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Scientific Contacts within Ethnology and Folkloristics between Sweden and Estonia. Personal Experiences and Considerations

2015; Estonian Literary Museum Scholarly Press; Volume: 62; Linguagem: Inglês

10.7592/fejf2015.62.gustavsson

1406-0957

Anders Gustavsson,

Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies

In recent years, presentations of scholars' subjective experiences and reflections have been an object of increasing interest in Nordic ethnology and folkloristics (Hellspong & Skott 2010; Rogan & Eriksen 2013).In this survey I will present a self-reflective overview of my experiences with new research contacts that became possible beginning in 1991, after the Baltic States -Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania -had been in isolation for decades.Although after 1991 ethnological views in Sweden focused on all the three Baltic countries, the focus here will be on Estonia as ethnologists at Uppsala University had the most contacts with this country throughout the 1990s.I held a professorship at Uppsala University between 1987 and 1997.During my childhood and youth in western Sweden in the 1940s and 1950s, I did not hear much about the Baltic States.Sweden's deportation of 146 Balts to the USSR in 1946 was the most well-known episode and one that also proved tragic for Sweden (Ekholm 1984).In 1958, a farmer's family moved from the Kalmar district in eastern Sweden to the farm next to the one where I grew up in western Sweden.The farmer's wife told our family about her Swedish/ Estonian background and her former life in Estonia.When she was eleven years of age, she and her family experienced a dramatic escape by boat as refugees from the Estonian island of Ormsö (Vormsi) to Sweden.This was just after the second Soviet invasion of Estonia in 1944.In 1966, I began my studies of ethnology at the University of Lund.Among my first contacts at the Folklife Archives was an elderly librarian who was known as The Rector.He was said to have been a rector in Estonia before fleeing to Sweden.He was a conscientious person who kept a close eye on the students' loans of books (see Frykman 1988: 92).Other than that, I heard nothing about