Nationalist movements reconstructed authentic ancient pasts through folklore and folk arts

Evidence

But images of individual figures that are not part of any narrative or moral scene may be understood in conjunction with a mainly nineteenth-century cultural movement that has been described as “the discovery of the people” and involved the “discovery” of folklore and popular culture. In this context “the people” usually meant uneducated folk and especially the peasants who were thought to have preserved primitive customs longer than anyone else. These ideas were much in common with romantic nationalism and the search by various national movements of their “authentic” ancient past. In this attempt to reconstruct the past, nationalists have often turned to folklore and folk arts that were believed to express the distinctive spirit of the nation and thus were to be revived and made a model for the future development of the nation. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 616

Categorization

• XREF: Links to the construction of invented traditions / imagined communities literature (Hobsbawm, Anderson) and to how national movements weaponize folk culture. — connects to: Folk art depended on agrarian or simple-commodity social relations that no longer exist; Recovering local history through research and museums strengthens village identity and cohesion. — Emil Sandström and Ann-Kristin Ekman and Karl-Johan Lindholm, Commoning in the periphery – The role…, 57; Commons are reinvented historical practices that villagers legitimize through analogies to past traditions. — Emil Sandström and Ann-Kristin Ekman and Karl-Johan Lindholm, Commoning in the periphery – The role…, 83 (+2 more)
• ADDENDUM: This pattern of nationalist revival of folk arts as a model for the future dovetails with how trees-as-infrastructure and other traditional crafts were promoted as national identity markers.