Stephen Scott: Vikings of the Sunrise

Stephen Scott & the Bowed Piano Ensemble Vikings of the Sunrise is a composition for bowed piano on themes of navigation, exploration and discovery in the Pacific from ancient times until the present era. The term "vikings of the sunrise" was coined by the noted Maori/Irish ethnologist Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa) to denote the intrepid seafaring peoples who first settled the islands of the "Great Ocean of Kiwa." They set out, probably from Indonesia, as early as 1500 B.C. or before; paddling and sailing from the West, ever toward the sunrise, they populated island after island throughout the central and south Pacific, sometimes traversing vast expanses of open sea, eventually reaching as far east as Easter Island and perhaps South America; to the north they discovered and colonized Hawai'i, and to the south New Zealand. They were the first Polynesians, and probably the first long-distance ocean navigators.Vikings of the Sunset refers to the European explorers of the Pacific, beginn