About us

The museum established in 1909 in Tartu was dedicated to the memory of our biggest antiquity collector Jakob Hurt, in order to preserve his legacy. It was named the Estonian National Museum. The founders saw the operational plan so inclusive that the new museum could have also been called the Estonian Museum (e.g. like the British Museum, the Russian Museum).
The main focus was laid on items of antiquity ("these mainly describe the manners of simple people", as was explained). At the time, just like in many other European countries, the priority was to preserve the vanishing peasant culture. A lot more was valued as well: items of cultural history ("which help to create a picture of the cultural development of our country") and ancient history ("stone, bronze and iron items found from the soil"), "old money bills, books and manuscripts, important papers regarding our country" (i.e. historical records).

A library, which would contain at least one copy of each Estonian book, also an art collection, which would contain "pictures, which contents is connected to our land... ", and photo archives were planned to be established. The ENM was supposed to become the most complete repository of Estonian culture.

Over time, other museums, archives, libraries were established and the ENM focused mostly on folk culture. Until World War II, the ENM contained Estonian cultural heritage from all fields, then written documents were separated from items and the independent Estonian Literary Museum was established. This is the way things are until today.

In the broader sense, the current ENM is a cultural history museum with a direction towards ethnology. Our goal is to reflect everyday life, culture as a way of life by considering its social, time and space diversity. The work consentrates of Estonian culture, which is complemented by other Finno-Ugric, especially the closer small Baltic-Finnic nations. The ENM has always been and will also be in the future one of the main ethnology centers in Estonia both in the field of research, as well as teaching. The ethnology field of study of the University of Tartu has been broadly based on the assets and people of the museum.  Connections with Western colleagues, which were restored a short while ago, have refreshed the museum. It has broadened our view regarding our work and created a conviction that ENM has a future.