Arkisto Kansatiede Paulaharju

Ethnological materials

Customers can view ethnological oral history materials and manuscripts at customer facilities of the ethnological collections after receiving permission to use the aforementioned materials. These visits must be agreed upon two weeks in advance. The use of ethnological materials is for the most part subject to permission for data protection reasons.

The application form for the use of materials.

Possible copying or scanning of documents must be agreed upon separately with the personnel. The use of materials is regulated by the provisions of the Act on the Openness of Government Activities, the Copyright Act and the Personal Data Act.

The main body of the ethnological materials is formed by oral history materials produced and collected by our organisation across Finland. The focus has been on material folk culture, particularly in the countryside, and later on documenting phenomena from recent history and today.

The archives include responses to ethnological surveys from 1956 onwards. The survey responses are organised by subject and further by municipality under each subject.

The ethnological manuscripts include a variety of reports, fieldwork materials, collections by student unions, ethnological theses, responses to surveys conducted from 1900 to 1945, materials pertaining to Finno-Ugric peoples and fieldwork materials related to working-class culture, among other things.

Materials received after 1957 are grouped as follows:

  • Travels in the home region, official journeys and memoirs
  • Regional and national collections
  • Theses
  • Collections by the Sami, Baltic Finns and other Finno-Ugric peoples

Ethnological manuscripts are catalogued in the Database of research reports on the cultural environment. With regard to ethnology, only a few individual reports have been digitised.