Model Of Reindeer Pulling Sled
date: label: Accession Date
content: 1991
name: label: Donor Name
content: No Information
notes: label: Notes
content: MODEL OF REINDEER PULLING SLED, SAMI/SAAMI, APPARENTLY INVENTORIED AS # 316976 WHICH IS WRONG, SINCE THERE IS ALREADY A WELL-MARKED 316976 IN STORAGE; RETURNED FROM CONSERVATION LAB 1/1986.
label: Notes
content: Model is marked with number 1863, which may be an original number/field number or date? This model does not appear on the list of sleds in the collections published on pp. 574 - 575 in "Primitive Travel and Transportation" by Otis Tufton Mason, in U.S. National Museum Annual Report for 1894. As labelled, this object is a model of a Sami open-top single rider sled (Vuogjem Geris daihe Pulkke/Battaliekko), with a reindeer figure and harness. The component parts are labelled (mainly) in Sami by the maker. It was made by a Sami man named Lars Haetta (Hætta), as confirmed by Dr. Jack Davy, 2019. See his paper: Davy, Jack (2018) Lars Haetta's miniature world: Sámi prison op-art autoethnography. Journal of Material Culture, 23 (3). pp. 280-294. ISSN 1359-1835; https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183517745716 . Lars Haetta (1834 - 1896) was a Norwegian Sami reindeer herder, political prisoner, wood carver/model maker and Bible translator. Following the Sami revolt in Guovdageaidnu in 1852 he received a death sentence, which was commuted to life imprisonment. While in prison from 1854 to 1867, he made models of everyday objects. He was pardoned in 1867, and then returned home. Models from Haetta are in the Horniman Museum in London, U.K., the Norsk Folkemuseum in Oslo, Norway, as well as a miniature tent at the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford, U.K.. A similar model to ET20322 in the Horniman Museum collections, # 32.53, can be viewed online: https://www.horniman.ac.uk/object/32.53 .
label: Notes
content: This model might be part of Accession 396, year 1864, a collection of Sami material from the "Ethnological Museum, Christiana [sic]", Norway (now the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway), though the Department of Anthropology has no record of Accession No. 396 objects having been catalogued in the old USNM Division of Ethnology collections. A November 4, 1863 letter from Louis [Ludvig] Kr. Daa of that institution to Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry, on file in Smithsonian Institution Archives Record Unit 26, indicates this collection includes models, and lists a reindeer harnessed with sled as part of the donation. Joseph Henry's acknowledgement letter of March 17, 1864 to Daa also mentions the reindeer (whose horns he indicates were broken in shipping and repaired after receipt at the Smithsonian). Alternatively, and speculatively, model also might have been part of Accession No. 51115?
label: Record Last Modified
content: 30 May 2025
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Norway, Europe
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Sámi (Saami)
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 999999
label: USNM Number
content: ET20322-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Sled Model / Figure