In the Footsteps of Halfdan Siiger Danish Research in Central Asia
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In the Footsteps of Halfdan Siiger Danish Research in Central Asia Editors Ulrik Høj Johnsen, Armin W. Geertz, Svend Castenfeldt and Peter B. Andersen In the Footsteps of Halfdan Siiger – Danish Research in Central Asia Editors Ulrik Høj Johnsen, Armin W. Geertz, Svend Castenfeldt and Peter B. Andersen MOESGAARD MUSEUM In the Footsteps of Halfdan Siiger – Danish Research in Central Asia © 2016 Moesgaard Museum, authors and editors ISBN: 978-87-93251-06-9 Editors: Ulrik Høj Johnsen Armin W. Geertz Svend Castenfeldt Peter B. Andersen Layout: Ea Rasmussen Printed by Zeuner A/S Published by Moesgaard Museum Published with financial support from: School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University Institute for Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies (TORS), University of Copenhagen DFF Research Project ‘Precious Relics: Materiality and Value in the Practice of Ethnographic Collection’, Aarhus Universitet Contents Acknowledgments 5 Ulrik Høj Johnsen 1. Introduction 7 Nina Siiger 2. About My Father, Halfdan 27 Armin W. Geertz 3. Halfdan Siiger and the History of Religions at Aarhus University 37 Esther Fihl 4. Cultural Meanings of Migrating Objects – Analytical Perspectives on Explorations of Central Asia in the Late 19th Century 41 Svend Castenfeldt 5. Halfdan Siiger’s Religio-Ethnographic Fieldwork in Central and South Asia, 1948 71 Peter Bakker & Aymeric Daval-Markussen 6. Linguistic and Genetic Roots of the Kalasha 93 Taj Khan Kalash & Jan Heegård 7. Dynamics of Cultural Survival of the Kalasha 115 Heleen Plaisier 8. Halfdan Siiger’s Studies on the Lepcha People in the Sikkim Himalayas (1949-1950) 137 Charisma K. Lepcha & Davide Torri 9. Fieldwork in Dzongu: in Siiger’s Footsteps and Beyond 147 Peter B. Andersen & Santosh K. Soren 10. The Christian Missions to the Bodos and the Collections of Halfdan Siiger 163 Rolf Gilberg 11. A Mongol Shaman Curse 183 Jens Soelberg 12. The Controversial Source of Amu Darya (Oxus) 195 Jens Soelberg 13. Yurt Material in the Afghan Pamir 201 Ulrik Høj Johnsen 14. On Collections and Collectors – The Double Gaze of Museum Collections 207 Epilogue 221 Halfdan Siiger’s Bibliografi 225 Appendix: Nina Siiger: Om min far, Halfdan (Original Danish version of “About My Father, Halfdan”) 229 Acknowledgments We have the pleasure of expressing our sincere thanks to all of those many people without whom this publication would never have appeared. Of course we all pri- marily owe our special thanks to the authors who were willing not just to attend the conference in November 2011 but also to offer the contributions which made this publication a reality. Thanks also to Dr. Phil. David Warburton and Cand.Pub- lic. Annie Thuesen who polished up the English, and offered valuable professional and editorial remarks. We are especially grateful to the three peer-reviewers who took it upon themselves to review the entire publication professionally. Many thanks are also owed to the Director of the School of Culture and Socie- ty, Aarhus University, Bjarke Paarup, who approved substantial support for both the conference and the publication. Furthermore, thanks is extended for funding and organization to those who cooperated with us at the Moesgaard Museum and also at the National Museum of Denmark, as well as Head of Department Ingolf Thuesen and the staff at the Institute for Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies (TORS) at the University of Copenhagen. Ulrik Høj Johnsen, Armin W. Geertz, Svend Castenfeldt and Peter B. Andersen, Aarhus 2015 Halfdan Siiger, 1911-1999 1. Introduction Ulrik Høj Johnsen The social sciences and humanities are in a perpetual state of change and devel- opment, with new fields of research constantly unfolding before our eyes. Many different facets of human life are being discovered at a pace which it would have been difficult to foresee in 1979, when Halfdan Siiger (Cand. Theol., Mag. Art., 1911-1999), the founding Professor of the Institute for the History of Religions at Aarhus University, chose to retire. Developments since would surely have pleased him. Year after year, ever more students have gone deeper and further into the History of Religions where, for over two decades, he founded, built up and guided the discipline – but also in other related disciplines such as linguistics, ethno- graphy and social anthropology. Using unexpected new methods, the disciplines offer new perspectives on the world. Altogether this would surely have been a delight for Siiger, as a scholar who wished that the disciplines would continue to develop into the distant future. Halfdan Siiger was the product of another age and another research tradi- tion than that of today. The mere fact that there were a lot fewer scholars in the 1960s and 1970s meant that experts from different disciplines came together in different ways than now. Aside from that, Siiger was part of a tradition when the questions posed were more general and larger in many ways, dealing with man- kind and its development. These were questions which could not be answered within the limits of a single discipline. As our publication shows, Siiger and his dedication was, and continues to be, of great importance for scholars working in different disciplines where in recent decades it would have been useful if there had been more cooperation across the boundaries of the disciplines. 7 The expedition For Siiger – like Lennart Edelberg, Knud Paludan and many others – the 3rd Danish Expedition to Central Asia (3. DECA) under the direction of Henning Haslund-Christensen (1896-1948) was the platform for his later career. The ex- pedition, which began in 1947 and continued through 1950, was also the last of the major Danish expeditions. The national project in grand style was to throw light on the blank spaces of the large-scale maps of Asia while placing Danish research and museums on the world map by means of a vast programme of field projects and collections of objects for the National Museum of Denmark in Co- penhagen. The interdisciplinary nature of the expedition was in many ways its hallmark, and this interdisciplinarity may well have been inspired by Haslund’s encounter with the great Swedish explorer Sven Hedin. Haslund had worked for Hedin as caravan leader during three years in Mongolia with Hedin’s Sino-Swed- ish Expedition in 1927-32. Hedin’s expedition numbered hundreds of men and was known as “the wandering university” (Braae, 2007:77). Beyond that, the idea of a team with diverse competencies and a common goal will have appealed to Haslund who was educated as an officer in the Danish army. The linguist Kaare Grønbech (Dr. Phil., 1902-57) was the expedition’s “scientific leader” who worked closely with a board of scientists, among whom was Birket-Smith. Grønbech also participated in Haslund’s Second Danish Expedition to Central Asia in Mongo- lia in 1938-39 together with archaeologist Werner Jacobsen (1914-79). Haslund’s third expedition to Central Asia was, therefore, in many ways a continuation and expansion of his previous work, which meant that a substantial amount of arti- facts and knowledge was brought back to Denmark in the 1930s. A publication on Haslund’s first two expeditions to Central Asia is about to be published by curator at the National Museum of Denmark, Christel Braae. The war years prevented Haslund from attaining the goal of a third, follow-up expedition. The time was subsequently used to register the materials from the first two expeditions. At the same time, a hitherto large team of scientists was assembled for the coming third expedition. It was only after the world began to open up again after the dark years of the war that it was even conceivable to think about crossing the borders in the name of research. On the horizon, people like Haslund and the men around him, began to see the possibilities of exploring and researching “the wrinkled face of Asia”, as Lennart Edelberg (Cand. Mag, 1915- 1981) would later formulate it poetically in the title of a book (Edelberg 1961). 8 ULRIK HØJ JOHNSEN Professionally, it was the Director of the Ethnographic Collection at the National Museum of Denmark, Birket-Smith (Dr. Phil. et Scient., 1893-1977), who sup- ported the expedition, together with Kaare Grønbech. From 1943 Birket-Smith was also Siiger’s superior at the National Museum. Birket-Smith’s paramount professional interest was the diffusion of culture: the temporal and spatial spread of cultural traits. This concerned major features of human life together with the history and development of humanity. His out- look was “global”, to use a word current in our own times. The way to this global view passed through the “purest” forms of culture possible. In an unpretentious brief folder entitled Læs med Plan (“Read with a plan”) from 1953, Siiger wrote that the goal of the “Study of Religion [was to] expose the religious life of humani- ty as far back in time as it can be followed, and as far as it can be traced across the earth”. For Birket-Smith, all peoples were seen as actors in a common story and, by means of historical comparisons between cultures, patterns in the spread of cultural characteristics would be thrown into relief. The title of Birket-Smith’s most important work was Kulturens Veje (“The Paths of Culture”, 1941-42). It is hardly surprising that Birket-Smith’s theoretical programme was likewise a guide for Siiger’s contacts with three different peoples in Asia: the Kalasha, living in the easternmost parts of today’s Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan; the Lepcha in Sikkim; and the Bodos in Assam, India. The plan was that Siiger would travel to Tibet to study Tibetan Buddhist beliefs and way of life, but even though every effort was undertaken to try, violent political and military events result- ing from the Chinese invasion of Tibet ruled this out.