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 […]
All posts tagged: thoughtsonthings
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
ethnographica 