Eerik Laid etnograafia ja arheoloogia piirimail

Archaeologist and ethnographer Eerik Laid (1904–1961) was from the first generation of Estonian scholars to leave his homeland and flee abroad in the turmoil of the Second World War. The article focuses on Laid while he was still in Estonia and his activity in his profession in as an ethnographer and archaeologist in the 1920s and 1930s. Back in his student days, in the early 1920s, he published comprehensive works on ancient Estonian hill forts, describing all of the fortresses known at that time. A paper originally written as a first-year seminar assignment later brought him a master’s degree in archaeology. In the midst of his studies, when he took ethnography courses at the university, he turned to the borderlands between archaeology and ethnology, studying the ethnographic and prehistoric brooches of the Mordvin people. He later defended a master’s degree thesis in ethnography on that topic. His student years proved the most prolific in terms of publications; he produced far less under a research grant since he travelled abroad frequently, developing close contacts with Finnish, Swedish and Russian colleagues. Laid applied his knowledge and experiences gained on these trips abroad in later positions. Goal-oriented and ambitious, he succeeded in making a mark in Estonian research and cultural history. He was one of the first ethnic Estonian archaeologists and ethnographers to teach Estonian and Finno-Ugric ethnography to university students. He was also the first Estonian heritage conservation inspector. Furthermore, he was one of the first Estonian ethnographers to rely on photography, not only for illustrative purposes, but as a scholarly, historical and documentary source. His contemporaries have port­rayed him as an outstanding researcher and advocate for the national idea. As the article writer delved through descriptions penned by Laid’s colleagues, newspaper articles from Laid’s era and archival materials, a number of questions came up – questions for which fully adequate answers may no longer be possible to find.