The Folklore-to-Nation Pipeline

The folklore movement model of creating cohesive national cultures which was launched by German nationalist Herder in 1777 was copied all over Europe. Folklore became a dominant culture-forming medium and was communicated through stories and songs (e.g. Asbjornsen’s troll tales, Ibsen’s troll plays, Goethe’s Faust, Wagner’s operas, Taras Shevchenko or WB Yeats’s poems).

Source: Counter Disinfolklore ~ Controlling War Magic

States which had never existed before — Greece, Finland, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Belgium — were all created out of this work.

In Ireland, the Celtic literary revival of the late 1800s led to liberation from England’s yoke. In Ukraine, the earliest articulation of patriotism came from the new university at Kharkiv in the 1820s and 1830s. Folklore collection was the method by which communities demonstrated a shared identity — and thereby claimed sovereignty.

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