On the Life and Work of Academician Arvo Krikmann on His 70th Birthday

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The 70th birthday of Arvo Krikmann, Estonian academician, folklorist, paremiologist and scholar of humour, is a fine moment to offer the readers of Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore a bit more thorough overview of his life and activities. For me, personally, Krikmann has been the most important teacher in folklore studies and during university studies and later the supervisor of my master’s and doctor’s theses. Krikmann’s lectures have been the most systematic and condensed ones I have ever attended, his methods and way of thinking have been appealing, and his work Sissevaateid folkloori luhivormidesse. Pohimoisteid, žanrisuhteid, uldprobleeme (‘Introspections into Minor Forms of Folklore (IMFF), Vol. 1. Basic Concepts, Genre Relations, General Issues’) has been an important reference source for discovering the original truths hidden in the folklore archive collections. In the following I have presented a rather eclectic combination of his academic career and memoirs, composed of different sources starting from Krikmann’s patient replies to my questions (Krikmann’s words are featured in italics throughout the text) about the beginning of things all the way to the previous reports of birthdays and Krikmann’s curriculum vitae on the Estonian digital research portal. Arvo Krikmann was born on 21 July, 1939, in Pudivere village (or, more precisely, in Liinemoisa), Simuna parish, Viru County, Northeast Estonia. In the manor times there had been a typical long farm-hand house to the west of our apple-tree and berry orchard. My paternal grandfather Mihkel had lived there with his family, but when I lived there only small heaps were discernible through the turf at the place where a stove or oven and the foundation had once been. When the lands of Pudivere manor were allotted and my parents got married, my father had some local craftsmen construct new buildings – a barn, stables and byres, and the house. This was where Krikmann spent most of his