Paper short abstract:

This paper concentrates on the political, financial, institutional, and disciplinary transition period of the 1980ies and 1990ies on the example of a folklore archive.

Paper long abstract:

At the heart of this presentation is the then folklore department of the Estonian State Literary Museum and its adaptation to a new course of action in a state that just regained its independence. The turn of the decades from the 1980ies to the 1990ies was strongly carried by the national spirit. The transition to independence brought its own problems, but also new opportunities. This meant changes in the directions and conditions on many levels, most prominently politically, but also institutionally, financially, technically, and in the research directions and the archival work. The back-drop of this, however, is the political change of the 1940ies, which in turn determined some of the actions taken five decades later. From the game of name-changing and substantive meaning of the literary museum and the Estonian Folklore Archives itself to the once again rising prominence of research in addition to archiving, what did this time of uncertainty and transformation give to a folklore archive? What was left behind and what was introduced to advance the discipline and the preserving of folkloristic data?