Norwegian museum returns artifacts, skulls taken by explorer back to Easter Island

The Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo announced on Wednesday that it is returning archaeological pieces and human remains taken by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl in 1947 to Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, as part of a collaboration with Chile and local authorities. A nine-person delegation from Rapa Nui traveled to Norway this week to collect the items, participating in a ceremony organized by the museum in Oslo.

Among the items being returned are human remains known as Ivi Tepuna and sculpted stones. The objects include skulls from the Rapa Nui community, the indigenous population of Easter Island, which is known for its hundreds of moai—monolithic human figures carved centuries ago. Many of these items have been stored and exhibited in the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, Norway.

Four members of the delegation spent the night at the Oslo museum alongside the remains as part of a ritual ceremony to take back the spirits of the remains. This ritual was conducted in Rapa Nui—the vernacular language—explained Laura Tarita Rapu Alarcón, a member of the delegation, to the news agency NTB. Before the reception, a spiritual ceremony was held. Ceremonies have also been scheduled once the remains arrive at their destination. The remains will be transported across the island to eight sacred places before being buried definitively.

Liv Heyerdahl, the museum's director and granddaughter of Thor Heyerdahl, stated, "My grandfather would have been proud of what we are about to achieve," and emphasized the importance of involving those who own the culture in the return process. She told the Norwegian news agency NTB that the objects were brought to Norway "with a promise that they would one day be returned." Liv Heyerdahl was quoted as saying by NTB, "It is important that those who own the culture are involved in the process. Of course these remains should be returned, and it feels right because they belong to the Rapa Nui."

The Kon-Tiki Museum added, "The return of the objects to Easter Island will ensure that the Rapa Nui people are the owners of their cultural property," highlighting the collaborative effort in this return.

This is the third time pieces taken by Thor Heyerdahl are being returned to Easter Island. Some objects were given back in 1986, and others were returned in 2006. Norway has been returning these pieces over the past few years.

In 2019, an agreement was signed in Santiago, Chile, during a visit by Norway's King Harald to return the artifacts. The COVID-19 pandemic halted all activities in 2020, according to the Kon-Tiki Museum. King Harald of Norway met with the Rapa Nui delegation on Tuesday.

Thor Heyerdahl, who passed away in 2002 at the age of 87, traveled in 1955 to Easter Island, where he and his team unearthed 5,600 objects to take to Norway, promising to return them someday to the local population. He was convinced that the inhabitants of Peru had reached the isolated islands of the Pacific and wanted to demonstrate, with this already mythical expedition, that this hypothesis was possible.

In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl sailed a balsa wood raft called Kon-Tiki from Peru to Polynesia in 101 days to prove his theory that the South Sea Islands were populated by navigators from South America. Heyerdahl traveled to several islands in South America between 1946 and 1947 to prove his theory that they had been populated by natives. A book about Thor Heyerdahl's journey has become an international bestseller, and his film about the journey won an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1951.

Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, is located 3,700 kilometers (2,300 miles) from South America and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. It covers about 164 square kilometers (63 square miles) and is home to about 7,700 people, half of whom have Rapa Nui ancestry. Easter Island was formed at least 750,000 years ago by volcanic eruptions and is one of the world's most isolated inhabited islands. In 2019, Easter Island was officially renamed "Rapa Nui-Easter Island," from its previous name of just Easter Island.

Sources: The Independent, El Mercurio, La República, BioBioChile

This article was written in collaboration with generative AI company Alchemiq