STOCKHOLM (AP).- Sweden is returning 22 skulls taken from a native Hawaiian community at a solemn ceremony at Stockholm's Museum of National Antiquities.
Museum spokeswoman Ulrika Mannberg says Saturday's hand-over will be attended by around 30 special guests, including representatives of the Group Caring for Ancestors of Hawaii and the Nordic countries' own indigenous Sami population.
Five skulls are being returned by the museum, to which they were donated in 1997. They were brought to Sweden by a Swedish scientist in the 1880s after he took part in a trip around the world. They are believed to have been taken from a Hawaiian burial cave.
The other 17 skulls are being returned by Stockholm's medical university Karolinska Institutet.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
