RunoVerse

Genre Explorer

Explore the ERAB (Estonian Runosong Database) song-type classification: 17 categories, 111 subcategories, 2,501 types. Browse by category, explore collection geography on the map, or dive into verse styles and emotion profiles. Genre data is Estonian (ERAB) only; the Finnish and Karelian corpora (SKVR, KR, JR) carry no genre classification.

About the Hierarchy

The official ERAB tree: 17 categories → 111 subcategories → 2,501 types. Each category and subcategory shows how many distinct poems of this corpus are placed under it (click the count for the poem list) and how many song types the ERAB catalogue lists under that branch. Individual types show their own poem counts. Click any category, subcategory, or type label to see its poems.

About the Map

The map shows where songs of each category were collected, based on place data from the song-type index. Parish polygons are colored by poem count. Only Estonian places are shown (no Finnish cross-corpus data).

About Genre Form

The genre form field records whether a song is runosong, transitional, or another genre. Pure runosong is implicit (empty genre field). The Verse Styles tab shows an honest breakdown.

This split is reconstructed from an internal archive “genre affiliation” field that is filled in for only about 15,000 of the roughly 82,000 poems and is, in ERAB’s own words, “not complete.” Untagged poems are treated as assumed runosong. The other / non-runosong group is a mixed catch-all (newer rhymed song, but also incantations, riddles, proverbs, prose and games), so the runosong–newer-song boundary still needs folklorist confirmation — treat the breakdown as indicative.

About Emotions

Emotion profiles use TES word-family frequencies, normalized by verse count. This is word-level detection, not semantic sentiment analysis. Approximately 17% of matches may be non-emotional uses (homographs, literal meanings).

Keyboard Shortcuts

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Song-type hierarchy
n poems = distinct poems in this corpus n types = song types in the ERAB catalogue under a branch ▸ click a label for details | click a poem count for the poem list
Collection geography by genre category
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Verse styles (genre form)
Emotion profiles by category
Emotion profiles are computed from TES (Tänapäeva emotsioonisõnastik) word-family frequencies, normalized by verse count. This is word-level detection (not semantic sentiment analysis) and reflects vocabulary emphasis, not subjective assessment. Approximately 17% of emotion-word matches may be non-emotional uses (homographs, literal meanings). 22% of genre-classified poems lack emotion data. Learn more →
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Comparison: category × genre form
This table covers only poems placed in the ERAB song-type tree — archaic runosong and transitional material. The roughly 10,000 poems tagged as other / non-runosong genres sit outside that tree, so the optional “Other” column is near-empty here; see the Verse Styles and Statistics → Curatorial classification tabs for those. Counts are category placements: a song filed under several categories is counted once in each.
Category size ranking
Genre form proportions per category
Classification pipeline
Key findings
Singing occasions
The singing occasion metadata is sparse. Listed below are all 27 distinct occasions recorded.
Coverage
Curatorial classification