The supernaturalisation of places appears as a socially embedded set of practices that involves storytelling and ritual behaviour. The first section “Explorations in Place-Lore” discusses cursed and sacred places, churches, graveyards, haunted houses, cemeteries, grave mounds, hill forts, and other tradition dominants in the micro-geography of the Nordic and Baltic countries, both retrospectively and from synchronous perspectives. This book addresses the narrative construction of places, the relationship between tradition communities and their environments, the supernatural dimensions of cultural landscapes and wilderness as they are manifested in European folklore and in early literary sources, such as the Old Norse sagas. This abstract model for approaching genre is intended as a calibratable tool that can be used for investigations of different scope with different types of material. The fourth aspect is a genre's social and semiotic (d) functions at a broader level in relation to other genres and to the semiotic system more generally. The significance of this signification is associated with (c) conventions of practice, or the who what where when and whys of situated use. The combination of formal features with appropriate content or enactment operate like a Saussurian signifier + signified forming an iconic sign for a generic product. Generic products are qualified according to (a) conventions of form + (b) content or what is enacted. It builds on earlier approaches to propose a four-aspect model for genre. This article proposes that, if genre is to be an effective analytical tool rather than simply a fancy word for category, the categories identified as genres must be based on commensurate criteria. The discussion will therefore have relevance to genre research in other disciplines such as linguistics, literature studies, performance studies, discourse analysis, etc. Although it is developed with particular concern for folklore, the view taken is quite broad, and readily relates to a broad range of forms of cultural expression. This article approaches the problem of theorizing genre from the perspective of Folklore Studies.
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