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Session 4a: Monsters From the Edge
Chair: Peter Dendle

Werewolves on the Baltic Seashore: The Monstrous Frontier of Early Modern Europe, 1550-1700
Stefan Donecker
Vienna, Austria

During the 16th and 17th century, the Eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, i.e. present Estonia and Latvia, were notorious for their population of vicious werewolves. Numerous humanist scholars devoted their attention to this topic, including Olaus Magnus, an exiled Swedish bishop and author of the influential treatise on Northern Europe, Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (1555). Werewolf trials were held in the area up to the late 17th century, the case of one Pirsen Tönnis, nicknamed “Old Thies”, (1692) being probably the most prominent one.
The proposed paper attempts to analyze the werewolf topos as part of the discursive construction and definition of periphery and frontier. During the 16th and 17th century, the lands of the former Teutonic Order in Livonia were hotly contested by Sweden, Russia and Poland, who fought for supremacy over the Baltic Area. Each side contributed numerous attempts to justify and legitimate their claims, thereby stimulating histroriographical and ethnographical research on Livonia and its inhabitants.
Scholarly debates on Livonia during this time are characterized by parallel patterns of integration and demarcation. Migration hypotheses – such as the putative ancestry of Livonians from Italy – integrated these areas into the humanist conception of Europe. Yet, at the same time, Livonia’s inhabitants were characterized as barbarous quasi-pagans and discursively pushed to the fringe of civilization.
The werewolf phenomenon can be perceived as a part of these demarcation discourses. The monstrous became an inherent aspect of the Baltic frontier. A land where humans regularly lost their humanity and turned into beasts was in dire need of conquest, civilization and education. Livonia was thus classified and stigmatized as a peripheral region, its inhabitants mere objects of history instead of active participants. Werewolves thus became a discursive symbol that justified the “civilized“ countries’ ambitions for Baltic hegemony.

Do You Believe in Monsters? Susperstition and Fear in a Chiloe Community (Southern Chile)
Giovanna Bacchiddu
Anthropology Department, St Andrews University, Scotland

The life and the activities that form the lived world of a small community of islanders is regulated by silent rules, that are hardly stated because considered obvious. However, as an anthropologist I came across ‘bizarre’ beliefs and I was looking for an explanation. I really wanted to know why my hosts were terrified of going out at night, and, if they really had to do it, they always tried not to be on their own. If, while walking outside at night, they met someone, they would ignore him – even if they were close friends, neighbours or relatives. Night-time is extremely scary: it hides dangers and it is the only time when humans are vulnerable to monsters. It is very difficult to recognise monsters, because they are able to disguise themselves as human beings, either living or dead, and animals. The most common animals (dogs, cats, pigs and birds) may be just an illusion, and be in fact dangerous monsters, came to harm and kill innocent people. Night-time is always a favourite moment for narrating terrifying stories of monsters and monstrous events, that always happened at nigh-time. With every narration, more details are added and the anthropologist sees herself being helplessly terrified – because of a talented storyteller, or maybe because fear is contagious? With the complicity of very dark nights, in the unfaithful company of the only light available – that of candles, a rational Westerner loses faith in rationality, and is transported into a magic and scary world of uncontrollable evil forces. Flying witches, hairy gnomes that knock out men, women turned into birds, fake dogs, fake pigs ….‘real stories’, as told by eye witnesses, are described and discussed in the paper, including in the picture the anthropologist’s first reaction of incredulity and then slow immersion in a different counter-reality.

Cute Monsters/Monstrous Cut
Maja Brzozowska
Institute of Sociology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

Cute aesthetic is, taking the risk of oversimplifying the comparison, the anatomy of a child. Yet the exaggeration of some features (like eyes and head) and the absence of certain other bodily details (like mouths or fingers) makes cute resembling more a freak (being the figure of monstrous) than a sweet toddler. Is it then possible to label the cute aesthetic a freaky/monstrous one? Is the aesthetic ambivalence enough to trace the similarities between these two – seemingly distant and contradicted – realms: of cuteness and monstrosity? The aesthetics of cuteness and the modes of presenting the monstrous are sometimes interchangeable (both on the level of visual representation and the evil/goodness dimension) and this assumed interchangeability I wish to make a starting point for the following questions to be posed in the presentation:

- what are the functions of “sugarcoated” monsters and monstrous sweeties? Do the former still posses the power to scare us and the latter to be an object of innocent love? What makes the monster at all in the face of such possible transposition?

- is (potentially monstrous) cuteness the means of presenting the content quite contradictory to its form and initial purpose?

The Japanese term for cute is kawaii meaning pretty and innocent and yet pitiable and clumsy (kawaiso). How then can we call monsters the creatures who not only lack visibly monstrous features (though who are physically disabled and have their bodies somehow mutilated), but are – by definition – the very opposite set of associations? How should then Happy Tree Friends (to name just one prominent example) be defined – wouldn’t they be the monstrous cuties? Can we – finally - call a nature of cute a transformative one – shifting the monstrosity not even to the realm of beauty (for a cruel beauty is something within the spectrum of monstrous emanations), but to the very space that is thought of as absolutely pure and sweet?
Kawaii and kawaiso. Happy tree friends – anti cute. Can the cuted monsters scare us anymore? Can the sweet monstrous cute? Can it be said that the shift is present? Transformative nature of cute – cute on the surface, evil inside?

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