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 […]
All posts tagged: Africa
Summer equals festival season – but what should you wear if you don’t want to be caught dead in a ‘bøllehat’?
Summer is finally upon us! And as the days become longer and warmer it becomes important to take precautions when stepping outside in the harsh scorching sunlight. For years Danish authorities have been trying to get Danes to take care and seek shelter from the […]
All my bags are packed
At the museum, we are looking forward to the summer season. Guests from all over the world will visit us and our beautiful city, and we are more than ready to welcome them! Hopefully they will save a little space in their bags for nice […]
Where there’s tea there’s hope
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 […]
Egg hunting in the Ethnographic Collections
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 […]
Anything can be made with imagination and enough raffia
All right, can we talk about how awesome this home-made laptop is?! Made from the raffia, and collected in Gabon in 1998, it is wonderfully wacky with all its knobs, buttons, and dials, and shows such a tremendous amount of imagination. We do not know […]
Cheeky monkey: Coconut figure from Namibia
The curious little coconut monkey figure is a part of collection that Mogens Stryhn just handed over to Moesgaard Museum a few weeks ago. As such, it has entered the museum database as EA 909-127. The entire collection consists of 269 artefacts that Stryhn has […]
Capturing the Moment: The journey to the end of the world…
A very blue sky. Children having fun in sand dunes. Target practicing. Passing time. The photo was taken by a Danish explorer in the Kalahari Desert in the southern parts of Africa in 1947. Even now, the Kalahari Desert is in many ways on the […]
The Malagasy raffia cloth – A convergence of three historical trajectories
Guest blogger Anders Norge Lauridsen takes an unassuming raffia cloth from Madagascar as his point of departure, and tells a tale that spans 1600 years and half the globe. Join us as he shows us how objects can hold This elegant raffia cloth from Madagascar […]
Mohara: Material Spirits of the Sihanaka
In this guest blog, MA in Anthropology Anders Norge Lauridsen tells the fascinating story of how he procured a pair of mohara; sacred spirit amulets shrouded in mystery, for Moesgaard Museum. So read on, and travel with Anders to the Sihanaka of Madagascar: ”So, is […]
New Year Special: Zambian clay pot
“THE END IS NEAR” reads the text on this Zambian clay pot. Why this doomsday message? Because the pot was made in Zambia at the end of the year 1999, when the world was swept up into Y2K panic and fear that the year 2000 […]
Bird Mask – Chad
We know – it’s too late for Halloween inspiration! Nevertheless, this mask deserves some attention, not least because of the effort it must have taken to wear it. Made to resemble a bird’s head – more specifically the head of a large Ground Hornbil […]
ethnographica 