Paper short abstract:

To understand cultures in the world through objects focus on individual persons behind the specifioc objects will add a dimension. To shed light on such position five different artefacts representing five cultures - the Saami, the Netsilik, the Ainu, the Nisga a, and the Hopi - have been chosen, in this way giving the objects an additional voice.

Paper long abstract:

In museum collections most objects are anonymous from the point of view of individual persons. Focusing on persons behind specific objects offers additional information about the culture from which they derive. It is my conviction that such individualization of artifacts, whenever possible through research-based collecting, provides more comprehensive knowledge than simply describing the objects as to function and how they were made.

In the following I build my general argument on five objects, representing five different cultures - the Sámi, the Netsilik, the Ainu, the Nisga´a, and the Hopi. The craft and art objects chosen are all made from natural material, and they were collected by me. Finally they all relate to already existing old collections in the Ethnographic Museum, Oslo, in this fashion also a contribution to the history of the museum.

Implicitly the argument represents a critical position vis-à-vis the broad concept "World Culture", letting specific cultures speak comparatively through carefully selected artifacts.