Country Life: Country museum shines light on Eketāhuna’s Scandinavian past

The big work table in Eketāhuna's former 1800s-era school is laden with curiosities from the past - an old pair of lace-up boots, opera glasses, a threadbare red coat, a wooden coffee grinder.

Around it sit volunteers - brushing, waxing, sorting and puzzling as they delve into the town's history and prepare displays for the town museum's spring reopening.

Large new display cabinets and new blood have helped revitalise the establishment, which grew out of a private collection set up by the daughters of two of Eketāhuna's original Scandinavian pioneers.

The northern European settlers' story is told through items like the "very good" collection of saws and tools, according to volunteer Ian Day.

"Eketāhuna's first business was timber, long before it was farming, and so you've got the broad axes and pieces like that that nowadays people just don't know how to use.

"In those days, the men went out to cut timber, the women tried to run the farm as the land was cleared," he told Country Life.

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Eketāhuna - or Mellemskov, as it was called in the late 1800s - was part of a heavily forested area known as 70 Mile Bush which stretched from northern Wairarapa to Hawke's Bay.

In the early 1870s, Scandinavians sailed from their homes with the promise of land in New Zealand if they helped to clear the bush and open the area for pastoral farming.

Many of them were skilled woodsmen, seen as hardy types, and suited for the daunting task.

Chris Petersen is descended from one of the original families, the Syversens. He and partner Bruce Laurence are now in the museum's driving seat after retiring to the area following long careers in hospitality.

"From Covid, the museum hadn't really reopened ... partly due to lack of funding, but also lack of volunteers," Laurence said.

They were invited to a meeting four years ago and left in charge of the whole collection.

"And what a job that's been," Petersen said.

"But anyway, we've enjoyed it, and it's been a voyage of discoveries."

One such discovery, a crudely made cot, looked like "a heap of old sticks", he said, but is very likely an example of "Depression craft" - rough hand-made items for the home crafted out of necessity due to hard times in the 1930s.

"Most of rural New Zealand was just hanging on," Day said.

"You just had to turn your hand to whatever you could do. And with that cot, they might have made it and tried to sell it, or they might have made it for for their family. They might have needed it."

Before he retired, Day worked in small museums around New Zealand and in Australia. With his toolkit and knowledge, he is a valuable addition to the team.

"One of the reasons why I choose to work in small museums is because the treasures that you come across can be breathtaking."

In a bigger place, with thousands and thousands of items, you wouldn't get to see as much, he said.

"Here you can actually trace [them] back down through to the families, to the individual family members, and it often gives you a really good insight into the human dynamics of these small communities in the early days.

"You see it in very simple things like invoices from the local businesses, and you can actually trace the business through the years."

But the challenges are numerous, not only lack of volunteers and skills, he said.

"Funding is always a major issue that's combined with visitor numbers. A lot of these small museums, they struggle to get visitors. They think they're doing well if they get, say, 30 people in a week.

"They're just doing the best that they can."

With costs like $100 per box to keep antique clothes in an acid-free environment, running a museum is not cheap.

"It's one box per costume. We could do with at least 50 more," Laurence said.

He said they had recently found a new volunteer who has the know-how to access the funding available.

There's also the cost of refurbishing the building so that items stored within it stay fit for another century, Petersen added.

Preserving the town's history may not be quite as daunting as the tasks facing the Scandinavian pioneers, though, with new volunteers like Bridget Ferguson who was drawn to the building when she came to live in Eketāhuna last year.

"It's just constant learning and it's a treasure hunt. We all say that, and that is a lot of what this museum is about, being the keeper of the community's stories.

"This is a place where I find connection and community."

Learn more:

• Find out more about the Eketāhuna/Mellemskov Museum here.

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