Paper Short Abstract:

This paper explores the corporeal and sensory dimensions of fieldwork by analyzing ethnologists' fieldwork diaries preserved in the archives of the Estonian National Museum.

Paper Abstract:

This paper explores fieldwork as an emotional, corporeal and sensory experience through the example of Estonian ethnologists’ field diaries. From the 1960s to the 1990s, the Estonian National Museum organized numerous field expeditions to the Finno-Ugric peoples of the Soviet Union. The primary aim of these trips was to collect objects of material heritage. The field diaries provide fascinating documentation of the daily life during these expeditions, offering comments and impressions deemed irrelevant or unsuitable for inclusion in the ‘official’ ethnographic accounts. Thus, the diaries serve as a unique source for studying the ethnographic collecting and research process, highlighting the fact that ethnographers did not operate in the field as neutral instruments. This presentation focuses on how fieldwork as both an emotional and bodily experience is reflected in the diaries. I am also interested in tracing the locals’ reactions to Estonian ethnologists as distinct bodily beings, and how physical appearance and bodily practices can both create proximities and establish distances in the field encounter.