Two Maori heads held in Norway, one acquired in the 1930s when racial studies were fashionable, were returned to representatives from a New Zealand museum.

The University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History and the faculty of medicine returned the heads to a Maori delegation charged with preserving New Zealand’s multi-cultural heritage, a museum official said.

At the handover ceremony, the delegation sang a traditional Maori funeral song.

Oeivind Fuglerud, head of the museum’s ethnography section said one head was purchased in the 1930s when the physiological differences between different races was a popular field of research.

The origins of the second head are not known, but Maori heads were often looted in the 19th and 20th century and were highly valued for their tattoos.

Meanwhile a mummified Maori warrior head will be returned to the Te Papa Tongawera museum in Wellington today.