Mongolian and Siberian Shamans

About the book

The costumes and ritual equipment presented in this work were obtained from shamans in Mongolia and Siberia, and today represent a unique cultural world heritage. They were collected in the 1930s by two legendary Danish travellers, 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 book, the entire material is now thoroughly described, analysed, and presented in a context for an international audience. The analysis contains the objects’ history of collection alongside a well-informed description of the cosmology of shamanism, and of the diversity of shamans in the larger Mongolian and neighbouring Siberian region. With expertise accumulated over more than 40 years of study, Gilberg’s analysis is guided by an abundance of original illustrations, both drawings and photographs, of which many are new. In one chapter the historical costumes and ritual objects are placed in a contemporary context through descriptions of Gilberg’s encounters with Mongol shamans in Mongolia in the 1990s.