The travels of the bones
Nothing can happen to the dead, how could the dead be harmed when they do not exist?
—Malin Masterton, “Duties to Past Persons”
1
A femur, brought up from the shipwreck by a diver in 1959. Some ribs. A skull.
2
More bones—over a thousand—found inside the ship, once it has been raised and brought into the dry dock. Some skeletons entirely, or largely, intact. But other bones dispersed throughout the ship. Perhaps moved by currents, or by earlier attempts at salvage, or by spray from the hoses used to clean tons of mud out of the hull.
3
An osteologist identifies twelve individuals, giving each one a letter code, from A to L.
4
The bones of each individual go into a plastic bag. The bags are sealed in a concrete coffin and buried in the naval graveyard in 1963, with full military honors.
5
Over the next few years, more bones are found by divers probing the mud where the wreck had been lying. Six more individuals, the experts think. These bones are never buried.
6
In 1989 the grave is opened and the bones are disinterred for further study. Water has seeped into the plastic bags, and the bones, which had suffered very little damage during the three centuries lying at the bottom of the harbor, have now become moldy and fragile. When cleaned, some bones collapse into splinters.
7
Another osteologist shuffles and reallocates all the bones, based on measurements and appearance. She identifies twenty-five separate individuals. One is only an arm bone, and another is only a tooth. She names them alphabetically, using the male names that constitute the Swedish Armed Forces radio alphabet, from “Adam” to “Zäta.” The female skeletons B and Y are designated as “Beata” and “Ylva.”
8
The bones of twelve individuals are put on display in the permanent museum, lying on glittering black aquarium sand in glass cases. The rest of the bones are put into cardboard boxes, each marked with that individual’s designated initial, and kept in a storage room beneath the museum.
9
Starting in 2004, new interest in the bones. Recognition that the earlier analyses were faulty: find-numbers had been lost; bones were not kept together; the second osteologist had been told to ignore the context in which the bones had been found.
10
Further shufflings and reshufflings, based on limited DNA testing and a re-examination of where the bones had been found. Some of Ivar’s bones, erroneously distributed to five other people, are returned to him. Cesar’s mandible belongs to David. Two of Kalle’s vertebrae belong to Beata; but three of hers are reassigned to Filip. Beata loses two metacarpals to Cesar, but gets a clavicle from Erik, and a tooth back from Niklas which, since the tooth was all there ever was of Niklas, means he never existed. Neither did Martin, Olof, Quintus, or Zäta.
11
The bones get together and separate again. There’s a lot of visiting back and forth between boxes, and some crossing-out in magic marker, like those apartment buildings where the names on the mailboxes are always being written over, and no one can remember who used to live there.
A femur, brought up from the shipwreck by a diver in 1959. Some ribs. A skull.
2
More bones—over a thousand—found inside the ship, once it has been raised and brought into the dry dock. Some skeletons entirely, or largely, intact. But other bones dispersed throughout the ship. Perhaps moved by currents, or by earlier attempts at salvage, or by spray from the hoses used to clean tons of mud out of the hull.
3
An osteologist identifies twelve individuals, giving each one a letter code, from A to L.
4
The bones of each individual go into a plastic bag. The bags are sealed in a concrete coffin and buried in the naval graveyard in 1963, with full military honors.
5
Over the next few years, more bones are found by divers probing the mud where the wreck had been lying. Six more individuals, the experts think. These bones are never buried.
6
In 1989 the grave is opened and the bones are disinterred for further study. Water has seeped into the plastic bags, and the bones, which had suffered very little damage during the three centuries lying at the bottom of the harbor, have now become moldy and fragile. When cleaned, some bones collapse into splinters.
7
Another osteologist shuffles and reallocates all the bones, based on measurements and appearance. She identifies twenty-five separate individuals. One is only an arm bone, and another is only a tooth. She names them alphabetically, using the male names that constitute the Swedish Armed Forces radio alphabet, from “Adam” to “Zäta.” The female skeletons B and Y are designated as “Beata” and “Ylva.”
8
The bones of twelve individuals are put on display in the permanent museum, lying on glittering black aquarium sand in glass cases. The rest of the bones are put into cardboard boxes, each marked with that individual’s designated initial, and kept in a storage room beneath the museum.
9
Starting in 2004, new interest in the bones. Recognition that the earlier analyses were faulty: find-numbers had been lost; bones were not kept together; the second osteologist had been told to ignore the context in which the bones had been found.
10
Further shufflings and reshufflings, based on limited DNA testing and a re-examination of where the bones had been found. Some of Ivar’s bones, erroneously distributed to five other people, are returned to him. Cesar’s mandible belongs to David. Two of Kalle’s vertebrae belong to Beata; but three of hers are reassigned to Filip. Beata loses two metacarpals to Cesar, but gets a clavicle from Erik, and a tooth back from Niklas which, since the tooth was all there ever was of Niklas, means he never existed. Neither did Martin, Olof, Quintus, or Zäta.
11
The bones get together and separate again. There’s a lot of visiting back and forth between boxes, and some crossing-out in magic marker, like those apartment buildings where the names on the mailboxes are always being written over, and no one can remember who used to live there.
Source: Poetry (September 2022)