Post #113276 by Kawentzmann on Thu, Sep 9, 2004 5:17 AM

I have this box of four books, unfortunately for most TCers it’s printed in german, and I have no idea if there’s an english edition somewhere on the planet.

Miroslav Stingl
“In der Südsee” (In the southseas)
Brockhaus (publisher)

Book 1
Die schwarzen Inseln (The black islands)
An ethnograph (Stingl) talks about Melanesia

Book 2
Atolle im Taifun (atolls in the taifun)
Journey through the micronesian islands

Book 3
Wikinger der Südsee (Vikings of the Southseas)
Researches in Polynesia

Book 4
Hawaii
On the traces of an ancient culture

Stingl wrote this in the mid eighties. He is a czech ethnograph who’s travelled the world a lot, apparently focusing on the americas and the south pacific. In all books he refers to travels as far back as the late sixties, but the main travel writing is about his latest mid eighties travel through all of polynesia, micronesia and melanesia.
He reports old legends, as well as all kinds of views and perspectives of the south pacific’s peoples’ lifes.
The Hawaii book has got lots of drawings of holy figurines. These are found also to a smaller count in the polynesian (French Polynesia, Samoa etc.) book.
The micronesian book has got what looks like native illustrations to their legends and the melanesian book has got lots of masks.
Each of the books has got about 70 photographs taken by Stingl, most of them seemingly made during his later travels.

It was really an entertaining read, even though I didn’t choose the order the author planned for the reader. I left the melanesian and micronesian books for last, but they were just as fascinating as the Easter Island/Tahiti/Newzealand and Hawaii chapters I enjoyed first.

KK