Cultural Restitution

May 18, 2020
SWEDEN
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Sweden

Updated May 2024


Below is a schedule of successful restitutions made by Sweden, together with other Swedish restitution news.  Entries are updated regularly.


May 2024

Sweden's Ambassador to Nigeria has announced her government's intention to return thirty-nine Benin artefacts to Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments

The Guardian


June 2022

Nineteen years after making the initial request, a Maaso Kova ceremonial deer's head and 23 other artefacts from the Yaqui Nation in northern Mexico have been returned by Sweden's Museum of Ethnography

ArtDaily


June 2020

Nationalmuseum Sweden has recommended the return of a stolen painting by the School of Lucas Cranach the Elder to Muzeum Narodowe we Wroclawiu in Poland

Art Daily


February 2008

Lund University in southern Sweden returned the remains of two Aboriginals after the Swedish Government ordered the repatriation of all Aboriginal remains

Sydney Morning Herald


September 2004

Sweden's National Museum of Ethnography returns the remains of 15 Aboriginals to Australia after public opinion was infuriated after confirmation Swedish explorers had stolen them 

NBC News




More News


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
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
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