Axel Bojsen-Møller
Axel Bojsen-Møller
Danish Globetrotter & Oceanic Art Collector
©Leif Birger Holmstedt
The Department of Ethnographic at the Danish National Museum has one of the largest and finest collections in the world of artifacts from Oceania, Melanesia and Micronesia with more than 9,000 objects of which the largest part was acquired between 1845 and 1959.
A substantial number of these were collected by Axel Bojsen-Møller, the Danish globetrotter and collector, who acquired about 3,300 objects during his five expeditions to New Guinea between 1934-1959.
Axel Bojsen-Møller
Axel Bojsen-Møller was born on August 30.1888 in Gødvad vicarage near Silkeborg. From an early age he was attracted to nature and not interested in following the family tradition of studying theology. Initially he worked as a farmer and later on he graduated with a degree in agriculture and in 1921 he bought a failing agricultural college, Vejlby Landbrugsskole, near Aarhus.
Axel Bojsen-Møller was a man of ideas – dynamic and innovative – and after studing in the USA in 1914-1915, he felt certain to succeed. The agricultural college he acquired expanded several times in the ensuing years. However, in 1933 he sold the college due to growing problems in agriculture followed by a falling number of students.
After selling the college, Bojsen-Møller could now fulfill a dream he had had from boyhood since reading about the exploits of the legendary English explorers, Henry Stanley and captain James Cook. He began by buying the Monsoon, a converted French fishing vessel, that he planned to sail to New Guinea and collect artifacts.
Monsoon
When he would return from the expedition, it was Bojsen-Møller’s intention to sell the collected ethnographic artifacts to private collectors and ethnographical museums in order to fund the expedition that couldn’t expect any support from the Danish state!
While the ship underwent minor conversions, Bojsen-Møller contacted the curators of the Department of Ethnographic at the Danish National Museum and the Danish Zoological Museum to inform them of his impending expedition. The curators showed great enthusiasm for the project, looking forward to expanding their collections with a large number of specimens from New Guinea and the many other islands the expedition was to visit.
Nautical instruments, charts, oilskins and weapons – all were found at the stores of the Danish Navy and lent to Bojsen-Møller willingly. Private firms sponsored other important items such as quinine, vitamins, beverages and canned food. The large Danish company ØK – the East Asiatic Company (EAC) – offered to transport the collected objects home to Denmark without cost.
As the leader of the expedition Axel Bojsen-Møller didn’t have any scientific background: His knowledge was solely based on his professional experience as manager of the agricultural college and a profound interest in ethnographic objects.
Apart from Axel Bojsen-Møller, the expedition consisted of an Ethnographer, a zoologist and the crew of the ship--a captain, a first officer, a cook and two ordinary seamen as well as the author Hakon Mielche.
The Monsoon Expedition – as the expedition was called – left Denmark on October 16th 1933 with a route down the English Channel to the Bay of Biscay and on to Tenerife. From here they were to cross the Atlantic and continue through the Panama Canal into the Pacific where the first goal was the Galapagos Islands followed by the Marquesas Islands, Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and finally New Guinea. The Danish Foreign Ministry provided the expedition with introduction letters to foreign governments and Danish consulates.
In August 1934, when the Monsoon had reached the island Vanikoro in the Santa Cruz Islands, they encountered a hurricane where the ship that was pushed over the coral reef and was lost.
It was a true miracle that both the crew and the dog survived this violent wreck.
During the following days, through hard labor, they were able to save the ethnographic artifacts thus far collected. The artifacts were dried and packed in large crates that were made from the bulkheads of the ship.
After being marooned for two months on Vanikoro, the castaways obtained passage to Tulagi on the Solomon Islands, and here they had to wait for another two weeks for a copra steamer that would take seven members of the expedition and the collected ethnographic artifacts, first to Kavieng on New Ireland and then on to Europe. But not Axel Bojsen-Møller who would continue on to New Guinea to live out his boyhood dreams of leading an expedition into the unexplored interiors of the island.
In Kavieng on New Ireland, Bojsen-Møller met McGregor, a former hunter of birds of paradise. McGregor told Bojsen-Møller that large parts of New Guinea were unknown to white people, and that it was possible to find lots of curios – as he called ethnographic objects such as masks, figures and weapons. He also told him that the natives made dugouts with stone axes and that they made carvings with sharp seashells, animal teeth or knives made from bamboo. They also conserved the heads of both their deceased relatives and the enemies they had killed.
Bojsen-Møller had no doubt that a man such as McGregor with this knowledge about the interior of New Guinea and especially the Sepik area would be a great addition to his expedition. After explaining his plans for the expedition to McGregor they agreed to go by canoe up the Sepik River with small detours by foot into the unknown and at times swampy and impassable areas.
Just a few days after the Australian administration in Madang had given the necessary permissions to the expedition – for instance to carry weapons for their own protection – they had bought the equipment and were ready to journey into one of the most dangerous areas of New Guinea. The equipment consisted of tents, mosquito nets, blankets, cooking utensils, medicine, quinine, rum and provisions such as canned food, flour, coffee and sugar as well as the number of weapons allowed and ammunition.
They had also bought goods for trading with the natives – steel axes, knives, fishhooks, razor blades, mirrors, matches and tobacco. The administration in Madang had also permitted them to buy six conserved human heads but they had to give information about where they were bought when they returned. Furthermore, they had to buy them as cheaply as possible, so the natives weren’t tempted into mass production!
On November 16, the expedition left Madang in McGregor’s big motorboat which was also to carry forty local workers who had completed a three-years’ work contract and now were returning home to their villages along the Sepik River.
McGregor’s motorboat in Marienberg Nov. 1934, Photo McGregor
After two days of sailing along the north coast of New Guinea their boat reached the entrance to the Sepik River at Broken Water Bay and the journey up the river could begin.
The expedition had visited several pile-built villages and had traded with friendly natives when they reached Angriman, some 200 miles up the Sepik River. Here they left the motorboat to continue in two large canoes with eight native paddlers into remote areas where the Australian administration had not yet established its authority.
Before the expedition left Angriman, Bojsen-Møller had acquired an approximately 2 meter long slit-gong garamut drum and a very rare Yambogia dance outfit.
Just a few miles up the river the canoes were stuck in the overgrown vegetation and had to be left behind. The baggage was then distributed among the native paddlers who had to make their way through the swampy ground until they reached open grassland with firmer soil.
Kaminimbit was the first village the expedition visited by foot. They saw an initiation ceremony for the young men who over two days had to endure particularly violent and painful initiation rites before they could be admitted to male society and gain access to the men’s house and its secrets. The men’s house in Kaminimbit is a dominant feature—as in my Sepik villages – both in terms of size and magnificent ornamentation. It is here in the men’s house that local legal cases are concluded and where political meetings are held.
Mens house in Nyindigum. Photo Axel Bojsen-Møller
It is also here that cultic meetings are held and where the ritual objects are kept—some of the most imaginative ethnographic objects of Oceanic art in the world, decorated with elaborate ornamentation and painted with bold colors. Both masks and figures are found in large numbers and a rich variety of types, each with their own symbolic religious importance.
Axel Bojesen-Møller in Tumbungu Nov. 1934.
The skulls of the ancestors are also kept in the men’s house. After they have been re-modeled, painted and decorated with various materials, they are attached to a stand and placed in a central location because of their strong spiritual powers concentrated in the head even after death.
Tumbungu 1934 collected ancestor skulls. Photo Mc Gregor
After the initiation rites the villagers were very eager to trade. In exchange for axes, fishhooks, pocket mirrors, razor blades, tobacco and matches Bojsen-Møller left with 134 objects – among others 13 ancestral spirit figures and nine war clubs. The collection was so large that Bojsen-Møller had to hire ten men to carry the objects, wrapped to protect them, through the boggy ground back to the canoes.
Iatmul overmodeled skull collected 1934
Subsequently, they visited many villages, and even if they were in “the uncontrolled area”, the reception was friendly and without problems, and almost everywhere they went, they quickly made good contacts with the locals who were very interested in trading.
Along the Sepik River, 1934
In Kanduanum, however, the expedition for the first time were met with animosity and aggression. Inspired by Stanley’s approach in Congo, McGregor used dynamite to blow a giant tree to smithereens! With the natives were still prone with terror when McGregor – after another blast of dynamite in a nearby lagoon by the river – offered fish to the whole village; fish that were stunned by the blast and which could be gathered in baskets without any problems.
After this exchange the expedition continued with good relations and trading.
After journeying for two months through one of the most wet and swampy areas in the world, Bojsen-Møller and McGregor fell ill with malaria, the expedition – with carriers and canoe crew – had to drag and sail the collected objects back through heavy mud to the main river and down to Angriman. From here they took the motorboat back to Madang.
The collected objects – about 700 – were brought back to Denmark by the East Asiatic Company (EAC).
New Guinea Expedition II 1949
Fifteen years after his first Sepik-expedition in 1934, Axel Bojsen-Møller was again back in New Guinea. This time the starting point was Port Moresby where he had arrived at by plane from Townsville in Queensland in northern Australia.
The first objective of this expedition was for Bojsen-Møller to reach Mount Hagen in the New Guinea Highlands. After acquiring the various permissions from government offices, district officers were appointed to accompany him on his expedition. In Lae he acquired objects for bartering – knives, steel axes, salt, glass beads, mirrors and cut tobacco.
Shortly before Bojsen-Møller took off with the small Quantas biplane to be transported to Mount Hagen, he had received a letter from his two girls in Denmark. Their final remarks were very sensible, “Remember to take your quinine and beware that you are not turned into an ’underground pussycat’!” This is a rabbit in the local pidgin. This admonition was at the front of his mind when Bojsen-Møller met a large group of warriors in full paint, dressed only in feathers and ivory ornaments –that surrounded the plane when they landed in Mount Hagen—of course they were there in greeting not aggression.
In the Highlands Bojsen-Møller visited the missions in Goroka and Bena-Bena where he was received with great hospitality and collected mainly weapons such as spears, shields, bows and stone axes—But far less than he had in Sepik region.
The Papuan Gulf
After Axel Bojsen-Møller’s mostly ethnographic objects found in the Highlands he hoped for better collecting in the next destination for the expedition--the Papuan Gulf. As at the Sepik River, here the ornamental art is abundant and spectacular.
A Qantas seaplane deposited Axel Bojsen-Møller at the Kikori River, just outside the government station where a motorboat, driven by Mr. Haily, the acting district officer, was waiting to bring him to the station. After having handed over his permission from the authorities in Port Moresby, he was invited to stay at Mr. Haily’s large and cozy tropical house.
The government station lent him a canoe with ten paddlers, and after a lunch at Mr. Haily’s house, Bojsen-Møller went to visit some neighboring villages. After an hour of paddling, they reached a village where the houses were tall with ascending gables. They were built to house a complete family with low partitions of bamboo divided the house into rooms for the individual family groups.
The elders of the house, who had received Axel Bojsen-Møller and his helpers graciously, pulled aside a screen at the back of the house. Here the sacred objects of the family were kept—the finely carved and painted human figures and many of the heads of deceased.
The heads were not for sale. But the old headman didn’t mind parting with the wood figures which represented the spirits of the family. Until this point they had been honored to appease the spirits before a hunt or going to war, and they were repainted when they needed to be – but now, during the visit they quickly changed owners. Bojsen-Møller also bought a beautifully carved and painted drum, a dance costume, fishing tackle and some woven baskets.
Papuan Gulf Spirit Board, Inv. No. 1.1145
In the evening back at the government station, Mr. Haily held a farewell party for a patrol officer who was going on a six weeks’ inspection tour. Before leaving, the officer gave Axel Bojsen-Møller a remarkably fine collection of big painted wood figures that he had kept rolled in bamboo mats and hidden under his house. The wood figures had been saved from destruction by the officer, since the mission in the area was working hard to make the natives burn all their idols.
During the farewell party, Axel Bojsen-Møller was invited to join the inspection tour that was to start the following day with the station motorboat and seven large canoes with ten paddlers in each. The current was against them from early morning, so they had to paddle slowly, close to the river’s edge of tall dense jungle, ever alert to attacks from crocodiles.
In the late afternoon they reached a tributary where they disembarked. Here they cleared a space from the trees where they could erect the tents and where the native paddlers could build their palm huts. Dinner consisted of roast boar which some of the natives had shot while others were setting up camp.
In the following weeks a great number of villages were visited. The mechanic on the station motorboat spoke the local language and explained to the villagers at each stop that they had come as friends and only to trade--after this guarantee they always were welcome.
Bojsen-Møller explored the great family houses for artifacts. Whatever he wanted to buy was placed on the porch of the house where he then proceeded to negotiate. To obtain steel tools such as axes, knives and fish hooks the locals were quite willing to barter the sacred objects of the family. From this journey alone, Axel Bojsen-Møller took home 47 figurative objects, a drum and some spears.
On another trip, Bojsen-Møller and his helpers had safely reached the Aird-Hill Mission without incident. The opposite might easily have happened because it was quite dangerous to travel in this area. Just two years previously, according to Mr. Fenn, the leader of the mission, the natives in a neighboring village had had an enormous feast where the menu consisted of two London missionaries and their native helpers. They had inadvertently dared to enter a village where the natives were having a large feast.
In a family house near the Aird-Hill station, Bojsen-Møller encountered a mysterious and exciting collection of human heads and spiritual images. Since the mission had been working here for quite some years, Bojsen-Møller expected that the natives had abandoned their belief in the spirits so it would be possible to persuade them to barter some of the conserved heads and wood figures.
However, all offers were rejected by the natives - the spiritual images were still more important to them than whatever they could acquire in exchange. This rejection was probably considered a major setback for the mission and its efforts!
Papuan Gulf Spirit Board Inv # 1.4845
They spent weeks travelling 150 miles on the great Kikori and Vailala Rivers paddling over wide lakes and through narrow overgrown streams where they had to chop down branches and rushes to pass through, battling the malaria mosquito and hungry crocodiles.
Bojsen-Møller had to wade through dense clay mud, which often reached his knees, to reach the natives when he went ashore to barter – conditions that other collectors might have avoided but he did so willingly and was rewarded with many great anthropological objects.
In one of the houses he had visited he faced one of the most interesting spiritual images he had ever seen. It was a combination of a rat catcher, a hanging hook, a red-painted boar’s head with open maw and a full-length costume of coir fiber. Bojsen-Møller’s interpreter – a Samoan teacher from the Aird-Hill Mission – was very interested in ridding the house of evil, so he helped spread out the contents of the owner’s chest on the floor. But the old headman was not impressed. How could all this wealth help if it meant illness or death for the family if they removed the spiritual image from the house? The Samoan teacher explained to him that their belief in spirits was nothing but lies, and that the Good Lord would take care of them! – The old headman was not to be persuaded
The Gopé people, which was the name coined by Bojsen-Møller for the people living around the swampy delta of the Purari River, was the last area that Axel Bojsen-Møller visited. Here he entered one of the long houses, more than 300 feet long, built on piles, which housed many families.
In the darkest and most sacred room were kept the many spiritual images and figures of the family. On an altar built from painted heads of crocodiles and boars, they had placed conserved heads of deceased family members. Here was an impressive display of all the anthropological objects that a collector could wish for – it was like entering into a magic cave!
Again, the barter chest was sent for – and again, in exchange for axes, cut tobacco, fish- hooks, knives and mirrors, Bojsen-Møller went away with weapons, masks, spiritual images and two preserved and painted human heads--which he had wanted to acquire for a long time.
These purchases together with 160 other interesting objects were carefully wrapped in grass skirts and mats and packed in the canoes. The objects’ journey continued down to Orokolo at the Pacific coast and on by ship to Port Moresby and further on with the East Asiatic Company (EAC) to Denmark.
Axel Bojsen-Møller himself went by plane home to his two daughters. To their joy he could confirm that not only had he remembered to take his quinine, but he had also avoided being turned into an underground pussycat!
Axel Bojsen-Møller’s approach to the natives may seem mercenary – even callous – since he bought or bartered to get objects that might have been an important element in the religious rites of the natives or necessary utensils for everyday life and the only things, he offered were less valuable, seen in a European context.
This was, however, not how the natives perceived it: They felt themselves progressing by exchanging their stone axes and bamboo knives for steel axes and knives – tools that would make it easier for them to make huts, canoes and weapons. To the natives, the objects they gave up were not “art” – a concept unknown to their language. This denomination was not used about the objects until they were taken out of context and placed in ethnographic museums or in private collections all over the world.
In the National Museum in Copenhagen and at Moesgaard Museum near Aarhus* many of the objects that Axel Bojsen-Møller saved from certain destruction are exhibited – after the missionaries had arrived in New Guinea and had established missions there, they didn’t hesitate to start burning the religious artifacts of the natives.
*The department of anthropology at Moesgaard Museum has about 1,000 objects from Axel Bojsen-Møller’s expeditions.
Later expeditions were:
The Expedition to Dutch New Guinea, 1954
The Mount Blücher Expedition – in Australian New Guinea, 1955-1956
The Sepik Expedition, 1958-1959
Literature:
Axel Bojsen-Møller, Globetrotter og Hovedjæger, Eget Forlag 1960
Flensborg Avis, ”Gennem Jordens vaadeste og mest sumpede Land”, 1949
Flensborg Avis, ” Ny Guinea har Plads til Millioner”, 1949
European Society for Oceanists, Third Conference, Pacific Peoples in the Pacific Century, Copenhagen 1996
Leif Birger Holmstedt, Axel Bojsen-Møller, Globetrotter – the wreck of the Monsoon and the first New Guinea expedition, Odense 2009
Nationalmuseet, Etnografiske kulturskatte set gennem fleres øjne
Louisiana Revy, ”Oceanien, Kunst fra Melanesien”, 1991
Conversation with Kirsten Bojsen-Møller, New-Zealand
Leif Birger Holmstedt
2021
Ramu River 1934 Collected objects. Photo Axel Bojsen-Møller
National Museum in Copenhagen
National Museum in Copenhagen
National Museum in Copenhagen
National Museum in Copenhagen
National Museum in Copenhagen
