In 1844 Abraham Fornander deserted a whaling ship and settled in Honolulu But Fornander was no ordinary whaleman His long hard years at sea were an unlikely interlude in the life of this sophisticated and scholarly man whose childhood and early youth had been spent in a quiet Swedish rectory and then as a university student preparing for the ministry For almost half a century Fornander was an active participant in the life of the Hawaiian kingdom During tempestuous years as a newspaper and magazine editor and as inspector general of schools for the kingdom he aroused the bitter enmity of many leaders of the Protestant missionary group but at the same time earned the deep admiration and respect of others for his intellectual vitality and moral integrity Married to an ali i daughter of a medical kahuna and former governor of Moloka i he became a vigorous and outspoken champion the Hawaiian people in their losing struggle against the pressures of new values and foreign power More than any other he helped to reduce Hawaiian traditions and mythology from fast approaching oblivion His greatest achievement the result of years of research was the monumental three volume An Account of the Polynesian Race Its Origin and Migrations published during his several terms as Circuit Court judge at Lahaina and the posthumous Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and Folk lore For too long Fornander has been little more than a footnote in scholarly works on ancient Polynesia He is perhaps better known in his native Sweden than in the Hawai i to which he contributed so much This incisive well documented biography captures the exuberant energy and buoyant optimist of this unusual man and recreates the turbulent times of mid nineteenth century Hawai i