Conceptual Analysis and Variation in Belief Tradition: A Case of Death-Related Beings

The article focuses on the popular conceptualisation of a death-related agent which is known in Finnish folk belief and narratives by the name churchyard-vki (vki means 'crowd', but also 'power' in Finnish). Natural conceptualisation is economical and distinctions are only made when found relevant enough. Verbal descriptions of churchyard-vki's appearance and actions towards people vary remarkably according to the narrative context. Rather than a clearly defined supernatural agent, churchyard-vki is a complex of different ideas which have had enough similar features to form a single polysemous concept. The incoherence and context-bound variation of the concept imply that the status of churchyard-vki has been instrumental rather than constitutive in belief tradition.