Vad gjorde Otto Andersson på Orkneyöarna? Eller Otto Andersson som folklorist

Abstract

What Otto Andersson did in the Orkney Islands

Otto Andersson (1879–1969) was one of the greatest Swedish Finn collectors of folk music and folk songs during the first half of the 20th century. During his time as an active folklorist, field work was hardly considered an act of creating scholarly material. Today, collectors are very well aware of their varying roles in the cooperation with their interviewees and the fact that their impact on the interview is remarkable. Therefore, they are requested to leave information about the context and to be reflective. The main objective of this article is to discuss to what extent Andersson was ahead of his time and aware of the context of his folklore items, and to what extent he was reflective about his field work practice.