diff --git a/swh/indexer/metadata_dictionary.py b/swh/indexer/metadata_dictionary.py
--- a/swh/indexer/metadata_dictionary.py
+++ b/swh/indexer/metadata_dictionary.py
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@
 import logging
 import email.parser
 import xml.parsers.expat
+import email.policy
 
 import xmltodict
 
@@ -425,6 +426,14 @@
 _normalize_pkginfo_key = str.lower
 
 
+class LinebreakPreservingEmailPolicy(email.policy.EmailPolicy):
+    def header_fetch_parse(self, name, value):
+        if hasattr(value, 'name'):
+            return value
+        value = value.replace('\n        ', '\n')
+        return self.header_factory(name, value)
+
+
 @register_mapping
 class PythonPkginfoMapping(DictMapping, SingleFileMapping):
     """Dedicated class for Python's PKG-INFO mapping and translation.
@@ -434,7 +443,8 @@
     mapping = {_normalize_pkginfo_key(k): v
                for (k, v) in CROSSWALK_TABLE['Python PKG-INFO'].items()}
 
-    _parser = email.parser.BytesHeaderParser()
+    _parser = email.parser.BytesHeaderParser(
+        policy=LinebreakPreservingEmailPolicy())
 
     def translate(self, content):
         msg = self._parser.parsebytes(content)
diff --git a/swh/indexer/tests/test_metadata.py b/swh/indexer/tests/test_metadata.py
--- a/swh/indexer/tests/test_metadata.py
+++ b/swh/indexer/tests/test_metadata.py
@@ -690,14 +690,14 @@
         self.assertCountEqual(result['description'], [
             'Software Heritage core utilities',  # note the comma here
             'swh-core\n'
-            '        ========\n'
-            '        \n'
-            "        core library for swh's modules:\n"
-            '        - config parser\n'
-            '        - hash computations\n'
-            '        - serialization\n'
-            '        - logging mechanism\n'
-            '        '],
+            '========\n'
+            '\n'
+            "core library for swh's modules:\n"
+            '- config parser\n'
+            '- hash computations\n'
+            '- serialization\n'
+            '- logging mechanism\n'
+            ''],
             result)
         del result['description']
         self.assertEqual(result, {
@@ -713,6 +713,22 @@
             'version': '0.0.49',
         })
 
+    def test_compute_metadata_pkginfo_utf8(self):
+        raw_content = (b'''\
+Metadata-Version: 1.1
+Name: snowpyt
+Description-Content-Type: UNKNOWN
+Description: foo
+        Hydrology N\xc2\xb083
+''') # noqa
+        result = MAPPINGS["PythonPkginfoMapping"].translate(raw_content)
+        self.assertEqual(result, {
+            '@context': 'https://doi.org/10.5063/schema/codemeta-2.0',
+            'type': 'SoftwareSourceCode',
+            'name': 'snowpyt',
+            'description': 'foo\nHydrology N°83',
+        })
+
     def test_compute_metadata_pkginfo_license(self):
         raw_content = (b"""\
 Metadata-Version: 2.1