Meet Professor in Anthropology at Aarhus University, Lotte Meinert! Our intern Iana Lukina has interviewed Lotte about the collections she made during her numerous fieldworks in Northern Uganda. Iana: How did you become a collector? Lotte: The first question, I think, is: ‘Am I a […]
Small but Courageous: The Chanter’s Drum
People on Sumba depend on the goodwill of the ancestors and in the Zaizo ritual, the requests of the living flow through the music and ultimately reach the ancestor spirits. As I wrote in the last post about gongs, Zaizo rituals related to the ancestors […]
Keeping track of time – calendars in the collections (New Year’s special)
After a long month of December with candles, presents, carols and plenty of traditional food, we have passed Christmas and New Year’s Eve. In many places around the world, New Year’s Eve marks the end of one year and the beginning of a new and […]
A time for giving
Christmas is upon us and for a lot of people it means a great exchange of gifts. In the Ethnographic Collections at MoMu there is an abundance of objects that have been given as gifts over the years. Some have been given as parting gifts to […]
Talking Gongs and Aching Buttocks
The first, middle and last rule of thumb in ethnographic fieldwork is that you gotta spend time with your informants to get to know them. Sounds easy enough. Do a bit of “deep hanging out”, participate in stuff and go write about it. Well, in […]
Repost: Beware the angry elf!
It is continually important to warn about angry elves; thus we hereby bring a repost of the Nisse-post from December 2018. Who says Christmas has to be this happy time, where everybody revels in candles, presents, and family comfort, and where you might meet a […]
Meet the curator: Mikael Gravers
In the Ethnographic Collections at Moesgaard Museum, we have a big collection of artefacts and photographs from Thailand: EA212. It was curated by Associate Professor Emeritus at Aarhus University, Mikael Gravers, during an ethnographic fieldwork that took place from October 1970 to July 1972 in […]
Chasing the Csodaszarvas
When I came across this beautiful ceramic decoration in the museum‘s Ethnographic Collections, I mistakenly thought it was a Christmas decoration – something that would help me write a relevant contribution to the blog seeing as Christmas is very much upon us. A seemingly flying reindeer […]
Additions to EA748 Wodaabe, Niger
As you might have seen on Instagram, we were recently handed over a number of beautiful calabashes and lids by Mette Bovin as an addition to her overwhelmingly rich collection from Wodaabe, EA748. Today we invite you to enjoy the beauty of the calabash carvings […]
Video Diary from Sumba Island
In September, anthropologist Victor Krusell went to Sumba Island, Indonesia, to collect objects for our Ethnographic Collections at Moesgaard Museum. In the video below, you can follow his and the objects’ journey – and in the bottom, we have showcased two central objects, that now […]
EA900-0031 Claydoll
In the beginning of October our last blog post presented a pair of fluorescent green foam shoes from Tanzania. Through a conversation with curator Thea Skaanes*, the reader was invited to ponder the importance of shoes in both every day and ritual life. Today, we […]
‘These shoes aren’t made for walking’ – a conversation with curator Thea Skaanes
The main-characters of this week’s story are these two fluorescent green plastic sandals from Tanzania. After stumbling upon these on the ethnographic collections’ database, I had a chat with anthropologist and curator at Moesgaard Museum, Thea Skaanes, who collected the shoes during her fieldwork among […]
