The tradition of hunting for eggs as a celebration of Easter is older than I thought. I had always assumed that hunting for eggs was another Anglo-American scheme to make more money on capitalising on holidays. The tradition goes back to 1700’s Netherlands, where children […]
When my son was 4 years old, he loved to dress in skirts. Reactions from the surroundings varied a lot: from the daycare assistant who laughed and said he was funny, to his great grandfather who exclaimed that skirts were for girls only. Not to […]
Ethnographic objects inspiring state-of-the-art green innovation? Indeed! Inspired by objects from our Sibirian collections, Moesgaard Museum launches an innovative and sustainable solution to an immense challenge for the planet, namely the excessive use of disposable diapers. Over the recent 30 years, disposable diapers have become […]
These days, a splash of colour has been added to the view from the railing around the central staircase at Moesgaard Museum. Looking down, our visitors will be met with the splendid colours and intricate details of a Buddhist sand mandala. During a week in […]
Sometimes these days, I feel like the world is a mess. We are fighting over ridiculous things, and not focusing enough on what matters. Pardon me for the Game of Thrones reference, but it feels like we are living through the War of the Five […]
I have always found the phenomenon of ‘the collector’ immensely fascinating. Perhaps because I am a bit of a collector myself… I have saved every cinema ticket since seeing The Waterboy in 1998, and am the proud owner of a splendid rock (actual rocks, not […]
Here is a truly curious pair of shoes. They are so-called khutaitchi shoes, made by a sorcerer or magician of the Central Australian Pitjantjara tribe. In traditional Aboriginal beliefs, there is no such thing as a natural death, which means that there is usually an […]
When most of us think of Kuwait, we might think of oil and deserts. But did you know that Kuwait used to boast of a thriving pearl diving business? Kuwait is situated on the Persian Golf, and for thousands of years, pearl divers have descended […]
A while ago, I stumbled upon something pretty awesome in our database. Something that says a lot about working at Moesgaard, ‘back in the days’. If you are a regular reader of this blog (or take a quick glance over the previous posts), you’ll see […]
The semsemeya is an instrument that looks slightly like a cross between a harp and a guitar to the unfamiliar eye. The instrument originally comes from Upper Egypt, where it used to be much larger. In fact, the semsemeya ‘evolved’ from the tambura, which shares […]
I do not think we have many artefacts in our collection, which can claim to have a whiff of royalty about them. The camel bag in the picture above is one of those few. It was given to Lieutenant Colonel Harold Richard Patrick Dickson by […]
In the autumn, we were doing an inventory of our storage facilities, double-checking the placements we have noted in our database with the physical placements of the artefacts on our shelves. And it came as no surprise that we found several funny or interesting artefacts […]
