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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
I have this fantasy. It might seem a little odd, but it goes like this: I have made friends with someone who used to be famous and popular. Someone, who has stepped out of the spotlight. Perhaps because of age. Yes, he or she has […]
English playwright Arthur Wing Pinero said that ‘where there’s tea there’s hope’. In many societies, drinking tea is a social event; sometimes even a ritual; something to gather around, something that organises the day, a tradition, a cultural practice. And around the globe, tea is […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Ah, New Year’s Eve. A night of celebration with friends. Of looking back at the ups and downs of the past year, and with hope and good wishes for the year to come. It is also a night of good food, copious amounts of champagne, […]
This last month, we have had the pleasure of having Maria Grilo intern at the Ethnographic Department at Moesgaard Museum. Maria is a Portuguese journalist, who came to Denmark to attain an MA in International and Global History at Aarhus University. During her internship, she […]
Isn’t it wonderful, how some designs survive practically unchanged for thousands of years, across vast distances of time and space? I still remember the first time I saw the ‘Huldremose woman’, and Iron Age bog body, in the Danish National Museum. After approximately 2000 years […]
