On this, his first expedition to the north-eastern part of Inner Mongolia, Haslund-Christensen collected extensive material, including physical artefacts and recordings of songs, that later became part of the Ethnographic Collection at the National Museum of Denmark.

Upon his return, he pointed out that the window for exploring the unique culture and identity of Central Asian nomadic life was closing fast, due to rivalry between the great powers and the rapid advance of modernisation that was putting traditional ways of life under pressure.

With this expedition, subsequently known as the First Danish Expedition to Central Asia (1936–1937), Haslund-Christensen made his name as one of Denmark’s leading explorers. Ever since his youth, he had been fascinated with the mystique and folk culture of Mongolia, and through books and radio lectures he had brought faraway worlds into Danish sitting rooms.

He developed a deep respect for nomadic peoples’ skills and ways of life during his instructive years with the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin (1865–1952), who gave him his first scientific training and instilled in him the endurance, discipline and curiosity that would later characterise all his expeditions.

The Second Danish Expedition to Central Asia, also led by Haslund-Christensen, took place in 1938–1939, at a time when the region was being squeezed by Japan’s expansion into Inner Mongolia, the Soviet Union’s dominance in the north and China’s continued claims to the area.

This time, Haslund-Christensen was accompanied by two younger researchers: the linguist Kaare Grønbech (1901–1957), tasked with documenting dialects, literature and inscriptions, and the promising archaeologist Werner Jacobsen (1914–1979), in charge of archaeological studies and collections.

The expedition camped at the White Temple, an abandoned lamasery that served as a base for journeys deep into Inner Mongolia. From here, the three men carried out extensive fieldwork and collected about 5,000 ethnographic and archaeological items and hundreds of Mongolian block prints and manuscripts. Today these materials make up one of the most important Asian collections at the National Museum.

One of the expedition’s key strengths was Haslund-Christensen’s systematic and diligent practice of audio recording Mongolian songs and music, a method he had refined since his travels with Sven Hedin.

The technology had evolved from an older Danish tradition, dating back to the folklore researcher Evald Tang Kristensen’s (1843–1929) fieldwork in Jutland, but this was the first time it was applied on the steppes of Central Asia as a way to preserve the voices and sounds of a nomadic culture.

Haslund-Christensen’s persistence sometimes put him on a collision course with Grønbech, who felt that the former sometimes went too far in his scientific ardour to secure the right audio recordings and artefacts, pushing his informants too hard and overstepping ethical boundaries. Haslund-Christensen, on the other hand, was excited by the technology and saw the recordings as a necessary means to preserve the oral heritage of the indigenous peoples of Mongolia.

After World War II, Haslund-Christensen resumed his work, and the Third Danish Expedition to Central Asia set out in 1947 with a team of 14 researchers. The plan was to explore the cultures of Central Asia from Afghanistan through Tibet to Inner Mongolia, but political tension and closed borders hampered their progress. The expedition headquarters was set up in Kabul, where Haslund-Christensen unexpectedly died and was buried, in 1948.

Still, the expedition continued: the natural science researchers conducted studies in Afghanistan, while the ethnographer Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark (1908–1980) took over the work in the Himalayas. Among the thousands of Tibetan refugees in Kalimpong, he documented social structures, rituals, genealogy and physical body measurements – a pioneering work of physical anthropology and ethnography. The expedition officially ended in 1954, but Prince Peter continued his work in the region for a few more years.

From 1953 to 1955, Prince Peter served as head of the Henning Haslund-Christensen Memorial Expedition to Afghanistan to complete Haslund-Christensen’s unfinished work. The team collected extensive material about local rituals, family relations, daily life and material culture, thus ensuring a valuable conclusion to the project as a whole. Together, the Danish expeditions to Central Asia helped make Asian nomadic cultures a main topic of Danish ethnographic studies.

The chapter is written by Dorthe Chakravarty.