The Ethnology Notebooks. 2026. № 2 (188), 340—354
UDK 39:728.6](477.86)”18/20″
DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/nz2026.02.340
- Received: 18.02.2026
- Accepted: 09.03.2026
- Published: 27.04.2026
«RAISING THE HOUSE» IN POKUTTIA (RITUAL ACCOMPANIMENT OF DWELLING CONSTRUCTION IN POKUTTIA)
RADOVYCH Roman
- ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1900-8948
- Doctor of Sciences in History, Senior Researcher
- of the Institute of Ethnology
- of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine,
- in the Department of Historical Ethnology,
- 15, Svobody Avenue, 79000, Lviv, Ukraine,
- Contacts: e-mail: radovychroman@gmail.com
Abstract. Construction ritualism, as one of the branches of the traditional everyday culture of Ukrainians, encompasses a specific system of customs, beliefs, omens, and symbolic acts (rituals) that accompany the construction of a new dwelling and its commissioning. The entire ritual-customary complex can be conventionally divided into several stages: the selection and procurement of building materials; the selection of a place and time for the construction of a new dwelling; the process of constructing the dwelling; and the ceremonial housewarming. The complex of customs, beliefs, and superstitions that accompanied the actual process of dwelling construction in Pokuttia has never been the subject of specialized research, which determines the relevance of the proposed study.
In this work, the author sets out to achieve the aim of elucidating the peculiarities of the customary-ritual accompaniment of the process of constructing rural dwellings in the territory of Pokuttia, identifying common Ukrainian features and local specifics. The object of the study is the traditional everyday culture of the people of Pokuttia, and the subject is the complex of customs, beliefs, and superstitions that accompanied the process of dwelling construction. The methodological basis of the study is the principle of historicism combined with elements of structural-functional analysis and the use of the main methods of ethnological science: typological, comprehensive, and retrospective analysis, historical reconstruction, and others.
The territory of the study covers the historical-ethnographic region of Pokuttia, which is localized within the boundaries of the modern Horodenkivskyi, Kolomyiskyi, Sniatynskyi, Tlumatsyi, the main part of Tysmenytskyi, the northeastern strip of Bohorodchanskyi, Nadvirnanskyi, and Kosviskyi districts of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. The chronological boundaries cover the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 21st century.
Keywords: ethnology, Ukraine, Pokuttia, traditional culture, construction ritualism, construction tree.
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