Published: Just now
For more than a hundred years, the remains of two men of Sami origin have been kept in Lund and Uppsala, respectively. Now they will be buried in Arjeplog.
About the man whose remains ended up in Uppsala University’s collections, it is known that he died in 1892 while serving a life sentence at Långholmen Central Prison in Stockholm.
The identity of the man whose skull was kept in Lund has not been determined. The skull was handed over as a gift to the Zoological Museum in Lund in 1852 by a man who studied to be a doctor in Lund and then worked as a provincial doctor in Norrbotten. The skull is believed to come from a looted grave, writes Lund University in a press release.
“The collection of remains of indigenous people was about cultivating the myth that there were human races that could be linked to different characteristics and that myth should not gain a further foothold in our time,” says the university’s rector Erik Renström in the press release.
Arjeplog’s Sami association has turned to both universities with a request for the extradition of the remains. Together with the Church of Sweden, the association arranges a funeral on Friday, where representatives from the universities also participate.