Arvo Krikmann (21 July 1939 – 27 February 2017) was an Estonian academician, folklorist, linguist, paremiologist, and humour researcher.
[1][2] He may be best known as a proverb scholar, “one of the leading paremiologists in the world.”[3] Krikman was born in Pudivere, Lääne-Viru County.
[4] He was part of the Tartu Paremiology Group, a group of scholar that did major work on not only Estonian proverbs, but cooperated on comparative work with other proverb scholars in the Balto-Finnic area, led by Matti Kuusi.
Also, he and Ingrid Sarv assembled the five-volume Estonian proverb collection ‘‘Eesti vanasõnad’’ (1980-1988).
[11] It was titled “Scala naturae: Symposium in honour of Arvo Krikmann’s 75th birthday” and was held at the Estonian Academy of Sciences in Tallinn.