Remembering a gentle giant
Along with the Dutch and Italians that made their way to New Zealand in the secondary wave of immigration from 1890 onwards, many also came from Scandinavia, Sweden and Norway in particular. Although most integrated seamlessly into their new society, some preferred to live alone on the fringes.
Swedish man Charlie Norberg became known as the Gentle Giant or Gentle Swede by residents of outer Pelorus Sound and D’Urville Island when he settled there in the early 1920s. His home was by the sea at Old Pa, an abandoned Maori settlement on the eastern side of northern D’Urville.
He fished for awhile before becoming the mailman around his area.
Charlie is mentioned in the May 1935 National Geographic for his role taking out American wildlife scientists to study tuatara on Stephens Island;
‘In the morning, Charlie, a large, genial and gentle Swede called for us. Every week he makes a trip, going the rounds of lonely houses on the shore, carrying mail, merchandise, food, messages, news and anything else that anyone may wish to include. Every second week he includes the distant Stephens Island, and we are lucky enough to not only hit the right week, but the right day as well.’
Charlie used to laughingly boast he knew virtually every rock in the Marlborough Sounds by heart, because he’d hit most of them in his boat.
In reality, he was a superb seaman, his only real mishap happening after he stacked his ’single banger’ launch so high with wool bales that he left himself the narrowest foothold down one side to get to back to the tiller.
Out from Penguin Bay, a big wave hit as he was returning the wool bales after attending to something up front, causing him to lose his balance and fall overboard. But as he was falling he managed to jam his arm down the narrow gap between a wool bale and the inner edge of the gunwale.
He just hung there, his twisted arm caught and his engine running at full throttle, just unable no matter how hard he tried to pull himself back up.
His boat went endlessly around in circles, dragging him alongside in the water.
Luckily some local fishermen noticed his boat going endlessly around and went over to investigate.
They found him totally exhausted, his arm almost totally ripped out of its socket and lucky to be alive.
Charlie’s remarkably good nature even showed in his devotion to his cat, whom he often described as the best friend he’d ever had.
When it finally died, he raised the eyebrows of neighbouring farming families, all of whom he invited to the funeral, complete with a little coffin.
Many attended out of sheer respect for the man, amazed to see Charlie dressed in a three piece suit with his shoes polished, the only time he was ever seen dressed like this.
With only one chair, everyone stood as he said a few prayers and read a section out of the Bible relating to treating animals fairly.
As Charlie grew old, he moved from Old Pa to the mainland and nothing is known about him after that.
Nothing remains of his hut at Old Pa today either, except for the roughly mixed plinth of his fireplace protruding out of the rushes there.
What is it about Norwegians though? For sheers endurance they just couldn’t be beaten.
One absolutely heroic story involved a Norwegian seaman thrown overboard from one of three boats going through Stephens Passage in 1927.
The steam launch Paiako had been towing two smaller boats through the three kilometre stretch of wild water that separates D’Urville Island from Stephens Island, when disaster struck.
A massive whirlpool of currents captured them, spinning them around and causing all three vessels to crash wildly together.
Four crew members off the boat were flung into the swirling cauldron including the two men off the Paiako which went careering off by itself. The smallest boat owned by two Norwegians capsized.
The crew of the remaining boat frantically rowed around retrieving three of the overboard men before taking off in pursuit of the Paiako which they eventually boarded.
They searched for the remaining missing man all afternoon Just at dusk, the captain of the Paiako had to admit the obvious; ‘No man could survive these waters this long…’
‘Never!’ cried the crewmate of the missing man. ‘He’s a mate of mine. And what’s more, he’s Norwegian. We don’t stop looking, because he’ll be out there, still swimming.’
In the very last fade of light, in the almost blackness, they spotted the bobbing hull of the upturned boat far in the distance.
As they drew up close they were amazed to see the boat being towed by the Norwegian fisherman – still swimming with the boat’s mooring rope clenched in his teeth.
As they pulled up the exhausted man, his first words were; ‘If I had lost my boat I may have lost my life. What good is a man without his boat.’
What happened to the man is uncertain, but I have no doubt he went on to more courageous episodes.
Charlie used to laughingly boast he knew virtually every rock in the Marlborough Sounds by heart, because he’d hit most of them in his boat.
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