The article informs about ethnographic materials regarding the culture of Rusyns/Ukrainians in the works of Oskar Kolberg, a documentalist of this culture in the 19th century. It shows what these materials are, where they come from, how they were collected and how they were made available. The author also presents Kolberg’s knowledge and beliefs about the Rusyns. He also discusses the reception of Kolberg’s work in past and modern Ukrainian and Polish science. The author is convinced that ethnographic materials from the 19th century collected by Kolberg are important cognitively and have the ability to shape the identity of people living today.
