The investigation on the remains of Christina of Sweden (1626-1689): rereading the report of the Swedish anthropologist Carl Herman Hjortsjö (1914-1978) for a new perspective in the Queen’s historiography

Abstract

The tomb of Queen Christina of Sweden (1626-1689), buried among the Popes at the Vatican Basilica, was reopened in 1965. Her remains were examined by the Swedish anatomist and anthropologist Carl Herman Hjortsjö (1914-1978) from the University of Lund. In 1966 he published a detailed report on the medical-anthropological investigation where he denied the question of the Queen’s intersexuality, improperly theorised by the gynaecologist Elis Essen-Moller and the literary critic Sven Stolpe, with the objective results of his investigations: the Queen’s remains were typically female in structure, features and size. The aim of this article is to restore the scientific value of Hjortsjö’s study, rarely cited in the historiography about the Queen, despite its importance.  The report re-establishes her female gender as an indisputable organic fact and suggests the formulation of other hypothesis on the Queen’s male behaviour as a modern attitude to managing power in a world dominated by males.