The State, the Museum and the Ethnographer in Constructing National Heritage: Defining Estonian National Costumes in the 1930s

In this article I attempt to analyse the way in which the Estonian national costume, as heritage, was defined through the cooperation of the state, the museum and ethnographers in the 1930s. The nationalist state wished to strengthen the national identity of Estonia. The Estonian National Museum (ENM) as a repository of memory and knowledge availed its resources to support cultural propaganda. The ethnographer Helmi Kurrik, a woman of strong will and keen interest in folk textiles, managed to fulfil her obligation at the expense of her own health. The primary result of her labours was a handbook entitled Eesti rahvarõivad (Estonian Folk Costumes) (1938) which has influenced general knowledge of folk costumes in Estonia up to the present day – the ‘right’ national costumes are believed to derive from authentic ethnographical folk costumes held in the Estonian National Museum

On Creating a Realm of Memory: The First Permanent Exhibition of Estonian Folk Culture in The Estonian National Museum

In this article I deal with the first extensive and comprehensive permanent exhibition of Estonian folk culture, opened in the Estonian National Museum (ENM) in 1927. l argue that this exhibition is a realm of memory in the so-called Estonian tradition on the wider scale and, more narrowly, for the ethnographers who worked and still work in ENM. ln the article l analyse how and what kind of a space was created in the museum in 1927 for the purpose of remembering Estonian folk culture. This means that l place the emphasis on the starting process of creating a realm of memory