Why Iceland wants its medieval skulls back

, curator of physical anthropology at the National Museum of Iceland, and she was finally able to reunite the skeletal assemblage—at least on paper—for her 2019 PhD thesis. Her research revealed Haffjarðarey is one of the largest medieval-era archaeological sites in Iceland, with bones uniquely well preserved by the island’s sandy soil.The geographic separation of the bones make the anthropologist’s work difficult.

worked on: categorizing and ranking “races” based on cranial measurements for eugenics. But they’re insufficient for contemporary research that focuses on characterizing the health and demographics of past communities, says Walser. Science reasons aside, he and other Icelandic scholars feel the skulls from Haffjarðarey should be returned on moral and ethical grounds.

Iceland was originally settled by the Norse and Celts and later controlled by Denmark, and thus has no Indigenous population. To Walser, that means there isn’t the same political urgency to repatriate the skulls compared to situations where a history of colonial oppression and looting is clear.

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