Matti Akseli Kuusi (25 March 1914 in

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

– 16 January 1998 in Helsinki) was a

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

folklorist Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...

, paremiographer and paremiologist. He wrote several books and a number of articles on Finnish folklore. He was the first to have introduced the type system of proverbs similar to the Aarne–Thompson classification system of folklore, the Matti Kuusi international type system of proverbs. With encouragement from

Archer Taylor Archer Taylor (August 1, 1890September 30, 1973) was one of America's "foremost specialists in American and European folklore","Archer Taylor, UC professor", ''The San Francisco Examiner'', 2 October 1973, p. 49. with a special interest in cultur ...

he founded the journal ''Proverbium: Bulletin d'Information sur les Recherches Parémiologiques'', published from 1965 to 1975 by the Society for Finnish Literature, which was later restarted as '' Proverbium: International Yearbook of Proverb Scholarship''. He was a member of the noble family Granfelt, but his father had fennicized his original Swedish surname to express his political sympathies. During his study period in the 1930s, Matti Kuusi was involved with nationalist political organizations. In the 1950s, he was appointed as the Professor of Folklore in the University of Helsinki, and later as the member of the Academy of Finland, becoming a nationally celebrated intellectual. He led the effort to produce a collection of "900 Balto-Finnic Proverb Types with Russian, Baltic, German and Scandinavian Parallels", described as one of the "major multilingual proverb dictionaries". Although his personal research specialties were Finnish epic poetry and proverbs, he developed the folklore studies in Finland by encouraging research of urban legends and pop-lore. He took also interest in African folklore. The international proverb typology developed by Kuusi along with its database of proverbs is available online. Kuusi's interest in the study of proverbs has been continued by his daughter, Outi Lauhakangas. Among the scientific achievements of Matti Kuusi, one of the most influential has been the rough chronology he established for the various layers of Finnish epics, based on stylistic analysis, motifs and comparisons with Old Scandinavian and Russian epics. He is buried in the

Hietaniemi Cemetery The Hietaniemi cemetery ( fi, Hietaniemen hautausmaa, sv, Sandudds begravningsplats) is located mainly in the Lapinlahti quarter and partly in the Etu-Töölö district of Helsinki, the capital of Finland. It is the location for Finnish state ...

in Helsinki.

References

Related literature

*Kaivola-Bregenhøj, Annikki. "Matti Akseli Kuusi (1914-1998)." ''Fabula'' 40.1/2 (1999): 114ff.

External links

Kuusi and his daughter's work

In Memory of the Last Giant of International Paremiology
1914 births 1998 deaths Writers from Helsinki People from Uusimaa Province (Grand Duchy of Finland) 20th-century Finnish nobility Finnish writers Finnish military personnel of World War II University of Helsinki alumni Academic personnel of the University of Helsinki Members of the Estonian Academy of Sciences Burials at Hietaniemi Cemetery Proverb scholars Recipients of the Order of the White Star, 3rd Class {{Finland-writer-stub