From piles of documents to a museum collection

In 1979 or 1980, British-born manuscript hunter Don Tumasonis was shown Oscar Mamen's 1933–1937 manuscript by a librarian at the MCH (then the Ethnographic Museum). He contacted Paul Heyer, a leading US Mongolist at the time, to review the manuscript with publication in mind. However, Heyer rejected it, considering it of little academic interest. Tumasonis never forgot the manuscript, keeping it in mind years later when he attended a mini-conference about Ethel Lindgren in 2015. A Cambridge scholar at the conference, whom he had met in the 1980s, showed interest, and Tumasonis promised to make an effort to locate the manuscript anew. After randomly calling Norwegian persons with the last name Mamen, Tumasonis eventually reached Stein Mamen, Oscar Mamen's grandchild, in mid-August 2015. Hearing Stein Mamen talk about the travel cases full of his grandfather's belongings, which he had stored in the garage, Tumasonis realised this could be a significant find. He contacted Gro Ween at the MCH to arrange a visit to Stein Mamen. On a second visit in January 2016, Tumasonis and Ween invited scholars from Cambridge and Aberdeen to join. On February 14 2017, the contract between the Mamen family and the Museum of Cultural History was signed. Several suitcases of old photographs, letters, diaries, and other notes left by the family became the Mamen collection.