FISCHER1914-001 - museum specimen
Karo Batak
Indonesia - Bukit, Karo highlands, North Sumatra - Southeast Asia
Play / practical
dengeng-dengeng German; Dutch metadata
Source term: Schwirrholz
dengeng-dengeng: Karo name recorded for accession 1680/1.
On a 71-centimetre bamboo switch hangs a small bamboo spearhead. Karo children swung the flexible stock and sent the dengeng-dengeng circling on its own cord. Fischer's 1914 catalogue calls it simply a child's toy, but the surviving object makes the play legible: a tiny lance launched into orbit, kept tethered to the wand that drives it. A Toba Batak example in the same catalogue used a rectangular blade; the Karo toy's narrow point gave it a silhouette of its own.
Schwirrholz (dengeng-dengeng) ... lanzenspitzenförmiges Bambusbrett, mittelst einer Schnur an das Ende eines biegsamen Bambusstockes aufgehängt. Kinderspielzeug.
Bullroarer (dengeng-dengeng): a lance-shaped bamboo board hung by a cord from the end of a flexible bamboo stick. Children's toy.
Fischer 1914, p. 119.
- Object
- A lance-shaped bamboo blade, 26.5 x 3 cm, hung by its own cord from the end of a flexible 71 cm bamboo stock; Wereldmuseum RV-1680-1.
- Function
- A children's whirled toy.
- Map confidence
- high - Kabanjahe/Karo Regency regional anchor; Fischer gives Bukit, Karo, not a collection village.
- Source location
- Fischer 1914:119, accession 1680/1
- Toy / secular survival