Amundsen’s Gjoa Haven Collection, 1903–1905
Nattilik Heritage Centre and the University of Oslo (UiO) Museum of Cultural History
This collaborative website brings together objects, photographs and documentation related to a collection of traditional Inuit material culture made around Uqsuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven), NU, and collected between 1903 and 1905 by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. The project, which has been co-developed by the Nattilik Heritage Centre in Uqsuqtuuq and the Museum of Cultural History at UiO, started in 2010 to make the entire collection of artifacts and photographs currently held in Uqsuqtuuq and Oslo available to the public via a digital online sharing portal. We reached out to Tone Wang, Adviser in the Museum of Cultural History’s Section for Exhibition and Research Administration, to hear more about the process:
Since the early 1990s my colleagues and I have been discussing whether it would be possible to return some of the artifacts to Uqsuqtuuq, as we feel that it is very important for them to be returned to where they were collected. Everyone was interested, but it wasn’t really doable until the Nattilik Heritage Centre was built around 2010. After we learned of the construction, the issue of whether it would be possible to return some items was discussed, and I think everybody was extremely enthusiastic to do so. We have returned 16 objects, which are now on display in the centre. The selection was done in collaboration with the Hamlet Council, and the best of what the collection had to offer was returned.
From the very beginning it was obvious that it wouldn’t be feasible to return everything to Uqsuqtuuq, so the only way for someone to access the entire collection would be on the Internet. The most important thing has been easy access—especially to the photographs. First, nearly all of the material was digitized and uploaded to a searchable website. The second step was learning what everything was and properly identifying it. We held workshops with elders in Uqsuqtuuq, Talurjuaq (Taloyoak) and Kugaaruk. Basically, we had discussions about how members of the community wanted to structure things and what they thought was important. Then we sat around a table and put out the pieces one by one, and people told stories and talked about the objects and how they were used, how they were made and how they were important to the communities. It was a lovely and incredibly informative process that continues to be expanded via the online portal.