Norwegian ambassador visits Maui
By EDWIN TANJI, City Editor--Maui News

PUUNENE - It was the first time in 125 years that a Norwegian ambassador paid a visit to Maui, said Patty Cannon Mazingo, who hosted Ambassador Knut Vollebaek earlier this month.  It was a lot more pleasant this time around.

The first time an ambassador from Norway needed to come to Maui, it was to investigate complaints of Norwegian workers who had been recruited to work in Hawaii's sugar plantations in 1881 and found the work conditions less than what had been promised.

The arduous field work was not what the Norwegians - most of them artisans or skilled workers - had expected. Most of them left the islands to find more suitable work options.

But not all.

During a tour of the Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co.'s Puunene Mill earlier this month, Ambassador Vollebaek was introduced to a great-grandson of one of those original workers, David Christopherson, a manager for special projects at the Maui plantation.

"He was amazed because the gentleman who showed us the mill, David Christopherson, David's family came on that first ship," Mazingo said. "It was four generations later and all four generations of his family worked for the plantations."

The entire sequence began with Mazingo, though. Her own ancestors, from Norway and England, had come to Maui more than 100 years ago but not as part of the original Norwegian contract laborers who arrived off Maalaea on Feb. 18, 1881.

She discovered a reference to a Norwegian connection to Maui on an Internet site and learned there was a centennial observation of the event in 1981 during which a plaque was set on a boulder at McGregor Point - where the first group of 600 workers landed on two ships, the Beta and Musca.

Mazingo, her husband, Steve, and a few friends of Scandinavian ancestry planned a 125th anniversary celebration on Feb. 18 around the monument, called a "bautastein" in Norwegian. A story about their plans published in The Maui News the day before the event spread through Norwegian communities around the world.

"Since The Maui News article came out, I've been getting e-mails from all over the world," Patty Mazingo said.   That helped to show just how small the world can be.

"A gentleman from Washington sent me his family history," she said. "It's 40 pages long. The interesting thing is when I was reading his history, I found that David Christopherson is

his relative.

"It had come full circle. I could give David a more updated version of his family history."
Mazingo also got a call a few weeks ago from the Norwegian consul in Hawaii, asking her to plan for a visit from Vollebaek, who was coming to Hawaii for a visit.

Vollebaek, with his wife, Ellen, stopped at the McGregor Point monument for pictures before taking a tour of the A&B Sugar Museum - during which they were shown a Plantation Labor Book from 1881 listing the Norwegian workers, work record and pay - and a tour of the Puunene Mill, followed by dinner at Mama's Fish House.

For his part, Christopherson admitted he hadn't been aware of Mazingo's efforts until another HC&S manager, Doug Sheehan, who also is on the board of the Sugar Museum, told him the Norwegian ambassador was coming to visit the mill because of the anniversary of the arrival of the first Norwegians.

"My great-grandparents came on the same boat," he said.
He said he was aware of his family's historic association with Maui but noted that even his great-grandfather didn't stay.
"He went back and forth a lot, to Seattle, San Francisco. They changed their minds a lot," he said.

Christopherson's great-grandfather was in San Francisco when the 1906 earthquake struck. That got him back to Hawaii, where he knew some of the folks at the Kahului Plantation and went to work there.

"Actually, what is kind of unique about the whole thing is, yeah, we're fourth generation in plantation workers, but we're fourth generation with A&B," he said.
"It's unique that four generations would work for the same parent company."

Alexander & Baldwin overall has been a good employer, he said, although for his forefathers, he's also sure "there were ups and downs along the way."
So far, there isn't a fifth generation of Christophersons employed by HC&S, he said. "Maybe my grandchildren."

They might also be invited to visit Norway.

Mazingo said Vollebaek was particularly impressed that HC&S generates its own power while recycling so much of its waste products, burning bagasse to produce electricity and even returning mud hauled in by harvesters back to the fields.

"In Norway, they're very energy conscious, and he was very impressed that the mill generated its own energy, they recycled their water and all of the waste products are recycled. To them that was amazing in this world where everything is a throw-away society," she said.