Topographical Archive (ERM TA)
The collection was established in 1909 to preserve descriptions of collecting trips, or fieldwork, including diaries, travel notes, and reports. From the museum’s very first collecting trips, it was required that collectors of antiquities write a report or diary of their journey, recording the route of the trip, the objects obtained and not obtained, and general observations on local conditions, people, customs, clothing, buildings, nature, and more. This principle continues to be followed to the present day.
For the most part, the diaries were written by ERM staff, students, artists, and scholarship-supported collectors involved in fieldwork (for example, in the museum’s early years, well-known figures in Estonian cultural history such as Henrik Visnapuu, Gustav Matto, Julius Kuperjanov, Nikolai Triik, Jaan Koort, Hanno Kompus, August Pulst, Gustav Vilbaste, and others). Exceptionally, the archive also includes Karl Männiste’s diaries from 1917–1945, Leida and Peeter Reinumägi’s Siberian diary, and Arthur Sachker’s Mein Tagebuch. The collection also incorporates fieldwork diaries and notes from the ethnography department of the Institute of History.
The Topographical Archive is organized by parish. In addition to Estonia and Estonian language enclaves, it also contains fieldwork diaries from Finno-Ugric regions and Estonian communities abroad. In 2025, the collection comprised 1,132 archival units.
Ethnographic Archive (ERM EA)
The earliest descriptions date from 1920, and the archive brings together reference material collected in the course of fieldwork by museum staff and scholarship recipients (students of history and art) on a wide range of topics: clothing, buildings, home interiors, agriculture, animal husbandry, fishing, beekeeping, trade, handicrafts and handicraft techniques, customs, food, and more. Alongside ethnographic topics, contemporary life has also been documented, for example written material collected in Viljandi District in 1978–1982, Aravete in 1983–1986, the town of Jõgeva in 1987–1992, Kihelkonna in 2007, and Suure-Jaani in 2009. Memories related to Soviet repression and the 1944 flight from Estonia have also been collected.
The Ethnographic Archive contains material from all over Estonia, as well as from Estonian language enclaves in Latvia, the Estonian diaspora, and Finno-Ugric regions. The collection also includes reference material gathered by the ethnography department of the Institute of History. In 2025, the archive comprised 945 descriptions.
Archive of Correspondents’ Responses (ERM KV)
The museum’s largest archive contains contributions from the museum’s correspondents and schools: responses to questionnaires, competition entries, and other manuscripts on ethnographic and cultural-historical topics. Responses to the first questionnaires date from 1925. With the help of its correspondents, the museum has collected reference material for nearly 300 questionnaires. These questionnaires have been compiled mainly by ERM researchers according to their research topics. A list of numbered questionnaires is available on the ERM website.
A large part of the archive consists of competition entries on ethnographic, biographical, local history, and cultural-historical topics. The archive also includes short-term collecting campaigns (for example, Donate a Day of Your Life to the Museum and Let’s Do It: Work Bee Stories). There is abundant biographical memoir material, as well as information on buildings and home interiors, men’s and women’s handicrafts, clothing and folk costume, foodways, childrearing, transport, calendar and family customs, folk medicine, house marks, agriculture and flax growing, beekeeping, dairying, fishing and hunting, fairs and trade, shipbuilding, farm life, farm servants and communal work bees, local history, life in collective farms, workers and factory history, the lives of Estonians outside Estonia, historical events, deportation, escape from the homeland, and many other subjects.
2025. As of 2025, the collection contained 56,560 contributions gathered into 1,501 volumes.
Sanitary-Topographical Archive (ERM STA)
This archive contains materials from the nationwide public health “inventory” carried out by the Institute of Public Health between 1922 and 1930. These include descriptions of villages and farms, as well as comprehensive surveys of rural municipalities, small towns, and holiday resorts. Mostly written by doctors and senior medical students, these descriptions provide a varied picture of settlements, dwellings, people, and everyday life in the 1920s. The materials were used in a summarized and analytical way by Professor Aleksander Rammul in county-level public health surveys published between 1928 and 1938. The collection contains 370 archival units.
Collection of Ethnographic Drawings (ERM EJ)
The collection was established in 1921 and contains drawings of farm buildings, home interiors, clothing, textiles, and everyday objects, produced both by ERM artists and by artists and art students participating in expeditions. The oldest ethnographic drawings come from the collection of the Learned Estonian Society (F. S. Stern, Hupel).
About 75% of the drawings concern Estonian rural architecture: site plans, floor plans, elevations, sections, construction details, and structures, mainly drawn in the 1930s by architecture students and in the 1950s–1970s by students from the Tartu Art School and the Estonian State Art Institute. The drawings from Finno-Ugric regions are especially diverse in subject matter and were created by art students under the supervision of Kaljo Põllu and Kadri Viires. 2025. In 2025, the collection contained 23,772 drawings.
Archival Collection (ERM Ak)
The collection was established in 2004, and in 2025 it comprised 37 fonds with 8,218 archival units. The fonds in the Archival Collection have been formed from ERM materials, from record creators connected with other ERM collections, from coherent collections, and from archival materials gathered through fieldwork and correspondents’ writing competitions.
Examples include ERM construction projects (Ak 1), the architectural competition for ERM’s new building (Ak 3), the celebration of ERM’s 100th anniversary (Ak 11), the competition for the ERM 100 anniversary carpet (Ak 14), and the ERM art procurement idea competition (Ak 22).
Personal archives include the archives of ethnologists, scholars, and persons connected with ERM’s research topics, for example the ethnologists Gustav Ränk (Ak 5), Ants Viires (Ak 36), Aino Voolmaa (Ak 24), Ferdinand Linnus (Ak 44), and Elle Vunder (Ak 42); memory researcher Endel Tulving (Ak 32); archaeologist Marta Schmiedehelm (Ak 43); culinary figure Linda Pett (Ak 13); expatriate Estonian Hans Teetlaus (Ak 18); and a number of small personal archives containing individual documents.
Institutional archives are related to the transfer of complete collections to ERM or to collecting campaigns organized by those institutions, for example the Consulate General of the Republic of Estonia in New York (Ak 6), the Kommunaari Museum (Ak 17), the Tartu Photo Club (Ak 31), the archive of the ethnography department of the Institute of History (Ak 39), the drawings submitted to the presidential drawing competition The Good Things of Our Estonia (Ak 46), Memento memoirs of repression (Ak 35), the materials of the University of Tartu Centre for External Studies project The Role of Estonian Communities Abroad in the Restoration of Estonia’s Independence (Ak 10), and the essay competition 15 Years of Freedom organized by Kuku Radio and the newspaper Postimees (Ak 16).
Thematic archives include, for example, the Archive of Estonians Abroad (Ak 12), Letters from Afar (Ak 27), Elections, Political Parties (Ak 21), Anatoli Mitt’s collection of views of Tartu (Ak 26), the food-themed archival collection (Ak 40), the handicrafts-themed archival collection (Ak 41), and others.
Postcard Collection (ERM Pk)
Established in 2012, the collection contained 2,506 postcards in 2025. It is organized by fonds: postcards published by ERM’s picture publishing unit (Pk 1), greeting postcards for calendar holidays (Pk 2) and personal milestones (Pk 3), postcards sent from travels (Pk 6), Estonian diaspora postcards (Pk 4), ethnographic postcards such as those relating to folk costume (Pk 5), coherent collections relating to individuals or topics (Pk 7), and miscellaneous material (Pk 8).
Drawings of Museum Objects (ERM MJ)
This auxiliary collection contains drawings of objects from the Estonian National Museum, mainly of women’s handicrafts and folk costumes, but also of household utensils, means of transport, and other items. The collection originated from illustrations prepared for publications. Detailed drawings of folk costumes serve as valuable supporting material in consultations on folk costume.
ERM Official Archive (ERM ARH, earlier abbreviation ERMA)
The archive of ERM’s activities since 1909: minutes, directives, work plans, reports, correspondence, chronicle books, personnel files, and other documents containing staff records.