The publication of Fredrik Svanberg’s Människosamlarna. Anatomiska museer och rasvetenskap i Sverige ca 1850–1950 [The Collectors of Human Beings. Anatomical Museums and Racial Science in Sweden c. 1850–1950] is very timely. The topic of human remains in museum collections has recently been under debate in Swedish media Early in 2015, the debate was triggered by the efforts of Karolinska Institutet’s Unit for Medical History and Heritage to research its neglected historic collections of human remains, and start repatriating racialized skulls to indigenous source communities. (Disclosure: I am the director of that unit, and my own research on the history of medical museums is referenced in this book.) Svanberg, who is head of research at the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm, wrote an important contribution to the media debate. The old skull collections that still exist in Lund, Uppsala and Stockholm, he pointed out, have been “rediscovered” by the media at intervals of 5–7 years since the 1980s (cf. pp. 20–26). Media attention tends to cause a brief uproar, until the crania are quickly forgotten again – until the next time. Swedes don’t seem to retain past understandings and constructions of race, or how these conceptions contributed to the creation of our modern, neutral and ostensibly non-racist welfare state.
Fredrik Svanberg. Människosamlarna. Anatomiska museer och rasvetenskap i Sverige ca 1850–1950