Collections of the Archives of the School of History, Culture and Arts Studies

The collection of Folkloristics and Study of Religion, which was founded in 1964, includes research material on religious traditions and folklore for example from Ingria and India, the ethnomedicine of the Peruvian Amazon, and the laments of the Baltic Finns. The audio recordings collection of Sami folklore is the most extensive audio collection on the subject in the world.

Due to the fieldwork-oriented production of research data, the majority of students and researchers in Folkloristics and Study of Religion frequently utilize and add to the collection. For example, students and researchers have produced and archived ethnographic research material on religious groups in the Turku area since early 1970s.

The collection includes textual material such as manuscripts, transcriptions of interviews and field notes; audio recorded material such as tapes and c-cassettes; and visual material such as videotapes and photographs.

The Talvadas / Dálvadas collection of the Sámi folklore research project is the world’s most extensive collection of recordings related to Sami cultural heritage and traditional knowledge. The project lasted from 1967 to 1975, and it was led by Lauri Honko, professor of Folkloristics and the Study of Religion at the University of Turku, in collaboration with Juha Pentikäinen, who was later appointed Professor of the Study of Religion at the University of Helsinki. The collection is archived in its entirety in the University of Turku’s current Archives of the School of History, Culture and Arts Studies (SHCAS Archives). The SHCAS archive is a research archive, and its material can be used for the purposes of research, museum operations and education. The restriction also applies to the Talvadas collection, but family members, descendants and relatives have the right to peruse images and interviews featuring their ancestors and relatives.

The oral history preserved with the interviews spans a significant amount of time, starting from deep in the 1800s, covering subjects such as the local environment and nature, livelihoods, family relations, and local and belief traditions. The material includes several different dialects of Sámi languages, some of which are already extinct. The project contributed to the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore guidelines published by UNESCO in 1989, and Lauri Honko had a key role in drafting the guidelines. The research project was based on a new kind of fieldwork methodology that prioritised the processes by which traditions were passed on and used in a single village, and what their significance in the village was. The in-depth research was pioneering even on an international scale. The practice of recording the interviews onto tape reels and systematically archiving them for later use was also new. The subject selected for the in-depth research project was Talvadas (Dálvadas), a village by the Tenojoki river. In addition to Talvadas, interviews were also conducted in other villages in the Tenonlaakso region, such as Aittijoki (Áitejohka) and Nuvvus (Nuvvos) in Finland, Porta (Barta) in Norway, and other locations in Lapland. A new generation of researchers continued the fieldwork in Talvadas and the neighbouring villages in the 1990s and 2000s.

The Talvadas collection includes approximately 1,200 hours of interview material, approximately half of which is in Sámi languages. It includes approximately 700 photographs and approximately 900 slide film photographs. It also includes approximately 5 hours of video material. In addition to the tape minutes, transcriptions and translations, the collection also includes a comprehensive and diverse set of manuscript material, maps, fieldwork diaries, index files and matrices. When work on the digitisation of the archive’s material was started in 2000, the Talvadas collection was the first set of material to be digitised. In 2020, the Talvadas collection was selected as the University of Turku’s first set of material to be stored in the Fairdata PAS service for long-term storage.

The interview material produced by the project has been used in dozens of theses and other scientific research projects in a variety of fields such as folklore studies, religious studies, ethnomusicology and study of Sámi languages. In addition to this scientific value, the collection has great symbolic value for the Sámi community. The collection was added to the Unesco World Memory National Register in 2024 with the support of the Sámi Parliament:

• https://maailmanmuisti.fi/en/resource/talvadas-dalvadas-collection/
• https://maailmanmuisti.fi/sv/objekt/talvadas-dalvadas-samling/
• https://maailmanmuisti.fi/sme/objeakta/talvadas-dalvadas/

Further information: hktl-arkisto(at)utu.fi tai Terhi Kivistö, termaki@utu.fi +358 29 450 2550 /+358 50 304 3435

The collection of Ethnology consists of materials collected since the early 1950s. The collection includes survey responses mostly from the 1950s-1970s, photographs, drawings, manuscripts, microfilms, and theses. The surveys have brought in about 400 000 pages of responses. For example, 1400 respondents took part in the survey “How I was taught to take a sauna bath”.

The collection offers research material on subjects such as Finnish industry, village folk culture, construction and settlement culture, livelihoods, and custom culture. The collection of Ethnology also includes material from Nuoperi project, which collects and preserves material concerning Finnish youth work.

The collection of Museology hosts materials on cultural environment and cultural heritage as well as activities of museums, museum exhibitions. The collection includes drawings, photographs, reports and transcribed interviews. The collection was established in 2003.

The collection of Finnish History consists of microfilmed materials and published original materials. The microfilms contain various central, county, and local government documents, ledgers, and numerous private archives of different eras, compiled mostly from the collections of the National Archives, Swedish Riksarkivet and Krigsarkivet. Published original materials include rich collections of law and decrees from the 17th to the 20th century. Kinship Wars material contains oral history collected from 1967 to 1970 concerning the Kinship Wars of 1918-1922.

The collection of European and World History has been accumulated over the years, especially on the themes of the departments focus areas: migration history, Baltic district history and tourism history. In addition to these, materials can be found on, for example, World War II and World Exhibitions. The materials consist of letters, records, photographs, printed literature, and annual reports of newspapers and magazines. A sizeable portion of the materials is in microfilms.

The collection of Finnish Literature includes author interviews conducted by the department from the 1960s to the 1990s, correspondence and photographs.

Collection of Cultural History is the most recent collection of the Archives, and it includes a private archive of a Finnish author and poet Aarni Kouta.