author
Albert Hämäläinen
1881–1949
An ethnologist and folklorist who documented Finno-Ugric peoples before the Soviet era changed access to many of those communities, he later turned his attention to central Finnish buildings, folk culture, and even traditional seal hunting. His work preserves details of everyday life that might otherwise have vanished from record.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in 1881 and remembered as part of the last Finnish generation of researchers able to gather material among Russia’s Finno-Ugric peoples before the founding of the Soviet Union, Albert Hämäläinen built his reputation through careful field-based ethnographic work. He is associated with studies of courtship and wedding customs as well as broader questions of folk belief and material culture.
Later in his career, his research focused more strongly on the building traditions and folk culture of Central Finland. Bibliographic records also show him publishing on the Forest Finns of central Scandinavia and on Finnish communities in that region, reflecting a wide interest in settlement, housing, and cultural history.
Hämäläinen died in 1949. His writing remains valuable for readers interested in folklore, ethnology, and the lived traditions of Finno-Ugric and Finnish communities.