Norway to repatriate Chilean artifacts

Human remains and other artifacts taken from Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyderdahl on his legendary Kon Tiki expeditions are to be returned to their homeland after an agreement was signed between Norway and Chile.

Heyerdahl's son Thor Jr and Chile's Minister of Culture, Arts and Heritage Consuelo Valdes signed an agreement during a state visit to Chile by Norway's King Harald V and Queen Sonja.

Heyerdahl, who died in 2002 aged 87, crossed the Pacific Ocean in 1947 and then again in 1955 on a balsa wood raft called Kon Tiki, to prove his theory that some of the earliest Pacific Island settlers came from South America, rather than Southeast Asia, as widely thought.