Estonian Folklore Archives

The Estonian Folklore Archives was established as the central folklore archives of Estonia in 1927.1 The original collections of the archives were built upon manuscript reports and accounts of Estonian folklore, consisting of over 115,000 pages of material contributed primarily by the noted Estonian folklore collector Jakob Hurt (1939-1907) and his more than 1,400 informants in the late nineteenth century. Today the Estonian Folklore Archives holds nearly 1.5 million manuscript pages as well as a collection of photographs, videos, and audio recordings. After the death of Jakob Hurt in 1906, the tomes of manuscripts collected and systematized by him were transferred to the repository of the Finnish Literature Society (Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura) in Finland. One reason for the move was the lack of appropriate preservation conditions for such valuable material in Estonia; another was the Finnish folklore researcher Kaarle Krohn’s long-term interest in the materials. Following this transfer, a large-scale copying of Hurt’s collections was initiated in Finland (see further Järvinen 2008:57-58). Negotiations about the return of the collections were started in 1924 with an aim of establishing folklore archives in Estonia. Folklorist Oskar Loorits (1900-1961) was largely the brain behind the idea, and he was assigned the task of managing the retransfer of the collections