(This part of the exhibition was excluded from the physical exhibition but remains in the digital version)
Here you can see artefacts lying in cases from the museums storerooms. To the untrained eye, the figures might look the same, but they were actually made in different places, have been used for different things, and have come to the museum by different routes. The figures were stored together because they're made of wood and are of roughly the same size.
Most of the figures are from the region around the Congo River's lower reaches where many Swedish missionaries stayed, especially during the first decades of the 20th century. Many are artefacts of power, enclosing spirits with the task of protecting, healing, and bringing the owner luck.
Of the ten figures from Karl Edward and Selma Laman's collection, we know an especially large amount: what they symbolize and how they were made and used. One of them (no. 8) is an amulet for hunting and killing witches.