Was folklore studies Finlandized? Changing scholarly trends in Finnish folklore studies in the Cold War

This paper examines the impact of the Cold War on Finnish folklore studies as an academic discipline. Drawing on the university curricula of folklore studies at the University of Helsinki, the article seeks to trace disciplinary shifts from 1943 to 1979. The era coincided with a period of Finlandization—that is, a political culture subservient to the Soviet Union. The research strategies that the leading folklorists took continued concentrating on ethno-historically important Finnish- or Swedish-speaking oral traditions. International orientation consisted of balancing between the East and West scholarship. Among the academics, Finlandization often meant simply ignoring topics that dealt with the USSR.