Search results for "VDP::Humanities: 000::Archeology: 090"
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Curation by the Living Dead: Exploring the Legacy of Norwegian Museums' Colonial Collections
2021
ABSTRACT While the history of Norwegian museum acquisitions and collection formation has long been a topic of research, the extent to which colonial structures are still embedded in various Norwegian collecting institutions is seldom addressed. In this paper, we discuss the legacy of colonial collections in Norway through two case studies; Inge Heiberg’s collection of Congo ethnographica in various exhibitions at the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History from the early 1900s to the present; and the Norwegian Kon-Tiki Museum’s initiative to repatriate human remains and other material excavated by Thor Heyerdahl on Rapa Nui in the 1950s. Presenting two cases that have been promoted …
The thistle-mistle formula in the Viking Age and Nordic Middle Ages – Form, function, and symbolic value
2021
The paper aims to shed new light on the thistle-mistle formula in the famous Bósa saga and in a series of younger runic inscriptions, including some hitherto unpublished runic scribbles on a churchwall in Denmark. The author explores different graphological representations and disgui¬sed variants of this runic formula to get to grips with its positive and/or negative content. Thus, the thistle-mistle formula in the Nordic Viking Age and Middle Ages is identified as a clear-cut case of the written, visual formula which may be deliberately disguised for magical reasons. Based on Harris (1975) and Mitchell (1998), the author argues that this is a prototypical fertility formula which can be cha…