Edvard Christian Antonius Nielsen Ørtoft
a.k.a. William Peder Leonard, King Faiu of Wuvulu
A short biography by Charlotte Larsen and Kaj Aksel Jensen¹.
(Edited and reproduced with permission from the authors)
Edvard Christian Antonius Nielsen Ørtoft was
born In Byrum, Læsø, Denmark on August 29, 1875.
Læsø is a small island in the northern part of Kattegat,
ten miles off the coast of Jutland (57°15' North and
10°59' East) and has almost the same size and shape as Wuvulu
Island. So Edvard was born an islander. He died aboard his
ship on a business voyage to Port Moresby, New Guinea in
1920-21.
His father was Christian Nielsen Ørtoft, who had
moved to Læsø in 1871. He had contemplated
immigration to America, but was persuaded by friends to move to
Læsø instead.
According to Emil Larsen in his book Kong Faiu Paa
Wuvulu, Christian was a very god-fearing, strong and handsome man,
and two years after he sat foot on Læsø, he married the
most beautiful girl on the island. She was the daughter of the
local shoemaker, who, as was normal in those days, also had a small
farm.
On the island he first worked as a farmhand, then
bricklayer and postman, and also quickly learned the shoemaking trade
of his father-in-law as well.
Edvard, the second born, had 10 siblings, 6 sisters and
4 brothers.
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Author Charlotte Larsen gives
these additional details:
My great grand mother, Jakobine was the third.
She in her turn gave birth to 13 children. As of May, 2003, only
four of these 13 children are still alive. But this is only my
branch of the family, so I imagine there must be several more
around.
To my knowledge, there has been written and issued two
books in Danish, strictly about Edvard:
Kong Faiu Paa Wuvulu (King Faiu on Wuvulu) by
Emil Larsen, Vejle: Kristelig Bogforennings Förlag, 1927. 79
pages. This book is written like a biography of Edvard.
The author was born in Denmark in 1900 and was a very prolific writer
and clergyman who wrote numerous books mainly on religious subjects;
and Kongen af Wuvulu; En
Læsøø-drengs eventyr (The King of Wuvulu) by
Børge Mikkelsen, København: Eiler Wangels Forlag A/S;
1954. 124p. This book is also about Edvard, but more fiction,
like a novel.
And one in Swedish: Arafis tropiska år
(The Tropical Years of Arafis) by Birger Mørner, Stockholm:
P.A. Norstedt & Söners Förlag; 1914. 251p. This
book is about the Swedish Count Mørner's visit to Wuvulu
and nearby Aua in 1913. It is a very comprehensive book, with
pictures, ancient history, description of the islands flora and fauna
and Wuvulu poetry told and translated by Edward to Count
Mørner. Arafis was, according to Emil Larsen, the name
the islanders gave Count Mørner. I was told by my grand
mother that after he returned to Sweden, the Count visited
Edvard's remaining relatives on Læsø, and told them
about Edvard’s life on Wuvulu.
Furthermore. a Danish writer, Bent Rosenkilde Nielsen
(1904) has written a book Danske Pionerer i Stillehavet (Danish
Pioneers in the Pacific) in which there is a chapter about
Edward's life. I believe this book also is more fiction than
facts.
A Danish travel journalist and explorer, Arne Falk
Rønne visited the islands in the 1960s. He wrote a travel
book Mine venner kannibalerne (My friends the cannibals).
That book should also have passages about Edward and Wuvulu. I
know that this journalist, while doing research, visited some of
Edvard’s relatives after he came back home.
According to information from the various books, the
name of the island's ruler before Edward was "Poalla
Nalipei" or "King Nalipei." His wife’s name
was Geva’uge.
In a letter to his family in Denmark dated 22 august
1910, Edvard said that 125 persons on the island had died of
dysentery, one of them his wife Wollabai, but that now everyone on the
island was well. Edwards had three children, Dorthea, born June
1907, Margrete, born October 1908 and Karl, born October 1909.
The following is a brief summary of what Edward
Christian Antonius Nielsen Ørtoft a.k.a. William Peder Leonard
told Count Birger Mørner about himself during the Count's
stay on Wuvulu Island from July to October 1913.
This is what Faiu told me about his remarkable
life:
He was born on the island of Læsø in
Denmark in 1875. His father was a postal worker and shoemaker
and, like his mother, very religious.
At the age of 15 and against his parents' will, he
went to a dance at the local inn. This resulted in a big
argument, particularly with his father, and ended in Edward leaving
the island for Copenhagen, where he signed on as sailor on a Swedish
schooner.
He later signed on bigger ships, on which he went to
all of the Scandinavian and European countrys, and at the end he had
set foot on all the remaining continents.
He soon got tired of working at sea and in 1891, while
the ship he worked on was calling at the port of New York, he was all
set to jump ship go to California to become a gold
digger.
In New York he met a German who had been in California
and told him about the terrible conditions the gold miners worked
under and persuaded Edward not to go there, but instead follow him to
Chile where there was good money to earn by working in the salpeter
mines.
Edward and his German friend then went to Chile and
stayed there until the spring of 1893. Then they decided to try
their luck as gold diggers in Australia.
They were not very successful in that, so when they saw
an add in the papers that The German New Guinea Company (who later
became the German firm Hernsheim & Co. in Matupi) was looking for
men to sail out to the islands to buy copra from the islanders,
Edward who now had changed his name to William Peder Leonard, applied,
together with his friend, for the jobs, and they got them. On
one of his first voyages out to the islands, Edward almost got killed
by a tomahawk [hatchet] during a fight with the islanders who didn’t want
to have anything to do with the white men who came to the
islands. He was very seriously wounded on the head, and he
insisted that most of his brain ran out in that incident, but to me
the only notable results of the wound was the two enormous scars on
the left side of his face.
He and his friend tried twice to become
independent. First as traders in Tambu-Tambu on the Solomon
Islands, where their station eventually was ambushed by head hunters
from the British Solomon Islands, and almost all their men got
killed. Next they bought the 17 tons cutter
"Seegast" and used it to trade between the islands,
but one day while they had stopped on the island of Nouma-Nouma (now
known as Bougainville) and were trying to repair the sails, they were
attacked by the natives who sunk the ship and killed Edward's
German friend.
Being bankrupt he now arrived at Matupi and again
applied for a job at Hernsheim & Co. and it was while trading for
them that he first came to Wuvulu.
¹ Authors Charlotte Larsen and Kaj
Aksel Jensen are descendant of Edvard Christian Antonius
Nielsen Ørtoft.
Click here for links to other web sites with information regarding Edvard Christian Antonius
Nielsen Ørtoft.
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