Folk Life Studies: Some problems and perspectives

Abstract

With the publication of our eighteenth volume of Folk Life we may be said to have come of age as a Society. We are, in fact, slightly older, having been established in September 1961. At our first full conference in 1962, our guest lecturer was Sigurd Erixon, Professor of Nordic and Comparative Ethnology in the University of Stockholm, who spoke on ‘Folklife research in our time from a Swedish point of view’. In choosing the doyen of Scandinavian ethnologists to address us on such an occasion, we acknowledged our very great debt to Swedish inspiration, not only in the field of folk life studies but also in our major types of institution in that field, namely the open-air museum and the folklore institute.