Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as tales, myths, legends, proverbs, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also includes material culture, such as traditional building styles common to the group. Folklore also encompasses customary lore, taking actions for folk beliefs, and the forms and rituals of celebrations such as Christmas, weddings, folk dances, and initiation rites.
Folklore studies is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves. It became established as a field across both Europe and North America, coordinating with Volkskunde (German), folkeminner (Norwegian), and folkminnen (Swedish), among others.
Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald was an Estonian writer who is considered to be the father of the national literature for the country. He is the author of Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg.
The Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index is a catalogue of folktale types used in folklore studies. The ATU Index is the product of a series of revisions and expansions by an international group of scholars: originally composed in German by Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne (1910), the index was translated into English, revised, and expanded by American folklorist Stith Thompson, and later further revised and expanded by German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther (2004). The ATU Index, along with Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1932)—with which it is used in tandem—is an essential tool for folklorists.
Võru is a town and a municipality in south-eastern Estonia. It is the capital of Võru County and the centre of Võru Parish.
Juan Bautista Rael was an American ethnographer, linguist, and folklorist who was a pioneer in the study of the people, stories, and language of Northern New Mexico and southern Colorado in the Southwestern United States. Rael was a professor at Stanford University. He donated his considerable collection of ethnographic materials to the Library of Congress.
Estophilia refers to the ideas and activities of people not of Estonian descent who are sympathetic to, or interested in, Estonian language, Estonian literature or Estonian culture, the history of Estonia, and Estonia in general. Such people are known as Estophiles.
Estonian literature is literature written in the Estonian language The domination of Estonia after the Northern Crusades, from the 13th century to 1918 by Germany, Sweden, and Russia resulted in few early written literary works in the Estonian language. The oldest records of written Estonian date from the 13th century. Originates Livoniae in Chronicle of Henry of Livonia contains Estonian place names, words and fragments of sentences. The Liber Census Daniae (1241) contains Estonian place and family names. The earliest extant samples of connected Estonian are the so-called Kullamaa prayers dating from 1524 and 1528. The first known printed book is a bilingual German-Estonian translation of the Lutheran catechism by S.Wanradt and J. Koell (1535). For the use of priests an Estonian grammar was printed in German in 1637. The New Testament was translated into southern Estonian in 1686. The two dialects were united by Anton Thor Helle in a form based on northern Estonian. Writings in Estonian became more significant in the 19th century during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840).
Founded in 1938, the Estonian Academy of Sciences is Estonia's national academy of science in Tallinn. As with other national academies, it is an independent group of well-known scientists whose stated aim is to promote research and development, encourage international scientific cooperation, and disseminate knowledge to the public. As of March 2017, it had 77 full members and 20 foreign members. Since 15 October 2014, the president of the Academy is the mathematician Tarmo Soomere.
The National Library of Estonia is a national public institution in Estonia, which operates pursuant to the National Library of Estonia Act. It was established as the parliamentary library of Estonia on December 21, 1918.
The Monumenta Estoniae Antiquae is an academic publication series of Estonian folklore, including folksongs in trochaic verse form (regilaul), legends, proverbs, riddles and folk tales.
The Estonian National Museum founded 1909 in Tartu is a museum devoted to folklorist Jakob Hurt's heritage, to Estonian ethnography and folk art. The first items for the museum were originally collected in the latter part of the 19th century.
Arvo Krikmann was an Estonian academician, folklorist, linguist, paremiologist, and humour researcher. He may be best known as a proverb scholar, “one of the leading paremiologists in the world.”
The Estonian Museum of Natural History is the Estonian national museum for natural history. It is situated in Tallinn's Old Town.
Jean Baptiste Holzmayer or Johann Baptist Holzmayer was a Baltic German teacher, archaeologist and folklorist who worked on Saaremaa. He carried out excavations on locations of the ancient forts and stone graves, and gathered material about local religious customs and folklore. Holzmayer was also one of the founders of the local research society, and led the volunteer firefighter society.
The corpus of traditional riddles from the Finnic-speaking world is fairly unitary, though eastern Finnish-speaking regions show particular influence of Russian Orthodox Christianity and Slavonic riddle culture. The Finnish for 'riddle' is arvoitus, related to the verb arvata and arpa.
The Estonian Folklore Archives (EFA) is the central folklore archives in Estonia. The Archives functions currently as the subdivision of the Estonian Literary Museum but it was established in 1927 as the division of the Estonian National Museum. The current Head of the Archives is Dr. Risto Järv.
Anna Bērzkalne was a Latvian teacher and folklorist who founded the Archives of Latvian Folklore in 1924 and headed the organization for its first five years. Her analysis of Latvian folk ballads was awarded the Krišjānis Barons Prize in 1933. She was the first Latvian to earn a degree in Folkloric Studies and is recognized as one of the central figures in developing folkloric study as an academic discipline in Latvia.
Anu Korb is an Estonian folklorist.
Aado Lintrop is an Estonian poet, religious researcher and folklorist.
