1642–1870: first arrivals
Explorers and wayfarers
Sailors aboard Abel Tasman’s ships were the first Scandinavians to see New Zealand’s shores. Crew lists show ‘Peder Pedersen’ of Copenhagen and other typically Nordic names.
On James Cook’s first voyage to New Zealand (1768–71), naturalist Joseph Banks’s assistants were Swedish botanist Daniel Solander and Finnish draughtsman Herman Spöring. They were among the first Europeans to land. Solander’s botanical collections and Spöring’s sketches are a vital window onto the landscape and natural history of early New Zealand. Cook honoured both men by giving their names to offshore islands. The Solander Islands (Hautere) lie between the south coast of Fiordland and Stewart Island (Rakiura), while Spöring Island off Tolaga Bay is today known by its Māori name, Pourewa.
Scandinavia’s maritime history stretches back to the Vikings. It is no surprise that the first migrants crewed Pacific whalers and trading vessels. When gold was discovered on New Zealand’s West Coast, some jumped ship. Mining sites such as Westland’s Scandinavian Hill and ventures such as the Scandinavian Company in Otago mark their presence. It is estimated that during the 1860s there were 500 Scandinavian prospectors in the South Island. Most left after the rush, but some settled.
Manawatū pioneers
Bishop D. G. Monrad, a former prime minister of Denmark, settled in Manawatū in 1866. He was accompanied by his family and five young Danish men, and together they successfully cleared the bush at Karere. At the time Palmerston (North) had been surveyed, but a swathe of forest stood between it and the port of Foxton. The energetic Manawatū Danes helped convince Colonial Treasurer Julius Vogel that Scandinavians were eminently suitable for the job of clearing the forest.
1870s: assisted migration
In 1870 New Zealand’s agent-general in London, Isaac Featherston, toured Norway, Sweden and Denmark recruiting settlers for the colony. Prospective migrants were promised free passage and 10 acres of land. In 1871 the first government-assisted Scandinavian immigrants arrived in Wellington aboard the Celaeno. The 18 families settled on 40-acre sections between Palmerston (North) and Foxton, opening a road and tramway through the bush that gave settlers access to Palmerston.
Perceptions of New Zealand – ‘wild animals, snakes and English people’
Prospective migrants’ knowledge of New Zealand was very limited. To the average 1870s Scandinavian there was a degree of fascination with a country on the opposite side of the earth, ‘with the feet of its inhabitants pointing towards us’. Most knew of Māori, but there were shipboard rumours of ‘wild animals, snakes and English people’.
Letters home helped provide a more accurate view. But it was not always easy to convey what life was like here – as one Dane who visited his homeland found out. When he enthused about the wonders of the new land, its giant trees, flightless birds, prodigious grasses and the prowess of its sheep-shearers, his mother gravely informed him that his travels had turned him into a teller of tall tales.
The Seventy Mile Bush
Known to Māori as Tapere-nui-a-Whātonga, this forest stretched for 70 miles from Wairarapa to Hawke’s Bay. A key aspect of Vogel’s immigration and public works plans was to establish Scandinavian settlements along road and rail lines surveyed though the bush.
In 1871, the New Zealand government sent Swedish settler Bror Erik Friberg to recruit immigrants in Norway and Sweden. Agents like Friberg offered a subsidised passage and 40 acres of land at £1 per acre, all of which could be paid off by working on road and rail construction. In May 1872 the ship Høvding left Christiania (Oslo) for Napier with 365 Norwegians and 11 Danes. Meanwhile the Ballarat (with 71 Danes aboard) set sail from London for Napier.
By 1872 the government-named towns of Norsewood and Dannevirke had been surveyed. Dannevirke’s plans show evocative street names such as Gertrude, Dagmar, Christian and Hamlet. But these roads existed only on paper and the young immigrant families arrived to an expanse of dense forest.
As farms were drawn by ballot, nationalities were mixed throughout the region, although there were concentrations of Norwegians in Norsewood and Danes in Dannevirke. Families often shared crude punga and tōtara bark houses while ‘slabs-hus’ (slab huts) were built. Men laboured on roads and railways, often living away from home to pay debts. Women and children remained in rough forest homes growing cabbages, potatoes and carrots among the tree stumps. Fever claimed seven lives by January 1873. When the 1880s depression hit, some unemployed men felt betrayed by a government that had promised them work.
Bushfires helped clear the felled forest but many houses, barns and fences also went up in smoke. In 1888 a massive bushfire razed Norsewood and threatened to do the same to Ormondville until a timely thunderstorm extinguished it. During the 1880s the Napier to Palmerston North railway made slow progress through the bush. Sawmilling began, and tree by tree the land was cleared to become productive farmland.
The Forty Mile Bush
The portion of the Seventy Mile Bush south of the Manawatū River was known as the Forty Mile Bush. In 1872 the first southern Wairarapa settlers arrived in Wellington on the England. The ship’s doctor was incompetent and an outbreak of measles had seen 14 Scandinavians buried at sea. Crossing the Remutaka Range proved a novel experience for plains-dwelling Danes. At Masterton the greens-starved settlers gathered watercress for their evening meal. Intrigued Māori picked up on the often heard ‘Ja, ja’ (yes, yes), dubbing them ‘Yaya’.
After crossing the Ruamāhanga River the Scandinavians encountered thousand-year-old trees looming up from a thicket of ferns, shrubs and supplejack – a far cry from the open silver birch and fir forests of their homelands. Crude huts were built at what was labelled ‘the Scandinavian Camp’. Towns were planned at Mauriceville and Eketāhuna (Mellemskov – ‘between woods’ in Danish).
By the end of 1873 most were settled on their 40-acre plots. With living costs high, they supplemented sugar and flour with the forest’s bounty – eels, honey, pigs, cattle and ‘vild-duen’ (wood pigeons).
During the early years of assisted migration (1871–76) there were 3,327 arrivals. In 1878 Scandinavians made up just over 1% of the New Zealand population – the highest proportion they were ever to reach.
Culture
Because Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are similar languages, barriers were minimal among the ‘Skandies’, as they were nicknamed. Unlike English settlers, their drink of choice was coffee, not tea.
Social events
In Wairarapa an annually celebrated event was the ringriderfest, in which riders tried to pick up rings from a row of posts with a levelled lance. The game of fugleskydning tested marksmanship, as pot shots were taken at an iron bird atop a post in the middle of a field. Sunday evening dances were popular among the Mauriceville Danes, especially when Jens Larsen fashioned a fiddle out of maire wood. Young settlers kicked up their heels to the polka, waltz and mazurka until sunrise, when they walked home and changed straight into work clothes.
Language
In the early years four periodicals appeared in Scandinavian languages, but these were short-lived. Most settlers were keen to become naturalised as British citizens. With intermarriage and internal migration, languages died with the first and second generations.
Danish was last widely spoken in Dannevirke in the 1900s and Norwegian in Norsewood in the 1920s. Norsewood‘s centenary celebrations in 1972 revived interest in Scandinavian culture, if not language. At celebrations 50 years earlier, an old-timer remarked, ‘practically nothing but Norwegian would have been heard’. 1 Today the main vestiges of the language in these towns are surnames, street names and gravestone inscriptions.
Churches
Many settlers missed their religion. At first, visiting ministers travelled vast distances to hold services in homes or under towering trees. The Scandinavian Wesleyan Church opened at Mauriceville North in 1881, followed by Lutheran churches in Norsewood (1882), Palmerston North (1882), Mauriceville West (1884) and Dannevirke (1887).
Churches were community focal points and ministers organised relief funds for bushfire victims. On Sundays, processions of fair-haired blue-eyed children skipped along the forest roads, preceding mothers wearing embroidered pinafores and customary kerchiefs. Fathers followed in sombre Sunday black. Scandinavians outside the planned settlements made do with rare visits from travelling pastors or changed denominations.
Footnotes
- From an article in the Dominion, 25 September 1972. › Back
20th-century migration
1920s–1930s: Norwegian whalers on Rakiura (Stewart Island)
During the 1920s and 1930s, Norwegian whalers prowled the Southern Ocean. Summers were spent chasing leviathans in the Ross Sea. Over winter, ships headed north to Paterson Inlet on Rakiura (Stewart Island) to prepare for the next season. In 1927 machine shops, a huge workshop, boiler room, blacksmith’s forge and slipway were built at Prices Inlet. The Norwegian flag was soon flying from the manager’s house. The settlement was short-lived as the early 1930s were marked by a glut of whale oil and the economic depression. In 1933 the factory ship Sir James Clark Ross returned to Norway with its whale chasers in convoy. Today Prices Inlet is littered with rusting propellers, boilers and concrete foundations – the legacy of a short-lived enterprise. Some whalers married local women, but most returned to Norway with their ships.
1950s–1960s: Danish assisted migration
A shortage of labour in the 1950s prompted the government to offer travel subsidies of £50 (equivalent to $3,000–$4,000 in the 2020s) to unmarried Danish builders aged 20–45. In 1955 this inducement was extended to include free passage from England for all unmarried Danes aged 18–45. The only requirements were ‘good health and good character’. Between 1956 and 1967, 234 single men and 26 single women received some immigration assistance. Between 1945 and 1968, 2,151 Danes arrived – the largest influx of Scandinavians since the organised immigration of the 1870s.
Finns
Fewer than 2,000 Finns have migrated to New Zealand. Early arrivals were mariners who formed scattered coastal settlements. The main Finnish inflow was in the 1950s and 1960s when the growing pulp and paper industry imported Finnish technology. Groups of Finns and their families were recruited by New Zealand Forest Products. Most went to Tokoroa and Kawerau, where they found conditions bleak but quickly adapted. A sauna was built and sports and cultural activities were organised by the Finnish club. Some chain migration of friends and relatives followed. By the 1970s second-generation Finns had been assimilated, and the Finnish club closed in 1984. In 2013 more than one-third of Finns lived in Auckland, which had an active Finnish society.
A prize of war
In the Second World War, Finland was a ‘territory in enemy occupation’. All Finnish ships within Allied waters were fair game. In 1941 the sublime deep-sea square-rigger Pamir was seized in Wellington as a ‘prize of war’. The crew were detained, but allowed to work ashore.
From 1942 to 1948 the Pamir sailed across the Pacific. On its tenth voyage it circumnavigated the globe. Many young Kiwis gained their sea legs on the Pamir.
In November 1948 the Pamir was returned to Finland. Its former commander, Captain Björkfelt, flew out to sail it back. The Pamir capsized in a hurricane in the Atlantic in 1957, with the loss of all but six of the 86 men on board.
1970s–2000s: recent migration
In the 1970s immigration slowed with New Zealand’s economy. During the 1990s, as the economy improved, some 1,000 Scandinavians were approved as permanent residents. Swedes have been the most numerous recent immigrants, followed by Danes, Norwegians and Finns. Most are professionals who have arrived through work or marriage.
There are at least a dozen Scandinavian organisations. Clubs based on nationality often speak the native tongue, as members are more recent immigrants. Although members of societies in Norsewood and Dannevirke trace their ancestry to early settlers, they are now totally assimilated. And even if ‘farvel’ signs and folk dancing have made recent appearances, very little Scandinavian culture is evident. In 2003, Tararua district councillors implemented the wishes of Dannevirke residents by voting against a proposal for a 10-m-tall Viking statue.
Facts and figures
Ethnic identity
In the New Zealand census, people were asked to indicate the ethnic group or groups with which they identified. The numbers include those who indicated more than one group.
- Danish: 1,932 (2006); 1,989 (2013); 2,214 (2018)
- Swedish: 1,254 (2006); 1,401 (2013); 1,911 (2018)
Country of birth
The New Zealand census figures listed here show the number of residents born in Scandinavian countries.
Denmark
- 1874 census: 1,172
- 1901 census: 2,120
- 1951 census: 1,191
- 1976 census: 1,588
- 2001 census: 1,434
- 2006 census: 1,491
- 2013 census: 1,410
- 2018 census: 1,563
Norway
- 1881 census: 1,271
- 1901 census: 1,279
- 1951 census: 516
- 1976 census: 368
- 2001 census: 465
- 2006 census: 471
- 2013 census: 420
- 2018 census: 567
Sweden
- 1881 census: 1,264
- 1901 census: 1,548
- 1951 census: 389
- 1976 census: 365
- 2001 census: 960
- 2006 census: 1,176
- 2013 census: 1,350
- 2018 census: 1,839
Finland
- 1921 census: 314
- 1951 census: 201
- 1976 census: 298
- 2001 census: 372
- 2006 census: 396
- 2013 census: 495
- 2018 census: 702