More from the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum

The museum included an exhibit room for items from Australia.  Here, I found one of the most intriguing straw sandals.  All of the text cards were in Swedish, of course!  My friend and colleague John Eriksson translated them for us:

Sunday Island, Australia
Sandals
These sandals are made of the bark from a young tree. The Bark is  
first made softer by chewing the bark.
No. 1912.0.1.0922 Kimberley, Australia

These sandals, braided/plaited using the inner bark from a young tree,  
represent another example of a clever technology. These sandals could  
be made in just a few minutes and they protected the feet when the  
ground was too hot to tread. The sandals could also be used when their  
owner did not want to disclose his/her identity. Familiar footprints  
were disguised by these sandals.
___________________

   One card gave an origin, Sunday Islands, Australia, and also mentioned Kimberley, Australia.  This was very helpful as there are at least three islands named Sunday island in Australia, and the Sunday Islands (plural) are actually an independent republic, the closest land mass being Antarctica apparently. 

So here goes my interpretation.  Kimberley is often used to mean The Kimberley, the most northern part of Western Australia.  It is remote and ruggedly beautiful with only about 40,000 inhabitants, including Aboriginal peoples.  There is a Sunday Island off its coast in King Sound, so I assume this is the one we want.  I found a description that said it is the traditional land of the Diaui people and has been for thousands of years. Another source indicated that the traditional owners and original inhabitants of the area around King Sound are the Nimanburu, Njulnjul and Warwa indigenous Australian peoples. Apparently another tribe, The Bardi, operates tours to the island. 

I have had very little success finding straw footwear from Australia that may be attributable to the native peoples.  It would be quite a find if these bark sandals were made using an ancient handicraft from this region.  They are about as simple a construction is it gets, more wrapped bark strips than actually woven, though some simple weaving described in the exhibit card as plaiting, can be seen.  Sandals like these would be fashioned quickly as needed and were not meant to last much beyond an immediate need.  I would love to know their age!

 

______________

The sandals found in Australia have some remarkable similarities in construction to the ancient sandals made by the Anasazi peoples of the southwestern United States:

Anasazi sandals from southwest U.S. made by plain weaving on left and plaiting/braiding on right.  The sandal fragment on the left has two warps (passive elements), is a weft-faced weave, and the material used are yucca leaf elements, unspun and with intact cortex.  
_______________

Museum website

Introduction:  

“The Museum of Ethnography is a place for everyone interested in the world. Bring the whole family on an extraordinary trip and experience art, culture and food in an exciting and inspiring environment. With pieces from America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania the museum is a place full of dreams, achievements and treasures from Swedish adventurers, merchants, collectors and scientists. Restaurant Matmekka and museum shop. Free entry.”  copied from webpage.

The Storage, an ethnographic treasury, containing donated, found and abandoned items that travelers and explorers brought back to Sweden.  Approximately 6,000 items are arranged according to the materials with which they were made.  This is how items are cared for in the collections where they are stored under the various conditions of temperature and humidity that best preserve leather, straw, cloth, etc.  The idea is that different relationships among items may emerge in the mind of the visitor viewing them arranged in The Storage in this unusual manner.  There is very little information on the cards with the items about where they were collected.  In order to learn more about each item, the visitor has the option to borrow an electronic tablet computer from the front desk personnel to call up an item number and learn more.  Most of the museum is organized by geographic region and by peoples, e.g. an Australia section and a section on Native American Indian culture.  There are also contemporary ethnographic exhibits such as pantyhose!

We were there in early August, 2017, and there were very few visitors at the museum, which was clean and carefully lighted to highlight the well-constructed exhibits.  Most textual information was in Swedish and English, though sometimes the more detailed descriptions were in Swedish only.  I did not use the electronic tablet this trip as I was mainly interested in surveying what was on display.  Originally, I decided to visit the museum to learn more about Sven Hedin (1865-1952), the great Swedish explorer whose book titled My Life as an Explorer I had enjoyed reading as part of my preparation to visit the Silk Road during my trip to Western China in 2002.  I was surprised to learn from the docents that only a small corner of one of the rooms was devoted to this great explorer.  The docent said she wished it could be an entire room in the museum instead.  I asked of course about straw sandals and shoes.  She said that there were some scattered throughout the exhibit rooms and especially in The Storage where travelers had brought them back as gifts and momentos for friends and family.

My wife Gayle and I liked this museum very much and we decided we would revisit it with more time on any future trip to Stockholm.

[Not a valid template]