Hawaiki via Spirits Bay, Cape Reinga and the Three Kings Islands at the extreme north of the North Island of New Zealand — giving a possible pointer as to the direction in which Hawaiki may lie. Until , many anthropologists had doubts that the canoe-legends described a deliberate migration, tending to believe that the migration occurred accidentally when seafarers became lost and drifted to uninhabited shores. In 1947 Thor Heyerdahl sailed the "Kon-Tiki", a balsa-wood raft, from South America into the Pacific in an attempt to show that humans could have settled Polynesia from the eastern shores of the Pacific Ocean,
Knut Haugland museum manager. He also received the Defence Medal with three stars. Knut Haugland Knut Magne Haugland, DSO, MM, (23 September 1917 – 25 December 2009) was a resistance fighter and noted explorer from Norway, who accompanied Thor Heyerdahl on his famous 1947 "Kon-Tiki" expedition. Haugland, born in 1917 in Rjukan, Telemark, Norway, took his examen artium in 1937, qualifying him for university study. In 1938 he enrolled in military radio studies and afterward joined the Norwegian Army. In February 1940 he was stationed in Setermoen, and soon fought in battles near Narvik as a part of the Norwegian Campaign against