ABSTRACT
This chapter develops an account of how historical kinds may undergo status transformations and as a result achieve a moral standing. It discusses the supposed racial groups in northern Sweden and Finland and a particular status transformation that occurred for the Sami as part of the racial theorizing at the turn of the 20th century. Racial theorizing in the Nordic region is intimately connected with the eugenics movement that took place in the Nordic countries from the 1930s to as far as the end of the 1970s. Eugenics was often sanctioned by the scientific mainstream, but it also contained a devastating element that were integrated with xenophobic ideologies. National governments are often slow in implementing the appropriate legislation when it comes to indigenous rights. Only in August 2019 were 25 Sami craniums repatriated to their original gravesite in Lykselse, Sweden, after being removed for research purposes and later stored away in a museum.
