A Rising of the Sun. (image: Simon Harvey Williams)

The Viking influence in New Zealand - Welcome!

'Viking' ^*1 is not the name of a country or race of people. It refers to people from northern countries mainly Denmark, Sweden and Norway, who were renowned for being raiders and pirates, and visiting the shores of other countries in their travels. They excelled at navigation and seamanship, and left the mark of their skills and sometimes small settlements wherever they visited. And of course leaving their genetic traits which are in us, in our physical and spiritual makeup.
 
Earlier inhabitants in Aotearoa before 1840 were never known by a collective name ('Maori' for instance), and there was quite a range of different ethnic backgrounds, different paths of getting here, and different points in time. Not quite the same that I had been led to believe from my 'education' 60 years ago, so I now try and consider persons on their individual origins or merits, rather than group them into a particular mindset or stereotype, and that helps lot.
 
My family have been at Oueroa / Rotokare for over 100 years, and during my time I have met a good number experts in their fields of archaeology, anthropology, history, etc; but when looking at the overall picture of the landscape, I still found there were questions unanswered. There was what I am sure is a dew pond, and also other (till now) unexplainable things. It was these experts and even some of the local descendants from Oueroa that had alerted me to similarities which are found say in England, and other parts of the northern hemisphere..

I have little doubt the dew-pond is a genuine one. More details on previous page.
 
Some years ago, an English visitor to New Zealand pointed out to me that what we were looking at in our travels, was "without doubt a burial mound, just like we have in parts of England!". I had never read of or even heard anyone else mention burial mounds (more like a rounded hill) in N.Z. before that (or since).
 
So I began to read, and the first book I looked at was the in-depth book, 'Ancient Celtic NZ' ^*2, and this was a real eye-opener, ...maybe the title had some influence.
 
At the same time I was finding comments from other publications which I was finding online, such as, “...the Ancient Britons (Celts) had been submerged beneath the successive tides of Anglo-Saxon and Danish (Viking) invasion long before the Norman Conquest, ...and no one reading such an account of Celtic and early Anglo-Saxon society, ..can fail to be struck by the close similarity in essential features with the Maori tribal system.” ^*3
 
In 'The Plume of the Arawas'^*4 by Frank O. V. Acheson, it is written of how there was a great navigator, an expert at navigating a vessel upon the ocean, who taught the Arawa much of what was to be of value to them later in their migrations across the sea. It reads of him as follows, that it was ...on Little-Hawaiki that the beautiful Puhi-Ariki was given in marriage to a stranger chief who came from the north. Tradition speaks of that man as having been a ‘godlike man of gigantic stature’ and of his canoe as having been a ‘huge canoe of most extraordinary shape'. That Norseman or Viking (named Erika) was re-named by Puhi-Ariki, 'TANGAROA', and after going on one of his expeditions he did not return, and she and their two sons then travelled to Aotearoa New Zealand.
 
The Sea-God Tangaroa was a Viking!. And then the picture began to fall into place more clearly. It is often the Viking 'influence' we are viewing when looking at our landscape; and at our people, the hair and skin colour, the eyes of some. Even in reading through the traditional oral stories of Ngati Kahungunu, Arawa and other people, are found references to these fair people, to the red-haired (flaxen) Urukehu and descendants.
 
Whatuiapiti, who married Te Huhuti from Oueroa Pa, and who is the forbear of many locals, was renowned for the redness of his hair. The very strong DNA connection through the red headed Ngati Hotu / Urukehu descendant (Monica Matamua) to the Mediterranean and Northern Europe, should (I expect) show a clear link for these Whatuiapiti / Te Huhuti descendants back into those same earlier regions.
 
The facial tattoo and tiki designs seem very common to what is in Egypt. People linked to India, Spain, China, Peru all have obvious connections to here, or people from those countries were actually here. There is such a vast amount of information now available. Some books I know of are listed below ^*6.
 
Well before this viking influence in New Zealand / Aotearoa there were other people here, there being carbon-dated evidence of human habitation some 20 minutes drive from here at Poukawa, dating back several thousands of years or more.^*5
 
When asked, in May 2021 by a descendant of the earlier Oueroa inhabitants, ..“Do you mean that the Vikings were here before us?" The quick response, astounded both myself and him,

"No! They came in your blood!"