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 […]
All posts filed under: Europe
A collection of treasures and stories: Randi Dæhnfeldt’s collection
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 […]
Beware the angry elf!
Who says Christmas has to be this happy time, where everybody revels in candles, presents, and family comfort, and where you might meet a jolly Father Christmas accompanied by a helpful elf in every department store and kindergarten across the land. Looking at the little […]
The night is dark and full of terror: Santa Lucia special
This week, we are diverting from our usual format. Instead of looking at an artefact in our collections, we are looking at a creature, which has been roaming the corridors and exhibitions of Moesgaard these past three Saturdays. But beware, the night is dark and […]
A timeless design: Qatari bracteate
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 […]
The four winds hat
Take a look at this colourful specimen of a hat. It’s quite something, isn’t it? It is tall, colourful, and quite unlike any other hat I have ever seen. It was collected in 1963 among the Sámi population of Kautokeino, Norway. The Sámi are an […]
Post card from Lyon: Behind the scenes of a museum loan
Last week, I told you how two of our artefacts, a gandao and a gundurik from Kalash, made the journey to Musée des Confluences in Lyon. Today, I thought I would give you a bit of a ‘behind the scenes’ view of what such a […]
The price of a normal life: Rubber dinghy
“The boat we sailed in was smaller than this”, she says. I am standing in the new special exhibition ‘After the Escape – Syrian lives on Samsø’ about an hour before it is to open, and I am talking to an 8 year-old girl. We […]
Bringing Syria to Denmark: Brass tea pot
Mohammed has always been a strong man. A caring father and a hard worker, who loves to cook for his family. When Syria descended into war, he and his family decided that it was not safe to remain any longer. Mohammed went ahead and journeyed […]
Can a garden gate be the symbol of a subculture?
This week, we have invited one of the anthropology students who have created the special exhibition ‘In motion: A different take on nomads’ to write a blog about the exhibition. Last week, you could read about fieldwork. This week, Simone Hasse Stavnsbo writes about fieldwork […]
Field-what kind of work?
The next two weeks, we have invited some of the anthropology students who have created the special exhibition ‘In Motion: A different take on nomads’ to write a blog about their exhibition. This week, Pernille Bertram-Larsen writes about fieldwork and about her group’s exhibition ‘Nomads […]
Free the feet! Swiss wooden sandals
A major Danish newspaper recently released a dress code, warning their employees not to get overly casual in order to survive the unusually warm May, we’ve had. No shorts or tank tops, no dresses above the knee. To us, sun-unaccustomed Danes, who complain when it […]
