Artefacts and human remains taken by a Norwegian explorer in the late 1940s as part of the famous Kon-Tiki expedition are being returned to Chile’s Easter Island in the mid-Pacific.

In 1947, the anthropologist and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl sailed on a log raft named Kon-Tiki from Peru to Polynesia in 101 days in order to prove his theory – that the South Sea Islands were settled by seafarers from South America.

He brought 5,600 objects back to Norway from Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui. This is the third time objects taken by him are being returned.

Many have been stored and displayed at the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, Norway’s capital, and some were given back in 1986 and others in 2006. The return is a collaboration between the museum, Chile and Rapa Nui’s local authorities.

Liv Heyerdahl, head of the museum and the explorer’s granddaughter, said: “My grandfather would have been proud of what we are about to achieve.”

She told the Norwegian news agency NTB that the objects were brought to Norway “with a promise that they would one day be returned”.

The late Queen Elizabeth II is presented with a model of the raft by Thor Heyerdahl in the 1940s
The late Queen Elizabeth II received a model of the famous Kon-Tiki raft from Thor Heyerdahl himself (PA Archive)

Among those that are being returned this time around are human remains called Ivi Tepuna and sculpted stones.

A nine-person delegation had travelled to Norway this week to collect the items. Four of them spent the night at the Oslo museum, alongside the remains as part of a ritual ceremony to take back the spirits of the remains.

A member of the delegation, Laura Tarita Rapu Alarcon, told NTB: “First one must awaken the spirits, and then speak to them in our original language. Food is then prepared to eat a meal with them, where the smell of the food goes to the spirits.”

“It is important that those who own the culture are involved in the process,” Ms Heyerdahl was quoted as saying by NTB.

“Of course these remains should be returned, and it feels right because they belong to the Rapa Nui.”

In 2019, an agreement was signed in Santiago, Chile, during a visit by Norway’s King Harald. However, the Covid-19 pandemic stopped all activities in 2020, the museum said.

A book about the voyage of Thor Heyerdahl – who died in 2002 at the age of 87 – became an international bestseller, and his film of the journey won an Academy Award for best documentary in 1951.

Rapa Nui is best known for the hundreds of moai – monolithic human figures carved centuries ago by this remote Pacific island’s Rapanui people.

Covering about 63 square miles and home to about 7,700 people, half of them with Rapa Nui ancestry, Easter Island was formed at least 750,000 years ago by volcanic eruptions and is one of the world’s most isolated inhabited islands.

Located 2,300 miles from South America, Rapa Nui was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1995.

In 2019, it was officially renamed “Rapa Nui-Easter Island” from its previous name of just Easter Island.