Māori mythology

Common card · No. 262251

Māori mythology and Māori traditions are two types of New Zealand Māori oral history regarding the remote past. Māori myths are tales of supernatural events relating to the origins of the observable world for the pre-European Māori, often involving gods and demigods. Māori traditions are more folkloric legends, often involving historical or semi-historical forebears. Both categories merge in whakapapa to explain the overall origin of Māori and their connections to the world in which they lived. Māori did not have a writing system before European contact, beginning in 1769, therefore they relied on oral retellings and recitations memorised from generation to generation. The three forms of expression prominent in Māori and Polynesian oral literature are genealogical recital, poetry, and narrative prose. Experts in these subjects were broadly known as tohunga. The rituals, beliefs, and general worldview of Māori society were ultimately based on an elaborate mythology that had been inherited...

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