Armas Otto Väisänen

Who was Armas Otto Väisänen?

Armas Otto Aapo Väisänen was an eminent Finnish scholar of folk music, an ethnographer and ethno-musicologist In the early twentieth century he documented by recording and photographing traditional Finnish and other Finno-Ugric peoples music and musicians. With a scholarship from the Finno-Ugrian Society Vaisanen traveled to Russia in 1914 to collect Finno Ugrian folk melodies. He made field trips to Mordovia, Ingria, Veps, Russian Karelia. His activities also marked the a new stage in the history of collecting Setu folk songs in Southern Estonia. After the first trip in 1912 he made 6 fieldtrips to Estonia between 1912–1923.

Armas Otto Väisänen's dissertation was presented in 1939 on ob-ugrian folk music in German: Untersuchungen über die Ob-ugrischen Melodien: eine vergleichende Studien nebst methodischer Einleitung.

Between 1926–1957 Väisänen hold the position of the head of the folk music department at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, Finland. He was the professor of musicology at University of Helsinki from 1956–1959.