Manker was born in Tjörn; his father was a sea captain and a farmer.[1] He earned his fil. kand. in 1924 from the University of Gothenburg with a major in ethnography. His first job was at the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm, where he studied African cultures and wrote Kristallbergens folk (1929).[1]
After travels in Sami districts in the 1920s, especially a trek in 1926, he focussed on Sami history.[1] When a Sami section was established at the Nordic Museum in 1939, he became its first director.[1][2][3][4] By then, he was already working on his major work on Sami drums, Die lappische Zaubertrommel (2 volumes, 1938 and 1950). He also wrote The nomadism of the Swedish mountain Lapps (1953), Lapparnas heliga ställen (1957), and Fångstgropar och stalotomter (1960). After his retirement in 1961, he published Kvarnarna på Tjörn och den uppländska skenkvarnen (1966) and a number of articles about Tjörn.[1]
^ abcEva Silvén, «Ernst Manker 1893–1972». In: Mats Hellspong & Fredrik Skott (ed.), Svenska etnologer och folklorister. Utgitt av Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien för svensk folkkultur, 2010 (pdfArchived 2014-12-05 at the Wayback Machine) (in Swedish).
^Uggla, Erik T:son (ed.): Ordenskalender 1963. Svenska innehavare av svenska och utenlændska riddarordnar samt vissa svenska medaljer, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1963, p. 224 (in Swedish).