This object was catalogued in 1884 and identified as given by the Royal Museum of Sweden. Card and Anthropology catalogue ledger book identify this as from Vega Expedition. In 1878-1880 the Vega expedition in the Arctic Ocean took place. The expedition was headed by polar explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld; the ship used was the Vega. The purpose of the expedition was to study the Arctic coast along Russian Siberia, and look for the Northeast Passage. The expedition's progress was stopped by pack ice on September 28, 1878, about 1.5 kilometers from the coast at the Chukchi Peninsula at Neshkan, only days from the Bering Strait. The expedition spent the winter there at a place called Pitlekaj in eastern Siberia between Wrangel Island and the Bering Strait. The Vega expedition artifacts are described on p. 112 of the U.S. National Museum Annual Report for 1884.
Reference: Krupnik, Igor & Schultz, Martin. (2020). Dispersal and Reunion – The Saga of the “Vega” Expedition Chukchi Collection, 1878–2020. In Archiv 69: Archiv Weltmuseum Wien. 106-137.
