A woman in southern Sweden is furious after stumbling upon scores of
skulls and human bones inside IKEA bags in a church. The man who dug up
the bones, however, says it's not as bad as it looks.The Kläckeberga church is using IKEA bags to store the remains of around 80 people who were once buried under the floorboards. The
bags are covered by a tarpaulin and have been sitting there since parts
of the church were dug up and rebuilt to allow wheelchair access. "I was on the team called in to dig out the bones five years ago," archaeologist Ludvig Papmehl-Dufay told The Local."Our
mission was to document and rebury the bones, which may be as much as
500 years old. But the reburial was delayed and I have no idea why. The
plan was to rebury them as soon as possible, but that's up to the
church. The county board said they couldn't leave church ground, and it
became complicated."He explained that the bones were likely
reburied in a secondary deposition many years ago in what he called a
"bone house". The collection is mostly skulls and longer bones, he
added. While Papmehl-Dufay denied storing the bones in the IKEA
bags himself, he admitted that it sounded like an efficient storage
technique. "It's not standard practice, definitely not for
archaeologists, but the Ikea bags aren't actually that bad. They'd be
great for stopping the moulding process. But it can't be that good to
have them in the basement for so long."
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