Locked up in the Anatomical Institute in Oslo, two skeletons are all that is left of Mons Somby and Aslak Hetta, two Sámi men who were hanged for murder in 1854. The researchers at the institute use the skeletons in their experiments. The descendants and relatives of Mons Somby and Aslak Hetta want them back so that they can give them a decent burial. The question is: are they simple criminals or national heroes?

The middle of the 19th century was a hard time for the Sámi, the indigenous people of Lapland. Following their nomadic life style they were used to wandering wherever they found grazing grounds for their reindeer, but this came to an end when state boundaries were drawn in the northern regions. At the same time, in Kautokeino, in the very north of Norway and close to the Finnish border, followers of the Laestadian religious movement were being persecuted by the Church, and the local merchant enslaved people through alcohol. When the people at Kautokeino finally rebelled, there was an uprising in which the merchant was killed and the vicar beaten up. Mons Somby and Aslak Hetta were the two leaders of the uprising who paid with their lives - and became heroes of the Sámi people.

In this documentary, the main character is Niillas Somby, a descendant of Mons Somby, who leads the battle to have the skeletons returned. The relatives feel that, after more than 140 years, it is time the Sámi heroes were allowed to rest in peace in Sámi country. However, the Anatomical Institute is not likely to release what they consider their property - after all, the men were executed at the cost of the state and therefore belong to the state.
It was not only in the 19th century that the Sámi were considered an inferior race. In the 1930s, racial purity was studied in the Nordic countries as well as in Germany, and instruments were developed to measure skulls similar to those used in Germany to help 4 million Jews to their deaths. Anthropologists carried these instruments around Lapland, and they also forced the Sámi people to strip naked and pose for photographs - a cause of utter shame and insult to people whose religion considered photography a sin. These photographs, and the instruments, are kept at the Anatomical Institute, and in the documentary some of the models of those photographs are given an opportunity to say what they think of scientific research of this kind.

Another thread followed in the documentary is the study of racial purity, presented through the works of the leader of the Institute of Racial Purity at Uppsala University in Sweden. Apparently even the Germans were impressed by the methods used at Uppsala. In Norway, researchers dug up skeletons from graves despite strong resistance by the local populace, and Finland tried to prove to Germany that, in spite of the linguistic link, Finns were not of the same race as the Sámi.

These two historical themes provide the background to the documentary's look at the present day: the rise of racism today, as conflicts between Sámi people and other inhabitants of Lapland are on the increase. Spreading particularly among the young people, neo-nazism is claiming new supporters in the major centres in the north of Norway, Sweden and Finland. The young non-sámi people in Lapland seem well aware that in the 1930s the Nordic countries led the rest of Europe in the 'science of racial biology'. They know what the anthropologists were trying to prove then, and they do not hesitate to put forward their own solution to "the Sámi problem" which is not so very different.