Introduction

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Examples are everywhere. They are used to convince and persuade, to argue, to explain, illustrate and elucidate. They can function as models or ideals, objects of emulation or as mere enumerations. Examples are used in vernacular speech as well as—for instance—in academic texts like this one. Examples are frequently used in political rhetoric; they appear frequently in the media and are a well-known pedagogical tool. Their use is varied to a degree that may even seem self-contradictory. This is just one example , someone could say, thereby indicating the existence of several other similar ones. But they might also say let this be an example to you , referring to some unique case or model to learn from and follow. “The power of example” is great, as we all know, but tout exemple cloche [every example limps]—as Montaigne pointed out—is also well-known: Examples carry with them an excess of meaning that always exceeds what they are meant to exemplify. Despite their ubiquity and multi-faceted use, however, examples have so far attracted little theoretical attention. Medieval and Early Modern scholars have explored the exemplum, short stories that usually carried a moral or religious message, much used in devotional literature, pious education or to make specific doctrinal points (e.g., Scanlon 1994). Renaissance scholars have followed this tradition into new types of texts in the subsequent period and posited a kind of “crisis of exemplarity” as old religious authority dwindled and new narratives emerged, presenting moral dilemmas, ethical choices and human challenges in new ways (Rigolot 1998; Gelley 1995). In his study of early modern French and Italian novels, literary scholar John D. Lyons has developed theoretical perspectives on examples, which we will also encounter in the articles in this special issue. He has also presented the simple definition of examples that is being used as our point of departure here, stating that an example is a “dependent statement qualifying a more general and independent statement by naming a member of the class established by the independent statement.” An example consequently cannot exist without the general statement and an indication of its own subordinate status (Lyons 1989, x).

Over the last 15 years the study of examples has also found its way into the cultural disciplines. In 2015, examples and exemplarity were the topic of a special issue of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI) . In their introduction to the issue, two Danish anthropologists Lars Højer and Andreas Bandak ask: What do examples actually do? Are they merely good memory devices? Do they work just because they are transmitted by charismatic personalities? Or is there something else to them, something more complex and complicated? They also observed that the example “has almost never been the subject of genuine anthropological theorizing” (Højer and Bandak 2015, 2), which is surprising because of the close connection between single cases and places on the one hand, and the development of theory in anthropology on the other,—or between “small places, large issues,” as the Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen coined as the fundamental dynamics of this discipline (Eriksen 1995). Højer and Bandak also point out how some cases in anthropology gained special status as exemplars or some sort of disciplinary icons. Think only, they say, “of Balinese cockfights, Kula exchanges, or the death of Captain Cook!” (Højer and Bandak 2015, 2).

While folklore studies may have their similar icons, the situation is different. First, specific cases have not been used to develop general theory in the same way in folklore as in anthropology. Second, and far more interesting, is the fact that despite its fundamental and defining interest in expressive cultural forms, the discipline of folkloristics has largely also ignored the study of examples. As single cases used to instantiate a “general rule or maxim” (Lyons 1989, 5), examples will often come in a narrative form and be discursively or otherwise clearly delimited by their context. They are small conversational units packed with meaning and employed as parts of communicative strategies. To work, they must link their specific cases with norms, rules and ideals that are already known, shared and part of the cultural context in which the examples are set to work. In short, they are expressive forms.

An important exception to the remarkable lack of interest in examples in folklore studies is the work of Dorothy Noyes. Starting from the two German concepts Vorbild and Beispiel, she points out that the first of these refers literally to “a picture in front of you, a model to be emulated. A Beispiel is an example of something, a concrete illustration of an abstract proposition” (Noyes 2016, 77, italics original). The Beispiel, moreover, does not need to be representative of what it is used to illustrate, it is simply “conveniently at hand” (ibid). Starting from this distinction, which also exists in the Nordic languages but not in English, Noyes develops her perspectives on the Vorbild and its close relation to gesture and bodily expression. She demonstrates that the Vorbild, as “a model to be emulated,” has a potentially powerful political dimension (Noyes 2016, 77). In 2020, at an international workshop at Ohio State University, this was explored further and will result in an edited volume (Noyes and Wille, forthcoming). The approach developed through this work strongly invites interdisciplinary explorations.

About a decade earlier, Norwegian folklorists initiated the interdisciplinary project The Power of Examples, resulting in an edited volume and a special issue of the Norwegian journal Tidsskrift for kulturforskning (Eriksen, Krefting and Rønning 2013; Eriksen 2010). Adopting a slightly different approach, this project saw examples as being both serial and enumerative, a tradition going back to Aristotelian rhetoric and inductive thinking, working as models or ideals according to a more Platonic line of thought. It was a basic tenet of the project that these two aspects rarely can be separated, but in most cases work together, thus making examples fundamentally double-faced. Their inherent ability to switch between being a single example and a model to follow undermines them but is perhaps also at the very root of the power of examples.

The interdisciplinary research project “The Future is Now: Temporality and Exemplarity in Climate Change Discourses” (2017–2021) likewise engaged several folklorists from Norway, Sweden, and the United States. The point of the departure for the project was that anthropogenic climate change takes place on a temporal and spatial scale that makes it non-experienceable and inaccessible to common sensing, and it investigated how climate change is exemplified and turned into narratives through specific events and motifs: Polar bears stranded on a melting ice flow, or extreme weather events like hurricanes and heatwaves. The project explored examples in genres ranging from IPCC reports to popular science and political speeches, to news media reports. The examples were found to have both rhetorical and epistemological aspects. In vernacular reasoning and media rhetoric , examples were largely used as evidence, but also had moral or instructive dimensions. Furthermore, they were temporal; deep time examples were used to inform the current climate crisis, while present-day examples served as prefigurations of a climate-changed future (Kverndokk and Bjærke 2019).

This special issue has grown out of a panel convened by Noyes, Eriksen, and Kverndokk at the 15th SIEF conference in 2021. We aim to explore how the different approaches to exemplarity may provide tools for investigation of empirical material as well as inspiration for further thinking about examples, what they are, and—above all—what they do, and how they are employed in discourse and social practice. In this work, three aspects of examples and exemplarity have emerged as important: performativity, epistemology, and narrative. These aspects are explored and discussed in different ways and combinations in the articles that follow. There are several similarities and potential connections to the Vorbild/ Beispiel distinction established by Noyes and the model/serial distinction explored by the Norwegian group. Nonetheless, the argument developed by Noyes is largely concerned with the performative dimensions of the exemplar, while the epistemology of examples is the focus of the model/series continuum. In both cases, as performance as well as epistemology, examples will often be embedded in narrative structures or even come in narrative forms. The present issue explores the relations between these different aspects of exemplarity.

“Exemplarity is performance,” Noyes stated in her article, “its efficacy depends as much on audience uptake as on the performer’s intention and design, with the manipulation of shared inherited forms as the bridge between the two” (Noyes 2016, 82–83). Behind this statement is an argument where example—in the Vorbild sense of the word—is largely seen as a matter of gesture. This implies that the example will have to be lodged in the body of an individual, making it biological, physical, and particular—not generalized. At the same time, however, gestures have a lineage, Noyes argues. They point back in time and revise, rephrase, quote, interpret and comment on earlier situations and gestures. This is also at the core of Noyes’ argument that examples are distinct cultural forms, often highly stylized and consciously designed for exemplarity.

In the present issue, such aspects are explored by Antti Lindfors in his article on the Dutch wellness idol Wim Hof and his method combining exposure to the cold with breathwork and meditation practices. Hof’s exceptional stunts of ice bathing and extreme exposure to the cold are performative, making him stand out as an individual with unique physiological qualities. At the same time, however, his claim is that anybody can attain similar results by following the Wim Hof method. To give authority to this message, Hof situates himself within two different narrative spheres. On the one hand, his entire appearance as well as his message evoke a traditional cluster of wise men, gurus, prophets and “savages” that live in close contact with nature. On the other, as Lindfors demonstrates, Hof also makes use of science and scientific evidence, in part to bolster the argument that “any” human body can gain results similar to his, and in part to offer his own body and his own feats as a kind of scientific testing ground for what is humanly possible.

The narrative aspect is also at the core of Kyrre Kverndokk’s contribution to this issue. Starting explicitly from Noyes’ identification of the Vorbild as a distinct dimension of exemplarity, he explores how the performative practice of the Vorbild is given authority through hero narratives. Kverndokk has examined a sample of children’s books about the climate activist Greta Thunberg and argues that they tell a story that is strikingly similar to folktales in their narrative structure. The Greta story, as Kverndokk calls it, unfolds in the field of tension between the traditional and innovative. While the narrative structure is traditional, the content and morals of the story are contemporary and add a set of values to Greta Thunberg’s exemplary performances. Kverndokk points out that the Greta story is not merely about school strikes for the climate, but also about a girl taking control over her life and overcoming her personal problems. As a story about transformation and self-fulfilment, it is also about empowerment and, on the more general level, about individuals’ potential for political influence, Kverndokk argues. In this way, the investigation of the Greta story contributes to the understanding of how the exemplary process adds layers of meaning to the performative acts of the Vorbild.

Audun Kjus emphatically combines the performative and the epistemological aspects of exemplarity, arguing that all narratives are “inherently exemplary because, on the level of content, they combine the narration of strips of concrete events with ideas of typical actors, actions and settings, and on the level of performance, they invite audience evaluation” (Kjus, this issue). When a narrative is performed, it is fundamentally up to the audience to give meaning to it, to understand what it is meant to be about. In doing so, they draw on previous knowledge about content, form, and genre, thus inevitably turning the story into an example of something that they more or less know already. Kjus applies these perspectives to the answers to a questionnaire about the future, issued by the Norwegian Ethnological Research Institute (NEG). The argument informing his investigation of this material consequently is that even if the answers come from individual, actual persons and in this way are unique, they inevitably also build on larger and shared themes and topoi. In this way the narratives become examples that connect the particular with the general, the case with the rule.

The epistemological approach is emphatic that even if the two dimensions of exemplarity can be separated theoretically, they will still work together in practice. This makes it relevant to investigate the connections and interactions between them, and as pointed out above it can be argued that this double-facedness is what gives examples their cultural vitality and efficacy. The example as model will never be totally separated from its context of potential imitators, emulators, and followers. Even if none of them follow the example, or succeed to any remarkable degree, this type of example must be a model for somebody and a model of something that is recognized by others than the exemplary figure itself—if not, it would simply not be a model but merely a quirky single case. The model does not stand alone. On the other hand, the model as convenient illustration for its part is not completely randomly chosen. First, some relevance to the case in point must be secured. Second, and more important, even examples chosen just to illustrate usually appear to be particularly poignant, and in fact are also often somewhat extravagant, rare or exceptional (Lyons 1998, 32). Even if “this is just one example,” the one chosen from the implied series of similar examples stands out in some way on its own. Examples of both kinds are consequently messy, the qualities of the one kind spilling over on to the other. From this messiness stems the ability of examples to shift between being models and illustrations. The same single case can slide along the scale between the two extremes, shifting in meaning as it moves back and forth (cf. Eriksen 2016, 335). Again, narrative is important because different kinds of stories are often the location of these shifts and where examples execute their epistemological transformations.

In the case explored by Anne Eriksen, this point is front and centre. In the late 1850s the Norwegian ethnologist Eilert Sundt made the relation between examples and statistics a key issue in his study of unmarried parents and children born out of wedlock among the rural poor. Sundt made abundant use of examples throughout his study, usually in the form of short narratives, and combined them with statistical analyses. At the time, the birth of children out of wedlock was largely regarded as a moral issue. Sundt was excited to discover that structural and economic conditions were also significant factors. A major topic in his work was then the relation between these aspects, i.e., between unmarried parents as a moral issue and as a phenomenon that had structural roots. Sundt sought to understand both these dimensions, but also the way in which they influenced each other. Eriksen argues that to achieve this he needed a methodology for each, but without severing the connections between them. The epistemology of examples made this possible. Their ability to shift between being a lesson to learn from to just one of a series made it possible for them to oscillate between representing single and individual cases of (bad) morals and at the same time be close kin to the statistics and calculations that Sundt also favoured.

A related cultural dynamic is explored by Marit Ruge Bjærke in her article on the presentation of two invasive species in North Atlantic and Norwegian fisheries policies: the red king crab and the humpback salmon. Taking policy documents concerning these invasive species as her main empirical material, Bjærke explores what she calls a process of exemplarity: In formulating policy in Norway in the early 2000s, the crab was made to exemplify several issues ranging from biological threat to exploitable natural resource. Analyzing a set of textboxes from the most influential White Paperon the topic, she demonstrates how different aspects of the species, their life cycles and habits, were foregrounded in each of them. In this process of example-making, meanings were stabilized and gradually coalesced into fixed narratives and images. When the humpback salmon became an issue some years later, the themes and challenges which the crab was already thought to exemplify could in turn be used as keys to grasp the new situation and the new invasive species. The king crab became both an example and a counter example for the new case. The process of exemplarity, as investigated by Bjærke, is in part about creating meaning, and is also about making use of the meaning conveyed by the examples as a basis for handling subsequent cases.

The present collection of articles brings the study of examples into the fields of cultural analysis, ethnology, and folklore studies. Concentrating on the three aspects performativity, epistemology, and narrative, as well as the relations between them, the texts explore the function, power, and rationality of examples and exemplarity. They demonstrate how examples are put to work in different cultural contexts, how their authority and cultural power are established, and how examples may be challenged, changed and renegotiated. It is our hope that the articles will contribute to further development of a theory of examples and exemplarity within cultural analysis.