Vâlva Băii – Link from Folklore to Societal Structure of the Mining Community in Apuseni Mountains, Romania

This paper explores the figure of Vâlva Băii, a female spirit from Romanian mining folklore, as a tool for social regulation and moral codification within the isolated communities of the Apuseni Mountains. Drawing on anthropological theories of folklore, mining cultures, and visual anthropology, the study positions the legend as a governing system in a microsociety historically shaped by extractive labor and social marginality. Further, it reflects on how documentary cinema may act as an ethnographic method to visualize and archive these immaterial systems of belief. Through an analysis of field research and cinematic representation, this study articulates how Vâlva Băii serves not only as myth, but as mechanism—at once regulating, punishing, and preserving the moral order of mining life.