 Estonian Swedish dialect – loanwords in Estonian, his doctoral thesis ("Hiiu murrete häälikud") treated the Hiiumaa dialect of Estonian language.From 1945 to 1946, Ariste was imprisoned by the Soviet authorities (for having been member of "Veljesto", a student association in independent Estonia)

Since 1927 Paul Ariste eagerly participated in activities of Estonian Folklore Archives, where he established collections of Jewish, Swedish and Romani folklore, and contributed a lot to collections of Finno-Baltic minorities and Old-Believers of Peipsi region.He was the head of the Finno-Ugrian Department at the University of Tartu and one of the two most instrumental personalities in reviving Soviet Finno-Ugrian studies.