The Tersky Pomor folk tale tradition (based on Dmitry Balashov's expedition records from the 1950s and the 1960s)

This study is of relevance today as it examines the folklore legacy of D. M. Balashov, whose 95th anniversary is celebrated in 2022. The article analyzes the folk tale tradition of the Pomors inhabiting the Tersky Coast of the White Sea (the Murmansk Region), which became known after several expeditions to this area undertaken by the writer during the second half of the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s. Records from these expeditions are stored in the Scientific Archives of the Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences (KarRC RAS) and the Phonogram Archive of the KarRC RAS Institute of Linguistics, Literature and History. A significant body of the materials was included in the collected volume Tales of the Tersky Coast of the White Sea, compiled by D. M. Balashov and published in 1970. These folk tales are also partially represented in the 1972, 1991 and 2017 editions of the volume, adapted for children and youth. This article is the first paper that compares the child-oriented collected volumes and matches the plots and the performers of the folk tales. Some texts from Balashov's records have not been introduced into scholarly circulation yet. The publication of one of the archived folk tales also testifies to the research novelty. The article confirms the conclusions that the texts recorded on the Tersky Coast largely correspond to the northern Russian folk tale tradition, but they also show the traces of influence of the Sami folklore. These texts are filled with details about the Pomor daily life, dialectal words, and often are special versions of either popular or very rare plot types, which makes them unequivocally original and special.