Viera Gašparíková

Viera Gašparíková (15 April 1928 – 2 February 2023) was a Slovak writer, folklorist and Slavist. She was a founding member of the Slovak Ethnographic Society and was vice-president of the Slovak Committee of Slavists.

Biography Gašparíková was born on 15 April 1928 in Prekop, Martin, Žilina, First Czechoslovak Republic. She was educated at schools in Žiline and Martin. By attending self-education circles in addition to her schooling, she met influential ethnographer Rudolf Bednárik [ hu].

Gašparíková studied Slovak language and literature, French language and literature, and ethnography at the Slovak University (now Comenius University, ) in Bratislava, before enrolling at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Bratislava, graduating with a doctorate in philosophy in 1952.

After graduating from university, Gašparíková worked as an assistant at the Department of Ethnography at Comenius University. From 1956, she worked as researcher at the Ethnographic Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, where she focused on the influence of folklore and oral history in the development of Slovak literature. She also wrote on the relationship of national minorities to the majority nation in folklore, such as in the Hungarian-Slovak context.

Gašparíková wrote the book about the outlaw folk hero and bandit Michal Vdovec [ sk] and the folklore of Gemer in 1964. This inspired her children's book Zbojník Mišo Vdovčík about the hero, which was released in 1966. and was a founding member of the Slovak Ethnographic Society (ESS). The three volumes contained 585 texts, which are arranged by communities and zhupas (administrative divisions), and includes a methodology in the last volume. Gašparíková selected Slovak fairy tales for translation into German for the book Slowakische Volksmärchen (2000).