xsl:copy-of

Copy the current context node together with any child nodes and attributes to the result document without converting it to a string.

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:template name="test">
    <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
					

You can use xsl:copy-of instead of xsl:value-of to copy a node-set into a variable.

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:variable name="contacts">
    <xsl:copy-of select="/contacts/*"/>
  </xsl:variable>

  <xsl:template name="test">
    <xsl:for-each select="$contacts">
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>