Uncertainties in the Early 1990s for Estonian Folkloristics and the Estonian Folklore Archives

Abstract: In Estonia, the late 1980s, until the regaining of independence in 1991, was a time of constant changes and uncertainties on the political level, although it was characterized by a strong national spirit. The transition from the Soviet regime to the pursuit of European and Western values and patterns brought its own turmoil, but also new opportunities for Estonian scholars, including folklorists. This article focuses on the adaptation journey of Estonian folkloristics and the then Folklore Department (the Estonian Folklore Archives) of the State Literary Museum through the upheavals on the political, institutional, financial, and technical levels. The significant political change had a strong impact on the directions of research in Estonian folkloristics and the status of the archives. On the background, however, was another politically uncertain era of the 1940s, which shaped some of the discussions and actions addressed in the article.

Keywords: cultural politics; disciplinary history; folklore archives; folkloristics; institutional funding

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Introduction

Folklore archives have their own place and importance in the broader field of folkloristics. They can be a guardian of passing or extinct knowledge, an interpreter of currents and undercurrents in the surrounding living culture, and a sage of future situations, a keeper of traditions with a vision for the future. Any folklore archive in the world also represents the history of not just local folkloristics, as the archives may also preserve original collections or copies of collections from other nations or regions, e.g. as is the case in the Baltics. Collecting, preserving and archiving, giving a meaning to folkloristic knowledge for the wider society, and making folklore materials available to society for re-use has also been seen as a kind of metaphor of the ever-circulating folklore itself (Västrik 2002, 5). However, in the broader social and academic spheres, traditional archives and institutions of memory are rarely understood or recognized for their work in qualitative data preservation and its contextualization (O’Carroll 2018, 13). Thus, occasionally, within the discipline itself and beyond, questions are raised about the meaning, possibilities, and expectations of folkloristics, folklore archives, and their future perspectives (Sarv et al. 2023; O’Carroll 2018). This requires also contemporary folkloristics to address its history to gain clarity about the background of the current moment and the possible solutions (e.g. Bula 2017, 10).

This article focuses on the history of Estonian folkloristics and the Estonian Folklore Archives between the late 1980s and early 1990s, a period characterized by political, financial, and disciplinary uncertainties and challenges. In addition, it offers a retrospective on the public discussion regarding solutions for the advancement of Estonian folkloristics and the change of status of the Estonian Folklore Archives during 1990–1991. On the political level, Estonia underwent a major transformation after the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1940, and a reorientation towards the West in the early 1990s, the financial structures of the state were dismantled and rebuilt, and a new disciplinary and educational discourse within folkloristics was under debate. In short, while changes were occurring on many levels and the future remained uncertain, Estonian folklorists tried to maintain a steady and clear course by discussing the optimal balance for the betterment of the discipline.

The Political-Scientific Background

In the early years of the Estonian Republic in 1919–1920, the University of Tartu was established as an Estonian-language university where folkloristics and ethnology were taught separately. According to folklorist Tiiu Jaago, the study of ethnography (ethnology) was based on history and at first was closely related to physical anthropology and even historical geography, before it was distinguished from them in the process of organizing departments at the University of Tartu. Folkloristics, on the other hand, was considered part of philology¹ , and despite its connection with literary studies, a separate Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore was established with relative ease in 1919. On paper, the Department of Ethnography also existed in 1919, but it took until 1923 before courses began, as the position of professor remained vacant until that year. The newly established Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore was the first institution to teach and research folklore academically in Estonia, offering courses in folk poetry, beliefs and traditions, and following in the footsteps of earlier Estonian folkloristics (Jaago 2003).

Eesti Rahva Muuseum (the Estonian National Museum, hereinafter ENM) was founded in 1909 based on the folklore collections of the pastor and folklorist Jakob Hurt.² Eesti Rahvaluule Arhiiv (the Estonian Folklore Archives, hereinafter EFA) were first established as one of the subdivisions of the ENM. The first head of EFA was Oskar Loorits, who was the first Estonian folklorist to receive a Ph.D. in folklore studies from the University of Tartu in 1926. Loorits devoted himself to the establishment of EFA and the return of Jakob Hurt’s collections from Helsinki, where they had been in the care of the Finnish folklorist Kaarle Krohn. The main tasks of EFA were to organize the already collected material, make copies for use, serve the public and researchers from Estonia and abroad, collect further folklore material, and conduct and disseminate research (e.g. Loorits 1932).

During the interwar period, scientific research³ had a high status in the Estonian society and served the newly independent country by supporting a national self-image, but state priorities and a proper funding had yet to be established. The Soviet occupation abruptly reformed the Estonian research system that had been slowly built over the preceding 20 years. Nevertheless, even in the Soviet Union, scientific researchers served the country and generally enjoyed a favorable reputation (Vainik 2012, 39–40). Scientific research did not stop, but did experience inevitable interruptions.

After the beginning of the Soviet occupation in 1940, a political and cultural reorganization took place at all levels and in all occupied places, including memory institutions. The ENM with all its autonomous departments was divided into two. On September 11, 1940, the departments responsible for managing intangible heritage, located in Aia (now Vanemuise) Street in Tartu, were reorganized into Riiklik Kirjandusmuuseum (the State Literary Museum, hereinafter LM, considering the name since 1953)⁴ following the existing model established by the Soviet Union, as were local expectations connected with this separation. The rest of the museum was renamed the State Ethnographic Museum, remaining at its former location in Raadi Manor on the outskirts of Tartu. On November 1, 1940, the new LM began its work, and the former EFA was renamed as Riikliku Kirjandusmuuseumi rahvaluule osakond (the Folklore Department of the State Literary Museum, hereinafter FD), at first continuing work as usual.

During the political turmoil of the Second World War, when the country was occupied and restructured several times, the normal practice of folklore collecting and research slowed down considerably and experienced several inevitable breaks. On October 9, 1942, the LM was dissolved by the German occupying forces and the archive was reorganized and named Tartu Ülikooli Eesti Rahvaluule Arhiiv (the Estonian Folklore Archives of the University of Tartu), although it remained in the same physical location. Due to the war, the items and records of the archive were evacuated first in 1943 to different places all over Estonia and re-evacuated back to Aia Street in 1944–1945. Under reinstated Soviet occupation, the State Literary Museum was officially reopened on November 6, 1945, although the work was ongoing since early fall. Once again it was renamed, and the archives became the Folklore Department of the State Literary Museum. After the war, the situation of Estonian folkloristics was challenging – well-known folklorists such as Professor Walter Anderson moved to Germany, Oskar Loorits was exiled to Sweden, other folklorists working for the archives such as Rudolf Põldmäe, Herbert Tampere and the literary scholar August Annist, were imprisoned, which hindered their folkloristic research for several years.

The new ideological rules concerning research and collecting work established with the Soviet order prescribed the documentation of folklore primarily as a carrier of the ideas of the working class. Attention was paid to workers’ folklore, revolutionary and war songs, and earlier bourgeois principles of collecting and research, as well as religion and folk belief were criticized (Haberman 1949, 18; Viidalepp 1969, 169–84). At first glance, it is easy to think that the Soviet humanities would favor anything ethnic, but as Liina Saarlo has showed, the support of national identities was more likely a tool to facilitate the move from bourgeois society to socialism, which had the effect of a highly ideologized and idealized, unified Soviet nation (Saarlo 2023, 119–20). Also, as Eve Annuk has contemplated, there is a paradox in the way the Soviet era contributed to the preservation of national identity, since under the guise of the slogan “socialist in content, national in form,” both popular and professional culture were successfully advanced (Annuk 2003, 14).

On July 1, 1946, the LM was incorporated into the system of the Academy of Sciences of the Estonian SSR. Furthermore, in 1947, Keele ja Kirjanduse Instituut (the Institute of Language and Literature of the Academy of Sciences, hereinafter ILL) was established with its original seat in Tartu, and under this institute, a rahvaluule sektor (“Folklore Sector,” hereinafter FS) was created for folklorists, whose task was to conduct research. The FD in the State Literary Museum was given the task of serving researchers from other institutions, including the FS and the University of Tartu, by providing organized archival material for research. It would be wrong to say that the folklorists at the FD did not do any research during the following almost 50 years - they did in fact, but the research consisted mainly of large-scale academic text publications.

However, in 1952 the ILL was moved to Tallinn, the capital of the Estonian SSR, in order to consolidate the Academy of Sciences in one place, facilitate the work of its sectors, and provide firm ideological control over of such a scientific institution (Ahven 2007, 104–7). Understandably, this move made cooperation between the FD and the FS difficult; the staff of latter had to travel to Tartu to access archival materials. To alleviate this spatial challenge, the FS started to conduct their own fieldwork expeditions, resulting in a separate folklore collection. There were plans to merge the two institutions in the following decades, most actively in 1951–1952, but also in the late 1960s, with the emphasis on the comparatively lower salary level and general financial situation in the LM, which might have improved with the merger. None of these plans ever materialized. The developments during the war and the years of the Stalinist era influenced the disciplinary instability at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. After these instances of political and institutional restructuring occurred, the question of how best to move forward in an era where everything pointed towards possible statehood and further change, remained unanswered.

Estonian Research Policy in the Early 1990s

Science policy in the Soviet Union meant that science, and especially ideologically and politically correct science policy, was the main weapon for “building communism,” with Marxism-Leninism officially considered as the starting point. As a novelty, the state science policy had to prioritize basic research, strengthen its experimental base, pool resources for the development of priority directions, rapidly apply new scientific solutions to the development of technologies, and so on (Laas 2008), all in service of the Soviet order and communism. Although the Soviet research system had expanded exponentially from the 1960s onwards, it had reached its limits by the mid-1980s. The humanities and social sciences were able to gain a little more attention in the atmosphere of Perestroika and Glasnost in the late 1980s. Research policy took a different turn with the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the financing of Estonian research abruptly stopped and the whole research system faced a dire situation (Tammiksaar 2018a and 2018b).

On August 20, 1991, the Republic of Estonia regained its independence. The Baltic States had some advantages compared to other former Soviet republics—communism had lasted only two generations, the Baltic nations had retained a historical memory of their independence during the interwar period (Raun 2001, 21), and a strong cultural identity. Estonia also quickly joined various European and world organizations in the reintroduction of their own currency (kroon) in the summer of 1992. In the early years of independence, the government pursued an aggressive free-market policy, and the reestablished Bank of Estonia kept a tight rein on the money supply to tame inflation. However, this did not protect the country from a sharp economic downturn in the first half of the 1990s. The economic reforms generally earned Estonia a positive reputation abroad but left a hard mark on the population – income gaps, social divisions, generational differences, etc. increased (Raun 2001, 30–32).

Ethnomusicologist Ingrid Rüütel⁵ has also observed that much of the post-independence stress was caused by hopes that never materialized or that had led to disappointment:

The rapid disintegration of economic structures led to the impoverishment, unemployment, and loss of social protection of many people. However, it follows from the principle of the pyramid of social needs that if lower-level needs (food, shelter, physical security) are not satisfied, then a person cannot fulfill higher-level needs, such as cultural and social self-fulfillment. (Rüütel 2010, 619–20)⁶

The independence of the state also brought reform to science policy, which was characterized by the speed of its development, initial autonomy from political governance (the idea that science should serve society emerged slightly later), and at the same time a somewhat disorganized reorientation towards the West (Vainik 2012, 40–45), which, however, remained a desired goal to be achieved on all levels.

The Estonian Research Council, established by the government on July 31, 1990, as part of the general wave of science policy reforms that took place at the time, played a coordinating and guiding role in science and higher education in Estonia. The Council advised the government on national science and technology policy issues (Köörna 2008, 23–24). In 1993, it was renamed the Research and Development Council. Three separate funds were established to finance the research and development system: the Estonian Research Foundation for research funding, the Innovation Foundation for development funding, and the Informatics Foundation for the development of state information systems.

The Estonian Research Foundation introduced a new funding system of research grants in addition to state funding, also called basic funding. As elsewhere in the Western academic world, the distribution of personal research grants to research projects that had successfully passed an open competition was now implemented in Estonia. In 1994, a new code for the distribution of research funds was established. Basic funding was divided into infrastructure funding, covered by the budgets of ministries or local governments, and targeted funding of research institutions. The latter, together with personal research grants, was decided by the Council of the Science Foundation, which was formed by a panel of top researchers in Estonia and operated under the Estonian Research Foundation (Kaarli, Laasberg 1998, 2–5). As pointed out by historian Toivo Raun:

In terms of research, the natural sciences in Estonia were in a more favorable position than the humanities and social sciences since the former had been less subject to ideological controls and less isolated from international scholarship during the Soviet period, but in the post-communist era all fields faced the same problem of reduced funding. (Raun 2001, 37)

In parallel, the reform process of the Estonian Academy of Sciences took place in 1991–1994. The leading emotional sentiment here was to re-establish the system of the Academy of Sciences dating from before the Soviet occupation, and the local universities wanted to follow the combined system of research and lecturing as it was done in the West (Tammiksaar 2018b). Thus, the question of the Academy’s fate and place in Estonian research policy was one of the central topics of the discussion. One of the main political goals was to integrate research institutions into universities, apparently to eliminate duplication of tasks. This goal was not always met with enthusiasm. There were fears that the funding given to the sciences would be pooled with that of the universities. The leading role of the latter would have endangered the existence of the research institutions of the former academy. The institutions of the humanities and social sciences took advantage of the situation by submitting a request to expand the research into the so-called national topics and to create new institutions (the Estonian Language Research Center, the Estonian Center of Folkloristics, the Estonian Institute of Literary History and Literary Theory, etc.). With the new Science Act of 1995, the Academy of Sciences ceased to exist as a system of research institutions (Köörna 2008, 25–29; Kaarli, Laasberg 1998, 3–4). That year, most of the institutes under the Academy of Sciences became independent entities and the Estonian Academy of Sciences was reorganized into a body of respected scholars. By and large, the Estonian research system was reorganized into a Western style.

The Discussion on the State of the Estonian Folkloristics 1990–1991

Having clarified what reforms and plans were being prepared in the background of political and research policy and its funding management, the focus can now be placed on the disciplinary debate within Estonian folkloristics, which culminated in a public discussion. As mentioned above, humanities research in Estonia was able to gain somewhat more attention at the end of the 1980s. However, humanities’ scholars, legal scholars, and economists had the task of eradicating Soviet ideological norms in their fields, especially in universities that were more concerned with teaching compared to the field of natural and exact sciences, where academics could more easily devote themselves to the production of research (Tammiksaar 2018b).

In addition to the national research policy and several funding reforms, another heated debate was the future of Estonian identity and language, as the political plans of European integration were also seen as a threat to language and culture (Raun 2001, 36). Ingrid Rüütel summarized some of the contemporary feelings as follows:

We opposed ourselves to the Soviet culture imposed by force, and in addition to turning to our national culture, embracing Western culture was also a kind of attempt and protest against Soviet culture, but now the threat of cultural globalization is becoming more and more real. If, entering Europe and the world independently, we still want to preserve our national and cultural identity, as it exists in any European nation, we must be aware of this danger. (Rüütel 2010, 591–92)

In the context of ongoing transformation, the desire to distance oneself from all things Soviet and to follow the strong pull to the West, the disciplines of folklore and ethnology were particularly important in Estonian society. Ingrid Rüütel (2010, 615) has also pointed out that while the national awakening of the Estonians in the nineteenth century gave rise to the tradition of song festivals—a tradition still strong in the twenty-first century—regaining independence was accompanied by a widespread rise of the folklore revival movement (see e.g. Shmidchens 1996) several decades earlier, but especially during the 1980s and the 1990s. This created a demand for adequate advice, and one of those sources was the FD (Sarv et al. 2023, 16).

To articulate problems and find workable solutions in an unstable political, scientific, and financial situation, a series of debates were initiated by the journal Keel ja Kirjandus (Language and literature), which lasted for a whole year in 1990–1991. It is worth noting that in the past, Estonian folklorists had not been afraid to bring their problems to public attention (e.g., Goršič 2015; 2018a), so this kind of public debate was not surprising. Most of the discussion was published during the last year of Soviet occupation, at the time of the most active political turbulence and general uncertainty about the future, with the final article (Rüütel 1991) published during the month of regained independence: August 1991.

Ingrid Rüütel (ILL) was the first to start the discussion on the possibilities and problems of the situation Estonian folkloristics faced at that moment. In her introductory remarks, she raised several points followed by a series of replies. First, she underscored the necessity to have collecting, archiving, research, and dissemination of information under one structural roof, referring to the common notion that it was a mistake to create a separate folklore sector at the ILL, thus uniting all stages of work under one roof would eliminate problems of duplication and dispersion. In summary, she suggested that folklorists should create an Estonian Folklore Center with a common archive, library, and technological center, which would function both under Kirjandusmuuseum (the Literary Museum) and the ILL with its own specified working groups with the perspective of creating a common database of Estonian folklore. In a sense, this would mean restoring the former Estonian Folklore Archives with its all-encompassing folkloristic research stages (1990).

Her views were followed by a response from folklorist Ülo Tedre (FS), who first pointed out the internal structural reforms taking place in the ILL itself and then focused on the more general discussion. He emphasized several practical but problematic points of the historically separated working groups between different institutions and the need to re-establish the Estonian Folklore Archives and unite all folklorists under it, since most of the folklorists of the FS were working in the building of the LM in Tartu anyway, while also thinking about problems that needed to be solved, including funding distribution, living quarters, family relocation, etc. Tedre underlined an important aspect for a functioning folklore archive—archives are living, and what made them alive was the accessibility of the materials to all users (1990).

Mare Kõiva (ILL, FS), while acknowledging the recurring idea of reunification of folklorists, reminded of the broad the definition of folklore in place of the Soviet understanding of folklore as an aesthetic art of words, and how the latter played into the ongoing problems. She emphasized the need to develop modern methods of fieldwork, to investigate fresh topics, like “poplore,”⁷ the need for suitable and updated equipment to document these new topics, and that creating copies of old manuscripts would reduce the likelihood of disintegration, etc. She also pointed out the need for folklorists to broaden horizons and conduct interdisciplinary research with ethnologists and anthropologists. In conclusion, she suggested that it was the technical side of folklore methods that ultimately decided the future of the archive and that the greatest hope in the contemporary situation lied in collaboration, both within the discipline and through the creation of a joint institution in 1990.

Literary scholars joined the discussion—the director of the LM at the time, Peeter Olesk, discussed the connections between folklore and literature research, and suggested the need to pay attention to contemporary folklore and the Estonian diaspora. His article primarily listed various urgent problems in Estonian folkloristics and called for a broader perspective in the analyses of the discipline. He opposed the proposals to create a new common center and suggested rather to restore the EFA (1990).

As if to bring some balance in the authorship of the articles, Mall Hiiemäe (FD), focused on the issues present within archival work itself. First, she noted that for the FD, a common center would imply a stronger inclination towards research and dissemination, but that archival work could not be pushed aside. With the help of several practical examples, she urged the participants to remain realistic—the stated demands of the FD to quickly organize archival material to serve the needs of research were an illusion, especially when the demand on the FD for public lectures, consultations, interviews with the media, etc. had increased considerably (1990).

Folklorist Kristi Salve (ILL, FS) pointed out other considerations. She asked whether it was necessary for folklorists to work under institutions where the institutional name in no way reflected folklore research and asked what the benefit of working under several common institutions would be. She believed solutions would only be temporary, and it would be better to wait longer for further options to surface. Her preferred solution was to restore an autonomous Estonian Folklore Archives, as they existed prior to Soviet regime. She also suggested that the ILL would soon cease to exist, and the Academy of Sciences would only support a small circle of academics. Salve also emphasized the importance of conducting additional folkloristic research outside the obvious institutions in Tallinn and Tartu, and that it would be beneficial for the discipline if research were also conducted at the University of Tartu and some other universities—this would help to bind students to the discipline (Salve 1990).

Arvo Krikmann (ILL, FS) in his end-of-year article decided to summarize previous contributions to this discussion. He admitted that the main points lied in attempts to undo the “mistake” of creating two separate folkloristic sectors in Tallinn and Tartu, and that the solutions were twofold: either to create a new unit subject to both the ILL and the SLM, or to restore the EFA either within the LM or autonomously. He also admitted that the earlier eagerness to unite all folklorists had lost its momentum by the end of the year, and he also saw himself allied with Salve’s ideas. He thought that taking the archive out of the LM’s could be rather problematic regarding both the structure of the LM and the assets, also since the LM had found new hope in becoming a research institution in the legal sense. Other discussion points he summarized were the questions of the continuation of a younger generation of folklorists, and the bottomless workload of folklorists. Krikmann predicted that a future archivist would need to be able to navigate the technological world and subsequent advancements. Last but not least, Krikmann (1990) doubted that the great wave of folklore enthusiasm in the society would last, since the doors to the West were open and non-folklorists who were confusing the scene (with whom the professionals were fighting through endless public debates) would not disappear from the picture, and like others, he saw the need for Estonian folklorists to step out actively into the international arena.

Another ethnomusicologist, Vaike Sarv (ILL, FS), pointed out in her short article that there were also positives to the forceful restructuring of Estonian folkloristics, namely that otherwise the study of folk music could not flourish in its present abundance; and that folklore as a field of study was extremely broad (Sarv 1991). Ethnologist Ants Viires joined in the latter part of this discussion, mainly to point out his sadness about the situation, since he felt the main problems lied on the organizational side. He also regretted that almost none of the authors had included ethnological issues during the fundamental debate on the disciplinary future. He also pointed out that folklorists had to pay more active attention to contemporary folklore in order not to be “left behind” in the progression of international folkloristics and to maintain a living connection with society. According to Viires, fieldwork carried out over the decades had also helped keep folklore alive in the society, especially in remote regions, which was the plus and minus of humanities research in general (Viires 1991).

Theater and literary critic Ants Järv published his thoughts at the request of the editorial board of the magazine Keel ja Kirjandus,agreeing with Arvo Krikmann on many points. He also acknowledged that the discussion of the problems was open and comprehensive. He advocated for the restoration of the EFA and hoped it would continue to function in cooperation with the University of Tartu in the education of students as it had during the interwar period, and suggested that the restructuring already underway within the institutions would help to speed up the process (Järv 1991). Folklorist Ruth Mirov (ILL, FS) showed in her short article that in comparison to everything else that was going on in society at the time, and how the urge to make money also influenced decisions about what to print and disseminate, thus leaving quality texts aside, Estonian folkloristics was in fact in a good position. While she was not in favor of paying attention to contemporary issues, she stressed the need to continue the dissemination of research, pointing out the responsibility of the higher-ups to find solutions to this question (Mirov 1991).

Ingrid Rüütel (1991) brought this chain of discussions to an end by stating that everyone was right and had made noble points: the problems were complex, and the main question was what would be best for the advancement of Estonian folkloristics. In terms of research, she noted: 1) the need for a balance between “old” and “new” topics in folklore research, and this also applied to (university) textbooks—the modern approach to research needed modernized textbooks for the new generation of researchers; 2) the dangers of geographical location, since archives could easily be destroyed and the nation readily influenced by external forces; 3) the cooperation between folklorists in different institutions worked well in everyday work, but would need a legal oversight. She also noted that, apart from Mall Hiiemäe, the staff of the FD had been rather quiet, probably because the FD was going through a difficult time since it did not have a stable appointed head, and that the Department of Folklore at the University of Tartu had also not participated in the discussion. The main topic of this public discussion was therefore about organizational issues, including the possible restoration of the Estonian Folklore Archives (Olesk 1990; Salve 1990; Tedre 1990; Järv 1991).

It was also clear that Estonian folklore research needed to be reoriented in several directions: Estonian society had changed, the definition of folklore was shifting to accommodate new ideas, and the folklore itself showed signs of moving to the digital realm. To record all this fluctuation in the same multifaceted way required modern technical equipment in the field and in archival work of folklorists, despite difficulty acquiring this equipment. What was also emphasized, but not always in the foreground, was the need for a healthier synthesis with neighboring disciplines—e.g., ethnology, literature, and anthropology. The question of the new generation of students was also raised in several contributions, namely the urgent need for a younger generation of scholars and better cooperation between the institutes and the University of Tartu to integrate future researchers into collecting and research at an early stage. Finally, the issue of funding came up in almost every article, as well as the fact that folklorists in both organizations felt they were outside the decision-making circle as far as the LM and ILL boards were concerned (Rüütel 1991, 451).

This series of open discussions ended with a short public statement in the newspaper Sirp (Sickle) about half a year later, authored by Hiiemäe, Anu Korb (at that point the head of the FD), Krikmann, Kõiva, Rüütel and Tedre, with the following message to the public: the majority of folklorists at the LM and the ILL proposed to establish an Estonian Center for Folkloristics within the present system of the Academy of Sciences as an independent state-funded research institution, based on the folklore departments under the ILL and the LM, and as the legal continuation of the Estonian Folklore Archives. The Center would unite the various folklore collections with a common technical base and would be physically located at the LM, with a branch in Tallinn at the ILL. The Center’s task would be to collect, archive, research, disseminate and popularize the folklore of the Estonian and other major Finno-Ugric nations. The Center would also work in partnership with many other relevant institutions and centers and promote collaboration with international folklorists (Hiiemäe et al. 1992).

In summary, the long discussion about the state of folklore research and folkloristic institutions was organized during the general and broader restructuring of Estonian scientific fields. It is obvious that in addition to the many changes occurring within the Estonian scientific landscape, the discipline of Estonian folkloristics mobilized itself at a critical moment and publicly debated how best to proceed. It was important that Estonian folklorists made their voices heard, so creating a public debate in the form of discussion articles was an appropriate way to demonstrate to the public that the field was active and offered solutions. As the director of Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum (the Estonian Literary Museum, the name change will be referred to below), Krista Aru, has pointed out, the reforms of the Academy of Sciences forced the staff of the museum in general to reflect and reassess their goals, needs, strengths, opportunities, and possibilities for their institutional future (Aru 1996, 233). Change did occur over time, but not necessarily in the ways that were imagined or suggested.

Coping with Uncertainties: Internal Changes at the Estonian Folklore Archives

The definition of folklore in Estonian folkloristics broadened considerably in the early 1990s, but this change had already begun in the previous decade (Jaago 1999). The expansion reopened several collecting and research trends that were previously closed or were completely new to Estonian folkloristics at that point in time.

The constantly changing political situation and the wave of a strong independence movement towards the end of the 1980s allowed Estonian folklorists to record and study political folklore, soldiers’ folklore, students’ and children’s folklore. The influence, cooperation and joint events with the Finnish colleagues played an important role. This accelerated the observation of folklore movements in society, the growth of urban folklore and, in the 1990s, the novelty of collecting folklore in the media and online environment. In addition, politically sensitive material could not be archived before the 1990s (Hiiemäe 2002).

The restless atmosphere of the 1980s also brought many opportunities to consciously observe, record, and research belief folklore, the subject of which had been suppressed under the Soviet regime. However, collecting and researching folk belief was not as black and white as it appeared on the surface, and several outlets were found whenever possible (e.g. Goršič 2018b). Since the 1990s, there have been more opportunities to organize research expeditions to collect the folklore of diaspora Estonians not only in the territory of the Russian Federation, but also in the Western world, where Estonians had fled or settled during World War II and its aftermath.

The staff of the Folklore Department, together with the board of the Literary Museum, also made several changes in the way the archive would continue to function. Perhaps most importantly, the date of January 1, 1995, marked the reestablishment of the Estonian Folklore Archives by name. A year earlier, in 1994, the tradition of the President of the Republic of Estonia’s Folklore Collector’s Award, which began in 1935, was revived. Every year, close to the anniversary of the Estonian Republic, the Estonian Folklore Archives announced the President’s Folklore Collector’s Award to members of the public who had been collecting folklore for a long time and/or had made outstanding contributions to the annual thematic folklore collecting competitions. In this way, the link between the archive and the public was strengthened, the necessity of the folklore archive demonstrated, and its vitality proved. The collected material was also made public in accordance with the contractual conditions established between the archive and the donors. But it also underlined the importance of individual contributors to the folklore material—no team of folklorists could record folklore in such abundance as collaboration with the public could. Also, any publications at that time were based on the results of recent collecting campaigns, which meant that the public had quicker access to collected folklore materials, and both research activities and publications were more topically defined (Hiiemäe 2002, 292).

There were also changes in the technical side of fieldwork and archiving – photocopiers arrived at the Literary Museum, computers replaced typewriters, which revolutionized both archiving⁸ and research, and new lighter and more portable recording devices were used in collecting. Even though the big summer expeditions to various places in Estonia continued for some time, as they had in the Soviet decades, active collecting through more specific, thematic surveys became more prominent and the expeditions were not so all-encompassing. The 1990s also brought more consistency for a simple detail such as the manuscript binding—3cm of empty binding space on the page margin became a more strictly observed rule—important in the following wave of digitization because it helps to significantly accelerate the technical handling of bound pages. The number of permanent employees in the archive in the Soviet era was usually around 4–8, and additional employees were hired if there were funds available; in the 1990s, the number of permanent employees was slightly higher, and young students gradually joined both the fieldwork and staff (Goršič 2025; Korb 1996, 250).

With the disciplinary and structural changes discussed previously, archival research emerged alongside collecting and was more influenced by personal preferences of researchers, who were also more motivated to obtain academic degrees (Sarv et al. 2023, 16–17), especially as the process became easier than under Soviet conditions. The financial requirements of funding programs also played a role in determining the direction of research. However, this also meant that there was always limited, sustainable funding for necessary archival work (Sarv et al. 2023, 17).

To summarize, the 1980s and 1990s changed the picture of collecting and research trends in Estonian folklore in general and in the Estonian Folklore Archives in particular. Especially with the advent of online media, methods for collecting folklore and the wealth of topics multiplied. The EFA was once again taking action towards collecting, archiving, researching, and disseminating knowledge, as once envisioned by Oskar Loorits (Loorits 1932) and seconded by other folklorists in later decades (e.g. Rüütel 1990, 321).

The Institutional Transformations of the Literary Museum

Regaining independence coupled with the state’s orientation towards Europe opened opportunities for the Literary Museum to access EU funding. There were external funding opportunities available as well. For example, in 1992, with the help of the George Soros Foundation, new technical equipment was purchased for the Folklore Department for the preservation of old sound recordings. However, these new opportunities also brought new challenges. With the structural reform of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, and with a main direction towards research, the now Estonian Literary Museum as an institution was faced with project-based financing from 1995 onwards. This was a sudden change of direction for the entire institution and led to several years of financial struggle and hardship (Aru 2009).

In general, funding sources seemed abundant—there was state funding in the form of several foundations, such as the Estonian Research Foundation and the Estonian Cultural Endowment, and there was also the Foundation of Estonian National Culture, which came in handy when seeking support for collecting, researching, and publishing folklore. But since the funding structure was so rigidly project-based, the funding possibilities did not meet the long-term stability requirements for a memory institution to maintain consistent function and constant care of the invaluable holdings.

There were some positives to this, however. In addition to EFA, other departments of the Literary Museum also retained their original names. EFA continued as sub-department of the Literary Museum, which was named the Estonian Literary Museum in 1995. It is worth mentioning that the name of the institution created long-lasting disputes from the beginning – as early as in the 1940s, resurfacing even today. After the Soviet-style reorganization, museum staff highlighted the problematic nature of the name, noting in memos that the institution was not a museum⁹, and there were even no specific halls for exhibiting objects. There were efforts to make the building live up to its name, but it never really became a museum in the usual sense of the word, although it was open to the public for various activities such as public conferences, excursions, educational programs, etc.

This was not the end of the changes to the institution, which honored its history but also created instability. On August 8, 1997, the official status of the Estonian Literary Museum was changed from a sub-institution of the Academy of Sciences to a research and development institution that functioned under the Ministry of Education. Since 1998, researchers at the Estonian Folklore Archives have been mainly funded as a research group (Sarv et al. 2023, 16). In addition, as of January 1, 2000, the teams of folklorists working under Eesti Keele Instituut(the Institute of Estonian Language, former ILL, which underwent its own internal reorganization in 1993), many of whom were physically located in the building of the Literary Museum anyway, were officially integrated into the Estonian Literary Museum, and the collections integrated into the EFA. They now formed two departments, namely Folkloristika osakond (the Department of Folkloristics) and Etnomusikoloogia osakond (the Department of Ethnomusicology, the latter was dissolved in 2014 due to lack of funding). Thus, it can be said that the cycle of restructuring initiated in the 1940s reached a certain conclusion at the turn of the twenty-first century, resulting in the stability of the discipline, but at the same time dependency on successful funding projects to continue both research and archival work.

Conclusions on Past and Present Uncertainties

It is understandable that the changes within the Estonian Folklore Archives cannot be treated in isolation from the changes in Estonian folkloristics in general, and that other folkloristic institutions in Estonia should not be left out of this period of uncertainty. Delving into the intricacies of each institution may end up blurring the picture, and further necessary discussion is left for future works to broaden the scope of the political, economic, and disciplinary changes of this turbulent era of the early 1990s.

The Estonian Folklore Archives of the Estonian Literary Museum are now only a few years away from their centenary. The transformations that occurred in the 1990s brought opportunities for the archive’s researchers to develop the discipline, themselves, and the archive, to (re)connect with the rest of the world, and of course brought a handful of new problems in the form of competitive funding and evolving digital humanities. The logical outcome in this fluctuating situation was the return of the archive to its original name and function as both an archive and a research department. As uncertain as the last twenty years of the twentieth century were disciplinarily, economically, and politically, the period of uncertainty was overcome by the best decisions available at the time, whatever the feelings of those involved in the decisions and outcomes. It is much easier, in the process of political restructuring, to wipe out a field that has much to offer the mind and the soul, but no tangible monetary gain, than to agree to keep humanities research going. It is therefore gratifying to note that, in comparison with other countries in the world, Estonian folkloristics, and its institutions—the Estonian Literary Museum with the Estonian Folklore Archives and the Department of Folkloristics, and the Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu—survived as a strong pillar of folkloristics for the country and for the rest of the world.

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Acknowledgements