Gustav Ränk

Gustav Ränk (born 5 ^{. Jul} / 18th February  1902 ^greg. In the hamlet of the village Orga Nõmme on Saaremaa , Russian Empire , † 5 April 1998 in Stockholm , Sweden ) was an Estonian anthropologist , who over 50 years of his life in Sweden worked and lived.

Life

Ränk was born into a poor family of small farmers. Due to the difficult economic situation of his family, his schooling took longer than that of other peers. He was only able to enroll at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Tartu (German: Dorpat ) in 1925 and had to work as a primary school teacher in villages in the area of Tartu during his studies and study there until 1930. In 1931 he passed the master’s examination, in 1938 he received his doctorate .

Scientific work

As a student, Ränk became interested in ethnology when he found a dugout canoe at one of the tributaries of the Emajõgi and got a job at the Estonian National Museum . During these years his first publications were made. After graduating from university, he completed his theses for Mag. Phil. With a topic on fishing on Lake Peipus . In the following years he dealt with the Peko cult among the Setu in southeast Estonia.

In addition to his work at the Estonian National Museum, Ränk was able to study for half a year at the University of Helsinki and through trips to the Scandinavian countries , Finland , Latvia , Lithuania and Germany familiarized himself with the state of research there and the ethnographic museums. His dissertation was based on his intensive studies of house building on his home island Saaremaa between 1935 and 1938.

Ränk had been a lecturer at the University of Tartu since 1934, where he became the first Estonian professor of ethnology. In the years of the Second World War he was able to continue teaching in Tartu under difficult circumstances, as the country was occupied by German troops. In 1942 and 1943 he researched the Woten in Ingermanland , a Finnish-Baltic tribe whose culture and language were endangered in the 1940s due to foreign infiltration by the Russian majority. This danger still exists, among other things due to the further expansion of the port in Ust-Luga on the Gulf of Finland .

In 1944, Ränk and other scientists organized the evacuation and hiding of the collections of the Estonian National Museum and the university before he and his family fled to Sweden by ship in October 1944. The main building of the National Museum was destroyed in a fire due to war events.

Ränk continued to work as a researcher in Sweden from 1944 and as a lecturer from 1955 to 1969 at Stockholm University . Even after his retirement, Ränk published several books on topics of ethnology in addition to many scientific articles.

Honor

• Member of the Student Estonian Association (1980)
• Honorary doctorate from the University of Tartu (1990)
• Order of the State Coat of Arms IV Class (1998)

Publications (selection)

• 1934: Materiaale Peko. (Materials on Peko)
• 1934: PhD thesis: Peipsi kalastusest. (The fishing on Lake Peipus), Õpedtatud Eesti Selts, Tartu
• 1935: Vana-Eesti rahvakutuur. (Old Estonian Folk Culture), Series: Elav Teadus (Living Science)
• 1938: Eesti nootkonddadest. (From the train network communities in Estonia), Eesti Kalandus, 1937 No. 11–12, Kalanduskoda, Tallinn
• 1939: Rahvuslik kultuur väikerahva volemise alusena. (National Culture as the Basic Principle Underlying the Existence of Smaller Nations); Müüt ja ajalugu, ERK no. 5, pp. 30-36.
• 1939: Saarema taluehitised: Etnografiline uurimus. with a German lecture: The popular buildings on Saarema; Öpetatud Eesti Selts, Tartu
• 1949: The sacred back corner in the domestic cult of the peoples of Northeast Europe and North Asia. for the Folklore Fellows (FF); Helsinki, Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia No. 137,
• 1949 and 1951: The system of room division in the dwellings of the northern Eurasian peoples. Institutet for folkslivsforskning, Stockholm
• 1960: Vatjalaiset. (With a summary in German: Über die Woten in Ingermanland), Helsinki, Soumalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura (Finnish Literature Society)
• 1962: The forms of farmhouses in the Baltic region. Marburger Ostforschungen, Volume 17; Holzner, Würzburg
• 1966: Från mjolk till ost: Drag ur den äldre mjölkhushållningen. with a German summary (From milk to cheese ..); Nordiska Museet , Stockholm, Nordiska Museets handlingar, 66.
• 1968: in the Handbuch der Kulturgeschichte, Section 2, Cultures of the Peoples, The Cultures of the Eurasian Peoples: Peoples and Cultures of Northern Eurasia. with references, Wiesbaden, Academic Publishing Society Athenaion
• 1969: Fermented milk and cheese among the shepherds of Asia. Helsinki, Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura
• 1971: The older Baltic manors in Estonia: a study of the history of architecture. AB Lundquistka Bokhandeln, Uppsala
• 1973: in: The Culture of Finland: Peoples and Cultures of Northern Europe. Special edition: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, Frankfurt am Main, ISBN 3-7997-0130-3 .
• 1981: The Mystical Ruto in Sami Mythology: A Religious Ethnological Study. Stockholm studies in comparative religion; 21, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Almqvist and Wiksell, Stockholm, ISBN 91-22-00411-4 .

literature

• Ants Viires: Gustav Ränk: An Academic Biography. In: Kristin Kuutma, Tiiu Jaago: Studies in Estonian Folkloristics and Ethnology. A Reader and Reflexive History. Tartu University Press, Tartu 2004, ISBN 9949-11-110-2 .