Abstract
Inspired by Barbro Klein’s research on silences and exclusions in the Swedish folklife sphere, this article explores how diversity is handled at the new Estonian National Museum, which opened in 2016. While its permanent exhibition Encounters makes the bold claim of representing the Estonian territory and its inhabitants from the Stone Age to the present day, a closer look at its contents and design suggests that it does so by repeating, sometimes inadvertently, broader societal silences and stereotypes surrounding ethnic minorities past and present and by sustaining essentialist notions of ethnocultural discreteness. Preference is given to historical minorities already included in the Estonian folklife sphere. 
Highlights
OPEN ACCESSBarbro Klein’s Inspiring Scrutiny of the Folklife Sphere “If people live in a new country and become citizens of it, should they not be included in its public institutions? It seems to me that inclusions and invitations into the public sphere must take priority over exclusions and silences”, reasoned Barbro Klein in 2006 (2006: 72)
The making of the new Estonian permanent exhibition began in 2008 and over 40 curators are said to have contributed to this process, including ethnologists and folklorists, and specialists in archaeology, history, cultural communication, semiotics, geography and many other fields
The cataclysmic Russian Revolution of 1905, significant from the point of view of the Estonian national movement, is discussed in the form of three staged films that are based on the memories of three contemporaries affected by the upheaval: an educated urban Estonian woman who participated in Tallinn in the historic mass demonstration that turned to bloodshed, a Baltic German baron whose estate was looted by peasants and workers, and an Estonian manor servant, who witnessed the violence committed by the squad sent to the countryside to punish the rebels
Summary
Barbro Klein’s Inspiring Scrutiny of the Folklife Sphere “If people live in a new country and become citizens of it, should they not be included in its public institutions? It seems to me that inclusions and invitations into the public sphere must take priority over exclusions and silences”, reasoned Barbro Klein in 2006 (2006: 72). Writing against the backdrop of the rapid diversification of Swedish demographics and the government’s awakening to “the fact that the country is ‘multicultural’” (Klein 2000: 5), Klein emphasised the importance of historical reflection for understanding contemporary relationships between the folklife sphere, museum politics, heritage making and cultural diversity. She was resolute in her discussion of customs, stories, songs and other vernacular expressive forms as “special resources” for migrants when debating “who they are in relation to others” (Klein 2001: 79).
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