Judith Farley visits her ancestors at the Norsewood Cemetery with a 'Scandi Disk' she made.
Judith Farley visits her ancestors at the Norsewood Cemetery with a 'Scandi Disk' she made.
A Dannevirke woman has discovered a fascinating family split in her Scandinavian ancestor’s immigration story while helping to restore and mark the original settler’s headstones at the Norsewood cemetery.
Judith Farley is a great-granddaughter of the Methodist minister and first Scandi settler, Emmanuel Frederikson, who immigrated to the Tararua village with his wife Helena and four children of their six children.
Farley has discovered that two of Frederikson’s children were actually forced to stay behind on the other side of the world due to immigration regulations at the time.
They later travelled to Norsewood with another couple to join their family.
Through the restoration project, she has also been able to identify and mark their grave sites along with many others at the Norsewood Cemetery.
She became involved in the project when Kathryn Mulinder approached her earlier in the year with the idea to create a tribute to the first settlers of Norsewood who broke ground in 1872.
Farley said she felt “privileged” when Kathryn approached her after they completed another remembrance project for World War I soldiers buried in Norsewood.
Together they have created the ‘Scandi Disks’, which will be placed on the headstones of the first settlers so people are able to identify them.
The ‘Scandi Disks’ depict the Norsewood logo, and have the impression of the Norsewood Scandi wheel and axe.
“It just sat in my heart when I was making each one of them, it was a gratitude for their hardship,” Farley said.
The men and their families were recruited to Norsewood by Bror Erie Friberg, who is also buried at the cemetery.
He was the government agent tasked by the public works office to travel to Norway, Scandinavia, and Denmark to find and bring them to New Zealand.
The headstone of the government agent who recruited the first settlers to Norsewood.
The settlers’ job was to break ground, clear dense bush, and build the roads, and the railway, while also establishing themselves in a new country.
The hardship is captured in Emmanuel Frederikson’s letters home where he asks for money, clothing, and grain to be sent to Norsewood.
Kathryn Mulinder had done extensive research into the very first settlers after noticing the headstones were in a bad way, and felt inspired to restore them.
“A lot of our settlers’ graves were falling into terrible disrepair, and we were unable to read names,” said Mulinder.
She would be approached by people who were looking to find the original settlers and decided they needed to be marked.
The project worked with 45 to 50 headstones identifying the men, women, and children who lived in Norsewood in the first settlement.
“We tend to sometimes forget those that actually gave us this privilege,” Mulinder said.
She said that she grew up with descendants of the first settlers and through her work at the cemetery they have become “like family”.
Mulinder is also a part of the Treasures project and will be at the Norsewood school on the Sunday of Labour Weekend, where people share their stories and photographs and bring along artefacts to be recorded.
Michaela Gower joined Hawke’s Bay Today in 2023 and is based out of the Hastings newsroom. Michaela covers Dannevirke and Hawke’s Bay news and has a love for sharing stories about farming and rural communities.
