Status: Possible prank
Forty years after stealing a "Sami Fleshscraper" from a Norwegian museum, the contrite thief has mailed the item back. Problem is, the museum has no idea what the object is. From the article on
Yahoo News:
"For 40 years I have enjoyed this rare tool in my home. In my old age ... I have now decided to return it to the descendants of those who imagined it, built it and used it," the anonymous thief wrote in a typed letter sent to the embassy just before Christmas. The letter was posted from Biarritz in southwestern France and signed by "an ex-thief who was less a thief and more a man passionate about authenticity and real life"... The repentant thief called it a "scratcher", a word he then crossed out and replaced with "Sami fleshscraper" followed by a question mark. Sami refers to the indigenous people of northern Europe, also known as Lapplanders.
This sounds to me like a prank: mail an inexplicable object to a museum, leaving them wondering what in the world it is. Maybe they'll even decide it really is a fleshscraper and place it in the museum.
Comments
Though the Roman scraper was more curved in shape and was used more as radical exfoliation than removal of tissue. This does look more like the tools used to clean hides for tanning purposes, so I'd go with the reindeer explanation. Mind you, it's damn ornate for that purpose.....
So could well be real and not a prank.
I am surprised at you guys, the flesh scraper is of course not a prank. Similiar devices can be seen in many museums. The Inuiut (formerly known as Eskimos ) used them when cleaning the hides of animals, as did other native peoples.
Rob
Canada
In Alaska, such a broad-bladed knife is known as an "Ulu" (one of my favorite crossword puzzle words). "Ulo" must be the name in Greenland for the same thing. Among the Alaska natives,they are traditionally used almost exclusively by women (Men have other kinds of knives). I don't know if the same rule applies to Sami (Lapps). I have two or three of these ulus at home, one in the Yupik style and one or two in the Athabascan style. Besides scraping hides and gutting fish, they are very handy for slicing or chopping vegetables and cutting pizza slices.
Is the item in question a genuine "Sami fleshscraper"? I don't know, but it seems plausible to me.