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Arctic: Populations of the Arctic and Subarctic Areas

Old clothing used in the arctic

At the Arctic Exhibition, you can experience the shaman costume from Tuva, traditional Inuit clothing and tools and study life in the Igloo.

The exhibition opens by showing traditional clothing and tools from Arctic Siberia and then you can enter the room about ritual life.

Here, shamanic and Sámi noaidi artefacts are exhibited - a noaidi drum is suspended over a model of the Earth’s northern hemisphere. Traditional clothing made of fish skin and bark from Siberia and Japan are exhibited. Sámi culture is represented by various traditional pieces of clothing and information about reindeer husbandry and the history of the Sámi Parliament of Norway.

You can also find the exhibition Ten Sámi Time Frames, that gives a wide and updated perspective on the present-day Sámi and their diversity in the Sàpmi region.

View the exhibition in 3D

People in the Arctic, where the struggle for food and the fight against the cold are important, have developed a rich ritual life. One is at the mercy of the forces of nature and efforts to influence or control these forces are therefore important. Sacrificial rituals in connection with seasonal transitions or the start of a hunting season were common. The Netsilik’s sacrifice to “the goddess of the sea and marine animals”, Sedna, before travelling to their winter camp on the pack ice is one such ritual.

The Netsiliks were visited by several polar expeditions during the 19th century. Here is a part of the exhibit showing Arctic experts, and you can discover what the Netsilik people in Northern Canada taught Roald Amundsen about survival in Arctic climates. Roald Amundsen met the Netsilik people for the first time in 1903 when he spent the winter with his ship called Gjøa in the place that is now called Gjoa Haven. Amundsen learned a lot about survival in the harsh Arctic climate from the Netsilik people, and he traded lots of objects of which more than 900 are now found in the museum’s collections.

Published Nov. 11, 2021 11:49 AM - Last modified July 3, 2023 10:31 AM

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