Folklore Fieldwork in Klamath County

Em Knott and Julie Meyer, Folklore graduate students

As we drove back over the snowy Cascade Mountain pass that connects Eugene to Southern Oregon, I thought back over the last 24 hours. It had been our—Julie Meyer’s and Em Knott’s—first graduate school fieldwork experience. Under the guidance of OFN Director Riki Saltzman and folklorist LuAnne Kozma, we were able to shadow the beginnings of the OFN project to explore the folklore alive in Southern Oregon.

We observed five interviews in twenty-four hours, although there were two that made the strongest impression. Those were with long-arm quilter Judy Doud (Chiloquin), who invited us back to her log-cabin to view the fourteen-foot machine housed in her basement, and Laila Dahl Griffith, an active participant in the Klamath Sons of Norway. Laila, who makes a huge range of traditional Norwegian Christmas cookies, let us interview and photograph her while she showed us how to make krumkake, thin waffle cookies baked on a specially designed iron. She also made question to us, the graduate students, as to whether we were eating enough while we were at school.

We also had the opportunity to witness a cold-call: between the quilter and the baker, we stopped at a local, family-owned boot shop, walked in, and started making inquiries into the how and the why this man made boots. The next day, we hung out in the Lakeside Landing Café, where we spent a couple of hours with fly-tier John Kruger. Knowing nothing about fly fishing, we looked on in amazement as John talked to us about fly fishing, tied flies, and showed us just some of his vast collection. The various colors and textures were stunning, and the flies themselves were miniature works of art.

Our last stop involved a networking lunch. As we ate our Thai food, we watched as Riki and LuAnne begin to build new relationships within the community, laying down the groundwork to continue the project. That’s when we realized that folklorists are completely at the mercy of people. If our interviewees had not been willing to invite four strangers into their home, we’d be in trouble. We also learned the importance of sociability in fieldwork. We realized how critical it is to build rapport in the span of just a few minutes; this can easily make or break an interview.

Learning such lessons early on made this first foray into folklore fieldwork a success.

Em and Julie are first-year graduate students in the University of Oregon’s Folklore Program

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