On Sunday, 42 of those skulls were returned and reinterred in Palkane, a small community in Finland about 80 miles northwest of Helsinki, where residents hailed their homecoming as the righting of a historic wrong.
They are our own people, even if they lived hundreds of years ago, Pauliina Pikka, a local official, said in an interview before the ceremony. They deserve, now, to come back here. They deserve to get rest.
For decades until 2015, human remains taken by researchers were housed in various Swedish institutions before being returned to Karolinska. Since then, the university has been researching the origins of some of the remains and repatriating them.
This is a handshake with the past, the local cultural coordinator said of the remains' return, signifying reconciliation with historical injustices.
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