Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Ferdinand Linnus (1895–1942) played a significant role in advancing Estonian ethnography in the 1930s. In the years 1929–1941 he was employed as director of the Estonian National Museum and taught in his speciality at the University of Tartu. In the article, I examine how he articulated the theoretical, methodological and practical underpinnings of the ethnographic discipline. I also inquire into how these starting points were expressed in his research. I will take a closer look at his participation in the international scientific community, allowing the local ethnography of that period to be placed in a broader academic context. At the end of the article, I will touch upon his activities in the first year of Soviet occupation – in spite of his initial collaboration with the occupying force, he was arrested immediately before the beginning of the Nazi occupation and was dead the next year. Linnus defined Estonian ethnography as a discipline describing and comparing the material folk culture of Estonia, thus building on the tradition started by Ilmari Manninen. This was important for delineating the boundaries of disciplines but also began to restrict research. In 1930, Linnus postulated the necessity of considering historical context and ongoing changes and called for the use of interdisciplinarity in research, in addition to purely ethnographic sources. He applied interdisciplinarity successfully in his research on apiculture and was the first Estonian to defend a doctorate on the topic. In publishing many overviews of the status of Estonian ethnography in foreign journals over the years, he positioned the local speciality on the academic map of Europe. Due to his participation at conferences, and particularly interactions with Swedish, German and Finnish researchers, Linnus was well-versed in discussions and developments taking place on the European ethnology front. His greatest influence can be considered to be the Swedish ethnologist Sigurd Erixon, who emphasized the need to consider the social and economic context when studying cultural phenomena. Linnus called for such an approach in Estonia as well. Similarly to his European counterparts, he stressed in articles that ethnography had both a pure-science and applied-science side and was thus very important on a societal level. His tenure as director of the National Museum presumably strengthened this view. In Estonian-language articles, he cited the role of ethnography in shaping and reinforcing modern nation-state society. In the field of museum science, Linnus emphasized the systematization of collections and databases, and compiling of a bibliography in the speciality to facilitate research. He spearheaded the creation of the national museum’s correspondents’ network, which would become an important channel for gathering ethnographic source material for decades to come. In teaching museology at university, he conveyed future museum staff the knowledge they would need regarding the basic principles of work at museums. Perhaps the leading expert of the museum field in Estonia, he took part in drafting the museum act in the 1930s and advocated for state regulation of the field. Linnus took active part in the reorganization of Estonian museums in 1940–1941, in line with orders from the Soviet regime. He may have been motivated by a desire to carry plans from the previous decade to fruition. It appears that he sensed a duty and responsibility to apply his knowledge in the interests of making optimum decisions. The communist regime did not succeed in completely Sovietizing the discipline in the first year of the occupation, although Linnus was presumably prepared to participate in its transformation.
Source: Eesti Rahva Muuseumi aastaraamat
Author: Marleen Metslaid
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4412764620