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Manaiakalani

By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.

Description

Māui's hook

Hawaiian tradition: Māui's fishhook Manaiakalani hauls islands — or the Hawaiian chain — from the sea; other cycles have him snare the sun to lengthen the day. Some tellings make the hook from an ancestor's jawbone. The hook is also a star-figure. Sources are oral chants, later written by Hawaiian scholars and compilers (among them Fornander, and Hawaiian-language newspapers). There is no museum fishhook with a proven "original." Island geography is the proof the stories offer. Treat late written versions as records of older recitation, not as first invention.

Primary Sources

“Māui baited Manaiakalani and pulled land from the deep; in another cycle he snared the sun with a rope to slow its course.”
Hawaiian tradition (Māui cycles; later written collections)(oral; 19th-century Hawaiian and English records)

Powers & Abilities

Island RaisingSun SnaringOcean Mastery