Mongol Shamans: Shaman Costumes at the National Museum of Denmark

The costumes and ritual equipment presented in this volume were obtained from shamans in Mongolia and Siberia and represent today a unique cultural world heritage. They were collected in the 1930s by two Danish legendary travelers, Henning Haslund-Christensen in Mongolia, and Knud Rasmussen in Siberia. Parts of the material were described by Haslund-Christensen in earlier publications, but with senior researcher Rolf Gilberg’s manuscript, the entire material is now thoroughly described, analysed and presented in a context for an international public. The analysis contains the history of collection of the objects alongside a well-informed description of the cosmology of Shamanism, and the diversity of shamans in the larger Mongolian region. With the expertise accumulated over more than forty years’ studies, Gilberg’s analysis is guided by an abundance of original illustrations of drawings and photographs, of which many are new recordings. The book is rounded off with a chapter where the historical costumes and ritual objects are placed in a contemporary context through the depictions of Gilberg’s meetings with Mongol shamans in Mongolia in the 1990s.