Cultural Restitution

December 1, 2019
NORWAY
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Norway

Updated November 2024


Below is a schedule of successful restitutions made by Norway to a country or community of source.  Entries are updated regularly.


November 2024

For the third time, Oslo's Kon-Tiki Museum is returning artefacts and human remains collected by Thor Heyerdahl in the late 1940s to Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

apnews.com




September 2021

Nearly 100 Mesopotamian artefacts in the collection of a private Norwegian collector are the subject of a restitution request from Iraqi authorities to the Norwegian Ministry of Culture

ArtDaily



April 2019

Oslo’s Kon-Tiki Museum agrees to hand back thousands of artefacts, collected by the explorer Thor Heyerdahl in the 1950s, to Rapa Nui

https://www.thelocal.no/20190330/norways-kon-tiki-museum-agrees-to-return-easter-island-items



More News

Cambridge University’s transfer of legal title of Benin artefacts to Nigeria may lead others to do the same

February 14, 2026
This week’s announcement that Cambridge University has transferred legal ownership of its collection of 116 Benin artefacts to Nigeria could be hugely significant

DCMS will review its exclusion of national collections from returning cultural objects on moral grounds

February 4, 2026
Britain’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport has confirmed it will review the exclusion it imposed on national collections that prevents them from returning cultural objects on moral grounds

University of Edinburgh returns six Native American skulls to Muscogee Nation

January 30, 2026
Six Native American skulls, acquired to advance the pseudoscience of phrenology, have been returned by the University of Edinburgh to the Muscogee Nation, a self-governed Native American Tribal Nation