The Swedish government granted permission to the Karolinska Institute to transfer a collection of skulls of Finnish origin to Finland, the press service of the Swedish Ministry of Education reported on April 19 on the official Internet portal of government agencies.
The anatomical collections of the Karolinska Institute contain human remains brought from the territory of modern Finland. Its origin was established as a result of research carried out by the institute’s staff. There are 82 remains of Finnish origin, mostly skulls.
The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture previously asked Sweden to repatriate the remains. They will be transported to Finland for reburial.
Recall that in February 2024, an official request from Finland to return human remains of Finnish origin stored in the collection of the Karolinska Institute was reported. Some of them were received as gifts or as an exchange of anatomical preparations, and most were exhumed during a special trip that Swedish researchers made to Finland in 1873.
Swedish scientists carried out racial research and set out to study the skulls of Finns as representatives of a non-European race. The remains were exhumed from tombs in four Finnish cemeteries that, according to historical sources, were used between the 15th and 17th centuries.
The campaign to return the skull collection to Finland began in the fall of 2018 with a request from an independent group, the Committee for the Return of Finnish Remains from the Karolinska Institute Collection. An investigation initiated by the institute found that excavations carried out by researchers in the 19th century were legal under the laws of the time, but could be considered ethically and morally problematic by today’s standards. The press service of the Karolinska Institute reported that an official request is needed to return the skulls to Finland.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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