STOCKHOLM, Sweden, July 31 (UPI) -- Swedish investigators say they hope to find clues about the fate of a colony of Swedish immigrants to Angola last heard from nearly a century ago.
The team, from the Vanersborg Museum, is spending three weeks in southern Africa trying to solve the mystery, The Local.se reported Wednesday.
"We don't know what happened to them, the last letters arrived in 1925 and there has been no more contact since," said Peter Johansen, director of the museum and the expedition.
Years of political conflict in Angola had negated the possibility of earlier expeditions.
With Angola now at peace, "we have our first chance to go there, look through archives, field questions and find where their houses and farms were," Johansen said.
Charles John Anderson, an adventure seeker who traveled to Angola on the advice of Charles Darwin's cousins, established the colony in the 1800s. He convinced a number of Swedes to join him in the country, where they became farmers, traders, hunters and explorers.
Ann Charlotte Berg, head of the museum's collection, said the expedition would be "exploring for their remains, their gravestones, and looking for relatives" of the Swedish pioneers.
