The Statens museer för världskultur were founded in 1999 by merging four, formerly independent museums in Stockholm and Göteborg. Out of the around 500,000 objects in the collections, around 52,000 are from North and Central America. These are accompanied by roundabout 6,700 photographs and archival material relating to expeditions, exchanges, and collections in other museums. The libraries of the museums list far more than 100,000 entries and contain separate sections for North America and the Arctic and rare books, like Ossian Elgströmer´s book on myths from Greenland.

Collections

Our collections have two main areas of focus: From the earliest collections (17th century) and until today the museums keep testimony of diplomatic relations of Sweden with North America, for example the royal collections and the Folke Cronholm collection.

The second is expedition collections, these were gathered during expeditions mainly to the Arctic, Northwest Coast, and Southwest. Including archaeological collections and a large collection of gypsum casts of important finds from other museums, such as Carnegie and the Smithsonian Institution.

A strong focus lies on the Arctic (more than 10,000 objects, including archaeological finds from Norse settlements), California (more than 1,300 objects, focus: basketry) and the Southwest (ca. 1,200 objects, focus: pottery and weaving).

The collection data in the database are oftentimes reduced to very basic information. Information from the scanned inventory books are attached to almost every entry and include more data.

Världskulturmuseerna’s collections are on exhibit in the museums exhibition buildings and kept in storages in Stockholm and Gothenburg. Objects are available for research upon request 3 to 6 months in advance. Research visitors from all over the world have in the past been helping to improve our knowledge concerning the collections.

The knowledge they entrusted us with can be found in our database. Visit our online database.

Regions Included in North American Collections

The most important collections (due to size or history) by cultural area and numbers are the following:

Arctic:

• Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld (1832-1901), 1873-1911: more than 1,400 objects from Greenland. Of these a large number of material from the 1873 and 1881 expeditions. About 180 objects from Alaska (Vega Expedition 1878-79). Collection location: Stokholm
• Christian Georg Frederik Pfaff (1824-1870), 1904: About 3000 archaeological objects from Greenland. Collection location: Stokholm
• Knud Rasmussen (1897-1933), 1920: more than 320 Greenlandic objects from Rasmussen’s Second Thule Expedition (1916-18) Collection location: Stokholm
• Kaj Birket-Smith (1893-1977), 1918-19: 78 Greenlandic objects. Birket-Smith was, like Nordenskiöld, a freemason. They kept in close touch and exchanged about ideas and information concerning people and collections. The collection was exchanged with the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen, part of which the Birket-Smith collection is. Collection location: Göteborg

Northwest Coast:

• Gustav Retzius (1842-1919), 1904: more than 400 objects from the Central and Northern Northwest Coast.
• Otto Nordenskjöld (1869-1928), 1898: about 50 ethnographic objects from the Central Northwest Coast. Collection location: Stokholm

Northeastern Woodlands:

• Mark R. Harrington (1882-1970), between 1909 and 1912: about 200 numbers of contemporary pieces. Also a very good collection of Kickapoo objects from the part of the group that was removed to the southern USA. About 30 of the objects are from the Plains, 15 from the Southwest. These will not be mentioned separately again. Collection location: Stokholm
• Andreas Fornander (1820-1903) 1926: nearly 150 objects, mostly archaeological specimens and gypsum casts. Collection location: Stokholm
• Folke Cronholm (1873-1945), 1936: around 20 pieces, among them a complete chiefs dress of the Huron dating to the last decades of the 19th century. This was given to Cronholm by the Huron when he was named a honorary chief. Collection location: Stokholm

Southeastern Woodlands:

• Folke Henschen (1881-1977) 1968: 34 archaeological fragments from northern Florida. Collection location: Göteborg
• Einar Lönneberg (1865-1942), 1893: 38 archaeological fragments from northern Florida. Collection location: Stokholm
• Clarence Bloomfield Moore (1852-1936), 1906: ca, 75 archaeological specimens from south-western Florida. Moore’s name is only given in the archival material and did not make it into the database, perhaps because even the inventory book information are quite vague and do not give his full name. Collection location: Stokholm
• Gustav Axel Hallström (1880-1962) 1949: archaeological material from the Florida Keys, ca. 90 objects. Collection location: Stokholm

Plains:

• Armand Fouché d’Otrante (1800-1878), 1854 and 1864): 34 objects from the Northern Plains. One object (1854.02.0028) that probably dates to the 18th century and is from the Great Lakes area is attributed to this collection. It seems quite unlikely that this is correct. Collection location: Stokholm
• J.F.G Umlauff (Hamburg-based company, founded in 1868), 1910: 46 objects from the Sioux. Umlauff worked with Hagenbeck, who, at that time, had a group of Oglala travelling through Europe. Umlauff sold off the equipment of many of Hagenbeck’s ethnological expositions. The various Umlauff companies were in touch with many of the museums in Europe and North America until the end of the company in the 1970s. Collection location: Stokholm
• Andreas Eliason Sundberg (1845-1932) 1940: 27 object. Collection location: Göteborg
• Harry G. Beasley (1881-1939) 1930: ca. 30 objects. One of them is of a rare type of clubs from the Northeastern Plains/ Western Great Lakes region and dating to the first half of the 19th century. Collection location: Göteborg

California:

• Carl Vilhelm Hartman (1862-1941) 1914: 24 objects; though small the collection is important because of the four arrow points made by the Yahi Ishi, an informant of well-known anthropologist Alfred Kroeber. Collection location: Stokholm
• Charles P. Wilcomb (1865-1915), 1911: nearly 200 objects, mostly from Northern California and Southern Oregon. Collection location: Stokholm
• Erland Nordenskiöld (187-1932), 1926-27: ca. 80 objects, collected in the field. Collection location: Göteborg

Southwest:

• Gustav Retzius (1842-1919), 1904: about 250 ethnographic objects from throughout the Southwest. Collection location: Stokholm
• Gustav Richard Hogner (1852-1930), 1904 to 1926: more than 260 objects from throughout the Southwest. Collection location: Stokholm
• Museum of Anthropology, University of Berkeley, 1927: 46 pieces of pottery. Collection location: Göteborg
• Eskil Hultín (1915-?), 1968-1992: Around 50 contemporary objects from the Pueblo groups and Navajo. Including kachina dolls, pottery and weavings. Collection location: Göteborg

The permanent exhibit has one focus on the Northwest Coast. It is organized by culture area in one half of the room, by topic in the other. Apart from the European fascination for Native American cultures, it talks about boarding schools, the time of the wars, and Native Americans today. The exhibition was opened in 2008 and the largest part remained as opened.

Resources

• Online database
• Sketchfab: 3D scans and models database

Additional information

Up until the mid-20th century not much research has been done based on the collections. Contrary the collections were in many cases the outcome of field-research. One of the few exceptions is the work of Hjalmar Stolpe, who based his works on the development of ornaments on research carried out in museums and private collections. The collection of rubbings, a result of this research, is currently stored in the archives. From the 1950s on, research on various topics has been carried out. Also a number of homeworks, master´s and doctoral thesis from Swedish Universities can be found in the archives in Göteborg and Stockholm. While the focus of the student´s works lies manly on the Arctic, that of the staff is on New Sweden in Stockholm and the Northwest Coast.

Apart from the that in a few cases the works are reflexive, as “Catalogue of the ethnographical library of the late baron Erland Nordenskiöld chiefly containing Americana” (1933), compiled by the Ethnographic Museum of Göteborg, or Staffan Brunius’ “Some comments on Early Swedish Collections from New Sweden” (1995) in which he lists available older sources and works on these collections.

From the very beginning of the two museums, there has been a large interest in the collections from scholars all over the world. Names as Kaj Birket-Smith, Franz Boas, Norman Feder, Christian Feest, Alfred Kroeber, Knut Rasmussen, and Leslie Spier, to name only a few, appear in our archives. While Göteborg had a clear focus on collections from the North American Arctic, Stockholm did not focus on only one region. Both museums were part of an international network of researchers and were frequently visited and visited other museums up until at least the 1960´s. With a second phase of ethnographic field-work during the late 1950´s and until the early 1980´s, many museums tended to close a circle and start to focus on only their own collections. This is also the time when ethnographic museums became separated from universities. The current focus is still on the own collections and many museums struggle to give new meaning to old collections. Universities and other research institutions and researchers that work with museum collections oftentimes focus on topics like cooperation with source communities and repatriation. One example is Dan Jibréus’ work on White Fox, Silvia Badulescu´s Master´s Thesis “Exchanging totem poles. The social life of the G’psgolox pole.” (University of Stockholm) another.

The libraries and archives feature some outstanding material. George Catlin’s two volumes on his seven years travels through the United States (the library has the 1854 edition) and Lord Kingsborough´s facsimile prints of ancient mexican codices (printed in 9 volumes between 1931 and 1848) that play a key role in Central Plains indian art during the second half of the 19th century are among the treasures of the Stockholm library. Concerning North America this library has a lot to offer, just needs to be updated since there was no curator for the last couple of years.

Göteborg has a much smaller library that keeps a lot of articles and books connected to early exchanges. These are also connected with the archival material.

Sources

Archival material - Stockholm, Göteborg

• Backnäs, Eva-Marie: Pfaff-samlingens stenföremål – ett perspektiv på Väströnlands förhistoria. Institutionen för arkeologi och samisker studier, Umeå universitet, 2001.
• Beasley, Harry G.: Letter to Erland Nordenskjöld, dating 29.04.1930; Göteborgs Museum, Etnografiska avdelningen, Korrespondens, 1930, A-M; Sig: E 1:22.
• Björk, Alf: Katalog över Christian Pfaff’s samling av pilbågar. Institutionen för arkeologi och samisker studier, Umeå universitet. (undated)
• Brunius, Staffan: Etnografica från Nordvästkusten. 1978.
• Hernlund, Bengt: Irokesförbundet. En studie av en märklig, primitive union. 1959.
• Hultén, Eric: Översikt över Eskimåernas Konst. (undated)
• Miller, Judi, Elizabeth Moffat, Jane Sirois: CCI Native Materials Project Report. Ethnographical Museum of Sweden, 1990.
• Paulson, Ivar: IRKAIPIJ – Beiträge zur Kenntnis der alten Eskimokultur in Nordostasien. 1951.
• Pohlhausen, Asta: Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der arktischen und subarktischen Tranlampen unter besonderer Beruecksichtigung der Tranlampen des Staatlichen Ethnographischen Museums zu Stockholm. (undated)

Printed

• Björklund, Anders (2016) Hövdingens totempåle. Om konsten att utbyta gåvor. Stockholm: Carlsson Bökvorlag.
• Brunius, Staffan (1990) North American Indian Collections at the Folkens Museum-Etnografiska. In: European Review of Native American Studies 4:1.
• Brunius, Staffan (1995) Some Comments on Early Swedish Collections from the Northeast. In: C.E. Hoffecker et.al.: New Sweden in America.
• Göteborgs etnografiska museum (1933) Catalogue of the ethnographical library of the late baron Erland Nordenskiöld chiefly containing Americana. Göteborg: Göteborgs etnografiska museum.
• Jibréus, Dan (2013) White Fox’ långe resa. Stockholm: Hagströmerbiblioteket.
• Nordenskiöld, Erland (1907) Kortfattad Handledning för Besökare af Riksmuseets Etnografiska Afdelning 1. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktryckeri AB.
• Östberg, Wilhelm (ed.) (2002) Med världen i kappsäcken. Samlingarnas väg till Etnografiska museet. Stockholm: Centraltryckeriet i Borås.

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