ABSTRACT
In the 1990s, I was given the wonderful opportunity and privilege of working on a publication about the oldest Danish museum collection of ethno-graphical objects deriving from nomads. The collection goes by the name of the ‘Olufsen Collection’ at the Ethnographic Collection housed by the National Museum of Denmark, and it derives from Lieutenant Ole Olufsen’s two expeditions to the Pamirs in Central Asia. The expeditions took place in 1896–1897 and 1898–1899 and were scientific in their design, in fact multi-disciplinary, and conducted ethnographic, geographic, botanical, physical anthropological, zoological, and linguistic studies. Maps were drawn and climatological measurements made. Large numbers of plants, animals, and ethnographical items were collected by the scientists on the expeditions and taken home to Danish museums.
