The aim of this study is to investigate transmission of knowledge as critical archive practice within folk dance, and thereby contribute to updating the concept tradition bearer. The research questions are: What is done in the situation of knowledge transmission where different folk dance bodies understood as archives – both living dancers and bodies in text and image – meet over time and space? How can these situations be understood theoretically and thus contribute to a new, archive oriented, theoretical understanding of the transmission of knowledge and tradition within folk dance? The empirical material consists of phenomenological interviews with three folk dancers who each participated in two workshops created by the author: in one case, the participants encountered archival material such as text, film and photography, in the other a living dancer understood as an archive. Drawing on critical and pluralizing archive theory, the findings of the study show how both dancers and archive records are stakeholders and agents in creating the affective, dynamic and complex interchanges that take place in both situations. Pluralizing archive theory also proved useful in identifying values and hierarchies among the stakeholders in the folk dance archive. In the interchange between dancer and archive, negotiations between different approaches to tradition took place. Through pluralizing archive theory and the understanding of the body as archive, the concept of tradition bearer may be given a more dynamic and inclusive definition, shifting focus from what it is to what it does, and be considered a complex relational situation.