The Art of Ignoring Facts

In a recent article, Josephine M. Rasmussen and Vibeke M. Viestad (2021) use the Kon-Tiki Museum (KTM) in Oslo, Norway, as a case of contemporary “colonial museum practice”. The authors explore how Thor Heyerdahl’s legacy manifests in the museum’s exhibition, and its “decolonisation” process to repatriate Rapa Nui (Easter Island) material, and in current research. Both writers of this comment are cited in the article. We argue that Rasmussen and Viestad’s empirical evidence is faulty and inadequate. The authors use the Congo ethnographic collection of Inge Heiberg at the Museum of Cultural History, Oslo, as another case. Without knowledge about this collection, we will not comment its validity as a case of colonial museum practice.

Over the last decades Western museums have acknowledged Indigenous peoples’ claims to cultural property, unethically obtained during the imperial era, or, in rare cases, more recent times. Stolen objects, illegal art trade and preservation of cultural heritage are indeed important matters (Bakke 2010). However, not all repatriation processes result from colonial collecting practices. Rasmussen and Viestad’s lack of empirical evidence to support their case makes us wonder if they want colonial museum practice to fit KTM. Apparently, their main source is a newspaper interview in which Martin Biehl, the former museum director, allegedly saw the repatriation of Rapa Nui material obtained during Heyerdahl’s expeditions in 1955–1956 and 1986–1988, as a means to “decolonise the museum” (Rasmussen and Viestad 2021, 72, 78). We are puzzled by the fact that the word appears in the headline only (“Decolonisation with a smile”, our translation), and not once used by Biehl himself in the article.

KTM was established as a private museum in 1950 to house the Kon-Tiki expedition raft, which had been donated by Heyerdahl. It has never received government funding as claimed by the authors (Rasmussen and Viestad 2021, 79), and its small collections consist solely of material procured in post-war years. Moreover, it aims to abide by the ethical code of the International Council of Museums (ICOM). The repatriation of Rapa Nui material is an example.

In February 1956, Heyerdahl signed an agreement with representatives of the Chilean Ministry of Education, giving the participating archaeologists on his first expedition to the island permission to bring excavated objects to their home universities for further research (Bakke and Solsvik 2019; 2020, 151). Other objects were personal gifts, acquired by trade or through a traditional Rapa Nui exchange system. This has thoroughly been described by Edwin N. Ferdon (1966, 92–102), one of the expedition archaeologists, and not obtained from Heyerdahl’s “old records” as assumed by Rasmussen and Viestad (2021, 76). In the mid-1960s, Chilean authorities reminded Heyerdahl about the agreement. The four archaeologists were informed, and, as far as Heyerdahl knew, the excavated material had been repatriated. However, Arne Skjølsvold, the Norwegian archaeologist, head of KTM’s research department in the 1980s, had failed to return his share. The material had been stowed away at the museum, and when it was found in 2007, the event eventually led to KTM’s repatriation initiative (Solsvik, pers. comm.).

Hence, Rasmussen and Viestad’s (2021, 76–77) juxtaposition of Heyerdahl’s theft in 1937–1938 of human skulls on Fatuiva, Marquesas Islands, with the transfer of objects and human remains on Rapa Nui in the 1950s, has no empirical bearing. The authors’ reference to a PhD thesis, which on closer examination is not based on primary sources, does not inspire confidence. Moreover, regarding the objects excluded from the Chilean repatriation claims, still on display at KTM, there are good reasons why the exhibition “does not address issues of problematic provenance” (Rasmussen and Viestad 2021, 73).

As regards the repatriation initiated by KTM, the authors mention, in a mere footnote, that the process has been postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic (Rasmussen and Viestad 2021, 77), when, in their email correspondence with the museum, they were told that this is the only reason for the delay (Solsvik, pers. comm.). Rasmussen and Viestad leave the impression that KTM has a colonial mindset, one that views the Rapanuis as inferior and less capable of caring for their own cultural heritage. Chilean authorities have agreed to meet KTM’s only condition that the receiver on Rapa Nui, Museo Antropologico P. Sebastian Englert, will house the valuable collection according to international standards (ICOM 2017).

In their pursuit of depicting Heyerdahl a racist, one whose “colonial” practices and theories supposedly are continued by KTM, Rasmussen and Viestad (2021, 75–76, 79) state that the museum is “perpetually conveying [his] fantasies of white supremacy”, and that its exhibition is a continuation of biographer Arnold Jacoby’s representation of him as “the embodiment of Kon-Tiki, the bearded white god”. They support the arguments by referring to highly controversial critics of Heyerdahl.

Jacoby’s title Señor Kon-Tiki refers to Kon-Tiki the balsa raft, not to its namesake—the white, bearded Inca culture hero Con-Ticci Viracocha of Spanish chroniclers. It was the Rapanuis, having limited knowledge of Heyerdahl’s theory of cultural diffusion from pre-historic South America to Polynesia, and knowing him primarily as the world-famous balsa raft captain, who bestowed upon him the honorary nickname “Señor Kon-Tiki” (Heyerdahl 1958, 44). There is no evidence of Heyerdahl ever identifying with the character, who according to legend, brought civilisation to the predecessors of the Inca before departing into the Pacific. On the contrary, in American Indians in the Pacific (1952, 225, 304, 344–345), he explicitly rejects all attempts at racially identifying possible traces of bearded, light-haired pre-Columbian Americans as European or Nordic, and he even argues for local genetic mutation (e.g. Solsvik and Stokke 2020, 6; Stokke 2021, 228–229).

It is scholarly unprofessional to hide such nuances, and instead couple Heyerdahl with the catchword “scientific racism” (Rasmussen and Viestad 2021, 75–76). Several scholars are accused of having “repeatedly rejected” the scientific racism allegedly inherent in his theories. We acknowledge, that, assessed by today’s standards, some of Heyerdahl’s mid-twentieth century writings can be viewed as racist. However, archival records from the 1940s of private letters to his then wife, Liv, reveal that Heyerdahl nurtured beliefs that can best be described as anti-racist. Solsvik and Stokke (2020, 13) quote from one of these letters, wherein he states that the core of life “is the same in a Congo Negro as in a Norwegian” (our translation). Stokke (2022, 3–4; cf. 2021, 6) has found another letter, from which it can be inferred that Heyerdahl was strongly opposed to racism and other forms of discriminatory attitudes. We ask the authors to clarify how KTM conveys Heyerdahl’s “fantasies of white supremacy”, and how its exhibition is a continuation of Jacoby’s alleged presentation of him as a “bearded, white god”.

Rasmussen and Viestad (2021, 74–75) claim that Erik Thorsby, Professor of Immunology, University of Oslo, regrettably continued Heyerdahl’s outdated research agenda when conducting genetic sampling on Rapa Nui skulls around 2010, potentially proving that Heyerdahl was not completely wrong in asserting that the island was partly settled by people from South America. We find it both ethically and scientifically problematic to link the recently deceased Thorsby with a theory stated to “rest firmly on ideas of scientific racism, [and] hyper-diffusionism”.

Thorsby began his genetic studies of Rapanuis in the early 1970s as part of the Fifth International Histocompatibility Workshop (1972), whose purpose, according to the conference report, was to investigate the worldwide distribution of the newly discovered human leukocyte antigen (HLA) “for anthropological study” (Terasaki 1973, 2). It remains unclear why Thorsby and his multinational team chose Rapa Nui as their field of study, but it seems to have been a joint decision between the Workshop committee and the various laboratories involved (Bodmer 1973, 629; cf. Thorsby 2014, 121–122). The results of their study showed that a carefully selected group of 69 Rapanuis had possible HLA correlations with Native Americans (Thorsby et al. 1973, 294). In 2006, Thorsby and colleagues applied new HLA genotyping technology on the previously collected serum samples, and were able to identify certain HLA alleles with the highest frequencies among Indigenous populations in South America (Lie 2007).

Thorsby’s research is no more a continuation of Heyerdahl’s agenda than are the findings that made world headlines in 2020, after an international team of 31 scientists concluded that Native Americans from the region of prehistoric Colombia and Ecuador made landfall on Fatuiva perhaps as early as 1150 CE (Ioannidis 2020). To associate the research of Thorsby and his colleagues with scientific racism and theories of cultural hyper-diffusionism, is outrageous.

Rasmussen and Viestad (2021, 75) further argue that Thorsby is imprecise when speaking of Heyerdahl’s hypothetical “Indian” settlers of Rapa Nui as if they were Indigenous to South America. The authors claim that Thorsby “must be aware that this was not Heyerdahl’s theory”. Citing American Indians, leaving out its arguments for local genetic mutation, the authors posit that Heyerdahl in fact advocated a racist doctrine of white supremacy, which held that light-skinned, bearded culture bringers had come from across the Atlantic to impose civilisation on the natives. In reality, the book holds little evidence of hyperdiffusionist ideas (Stokke 2021, 228–229).

The basic premise of any scientific work is that assumptions must be documented with reliable data and information. This facilitates a constructive scholarly dialogue. Paradoxically, the authors’ selective documentation and biased understanding mirror the dubious methodological approach that Heyerdahl was often criticized for (e.g. Johansen 2003, ch. 12; Østreng 2014, 80–82). Bakke and Solsvik (2020, 255–256) discuss reasons for this criticism, and refer to letters that archaeologists on the Rapa Nui expedition wrote to Heyerdahl, one of which from Ferdon, dated June 29, 1961:

I am in no way implying that you are intentionally trying to force an issue, but all people are biased toward their views and, … all researchers should realize their particular biases, and realizing them, try to balance their reasoning accordingly so that the bias does not cause them to see things that other disinterested people might not see nor accept. (KTM Ferdon Archive 2012-010-0009).

Our comment has concentrated on issues that we regard as the most problematic ones. Our impression is that the authors fail to consider the complexity of the subject, and thus lack sufficient knowledge to make KTM a relevant case. Their article’s credibility is also affected by several factual errors. Adding to those addressed already: KTM’s curator- and directorship, consisting solely of Reidar Solsvik and, at the time of writing, Biehl, respectively, is incorrectly referred to in the plural: “curators”, “directors” (Rasmussen and Viestad 2021, 76–77); Heyerdahl is said to have launched more than one trans-Pacific expedition in the 1940s (Rasmussen and Viestad 2021, 72), when, frankly, his only expedition then was the 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition; that he initiated the expedition to Rapa Nui together with KTM to find evidence “in support of his hypothesis” (Rasmussen and Viestad 2021, 73), whereas the truth is that the initiative was Heyerdahl’s own, and that he never asked the expedition’s archaeological members to support his theory; and, that his “racist theories” are “largely unacknowledged” in Norway (Rasmussen and Viestad 2021, 78), when countless media headlines and scholarly discussions during the last decades give the completely opposite impression.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).