Ilmar Talve is better known to Estonian readers as a writer and cultural historian, although for decades he was a professor of ethnology in Finland. His connection to Estonian ethnology has hitherto attracted little attention. Talve considered himself first and foremost an ethnologist, which he had studied at the University of Tartu during the war and in post-war Sweden. During those years, he was closely involved in domestic ethnology, and it is for this reason that I will concentrate on that period (circa 1938–1960) in my article.

The teaching of ethnology at the University of Tartu had only gained a firmer foundation in 1939, when Gustav Ränk started as professor. The outbreak of World War II and the subsequent occupations overshadowed the learning opportunities for the students of the time: intermittent studies, few opportunities to attend lectures, a high proportion of self-study, unexpected and rapidly approaching deadlines, and the constant uncertainty caused by all of this put their stamp on their studies. Talve was one of the few who managed to earn his master’s degree, already in 1942. Like his fellow students, starting from 1940 he worked at the Estonian National Museum, which was the centre of ethnological research in Estonia at the time.

Talve’s passion for scholarship manifested itself when he was still a student. He hoped to publish each of his student papers in the future. He did indeed rewrite most of his seminar papers for publication but under difficult war conditions, his plans never materialised. During his time in Tartu, he did not confine himself to a single ethnographic topic but already then took a very broad approach to the study of folk culture. Traditional areas of material folk culture, such as wagons, and the burning of coal and tar, were addressed. Alongside these, Talve delved into the possibilities for studying the social sphere of (folk) culture, a field that was innovative in ethnology and promised to modernise the local discipline in the long term, but the war put an end to this research. Talve’s grandiose plans to study Estonian social (folk) culture, which would have considerably broadened the field of research that had hitherto been established, unfortunately remained only a dream since he fled to Finland in the spring of 1943 to escape German mobilisation.

In 1945, Talve arrived in Sweden and was hired by the Institute of Folklife Studies, which was headed by the renowned ethnologist Sigurd Erixon. A number of his colleagues were already working there, including Gustav Ränk, Eerik Laid, and Helmut Hagar. He still desired to make a name for himself as a researcher, but the master’s degree he had earned in Tartu was not taken into account in his new country of residence. Talve’s goal was to pass the licentiate exam and write his doctoral thesis, but it took years to achieve these goals. Economic uncertainty and the standoffish attitude of the Swedish scholarly community delayed the fulfilment of his plans. However, he did manage to earn his doctorate in 1960 on the broad ethnographic topic of ‘The Sauna and the Drying House in Northern Europe’. Yet he did not succeed in forging a career in Sweden, but instead found work in Finland, where Talve moved as early as 1959. From 1962 to 1986, he was Professor of Ethnology at the University of Turku.

Becoming a refugee scholar meant the need to meet new expectations and inevitable adaptation to (academic) life in the host country. Yet it also meant a conscious contribution to the study of Estonian culture so that continuity would not be broken, and disciplines would continue. He still hoped in his first years in exile for his imminent return to his Estonian homeland and dreamed of continuing professional work in Tartu in his research field amidst the domestic archives and libraries. The younger generation of researchers took Swedish ethnology as a model, which they now had the opportunity to study more closely. Talve’s ideas, which he had developed in Tartu, of looking at the field of ethnology more broadly than as the mere study of material peasant culture were confirmed. Taking his cue from Erixon, he underlined the need to view ethnographic phenomena in their historical-social-economic and geographical contexts. In 1952, in order to ensure the continuity of the domestic disciplines and, at the same time, to develop them, Talve put forward his own research programme, but he and his colleagues were unable to begin their actual work. Like his wartime research plans, the ideas of the early exile era were to remain a sketch awaiting better times.