Sweden returns skulls to Polynesia

8:20 am on 9 June 2015

Ten human skulls collected in the 1800s in French Polynesia have been returned to members of a Polynesian group at a ceremony in Sweden.

The skulls were taken to Sweden in 1884 by a pioneering Swedish archaeologist, Hjalmar Stolpe, and have been kept at universities in Stockholm and Uppsala.

University authorities worked with the Polynesian association Te Tupuna Te Tura on the repatriation of the remains.

The skulls will now be buried in the Marquesas Islands.