos and Hutsuls, fire, devices, means, methods, materials for arson.

Received 18.11.2022

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