Soome-ugri usuelu eesti etnograafide pilgu läbi

Finno-Ugric religious life through the eyes of Estonian ethnographers From the 1960s to the 1990s, the Estonian National Museum organized numerous field expeditions to other Finno-Ugric peoples within the Soviet Union. The primary aim of these trips was to collect objects of material heritage. During the expeditions, ethnographers produced photographs, drawings, and occasionally video recordings, as well as written ethnographic descriptions and field diaries. These materials provide valuable insights into the lives of Finno-Ugric peoples during this period. They also enable us to better understand Estonian ethnographers’ perspectives on their smaller kindred peoples, including their motivations for collecting, as well as the similarities and differences they perceived between themselves and the locals. One interesting topic that ethnographers occasionally address concerns local spiritual and religious practices and beliefs. Most of the peoples visited by the ethnographers had religious backgrounds – either Russian Orthodox or traditional animist – that differed from those of most Estonians. Another layer was added by the officially atheist Soviet framework. In this paper, I examine the fragmentary references to religion found in the ethnographers’ accounts, focusing on the contexts in which these comments appear and on how the researchers’ positionality is reflected in their observations.