Adiri

Also Known As: Adíri in Gunnar Landtman’s transcription; also called Woibu; the point where travellers land is Adirimuba or Woibumuba, the point of Adiri
Region/Culture: Oceania
Mythos: Papua New Guinean Mythology, Melanesian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Mythological Places
Mythical Attributes: Adiri is the country of the dead at the western edge of the world, where the sun and moon go down, and every soul that leaves a Kiwai body travels there.
Role in Mythos: It is the destination that the culture hero Sido opened when he became the first man to die, and the place he furnished with gardens and a single enormous house for the spirits.
Relation to Humans: The dead reach Adiri by canoe or on foot along the coast, are welcomed by kin who died before them, and are made to forget their homes so that they never wish to return. A few people in Kiwai tradition went there and came back alive, and their accounts are the main descriptions of the place.

A man from Mawata died, and like every newcomer he came by canoe to a beach he had never seen. His father was standing on the sand. A mat was spread out for him, and while he sat on it the spirits of the dead began to dance: drums beating, voices singing, feet thudding on the beach. They were dancing, the man was told, so that he would stop wanting to go home. It very nearly worked.

That beach is Adiri, the land of the dead of the Kiwai people, who live around the mouth of the Fly River in southern Papua New Guinea and along the neighbouring coast toward the Torres Strait. Almost everything written about it comes from one man’s notebooks. The Finnish anthropologist Gunnar Landtman lived among the Kiwai from 1910 to 1912 and in 1917 published *The Folk-Tales of the Kiwai Papuans*, several hundred tales taken down from named storytellers, many of them from the coastal village of Mawata. His summary is plain. The spirits go to Adiri, the land of the dead, which lies far in the west where the sun and moon go down.

In the beginning it was not much of a place. The tellings agree that Adiri already had a few inhabitants before any human soul arrived, but they disagree about who. One storyteller named three men, Sopuma, Adiri and Dirivo, and a girl called Gogu who was Dirivo’s daughter. Another had only a man called Adiri and his daughter Dirivo; the same narrator, telling it again, called the father Nemogu. A third made Adiri and Dirivo brothers. All of them lived under the ground and ate fruit and earth. They had no fire. When a fish washed up, they dried its meat in the sun because there was nothing else to cook it with.

Then Sido came. Sido is the great wandering hero of the Kiwai, and his death is the reason anyone dies at all. In the version Landtman set at the head of the cycle, Sido lay down in a grave meaning to slip out of his old body and take a new one, and had he managed it, people would have escaped death by following his example. He was stopped. His two mothers, the twin sisters Koumo and Ahau, buried him but kept his skull and wore it round their necks in turn. His spirit rose from the grave shining with a strong light and set off westward, forbidding them to follow. They followed anyway, as far as the island of Boigu, and when he was thirsty they let him drink from his own skull. That drink sealed his death. Sido speared the two women and turned them into a turtle and a dugong, and from then on, as the tellers put it, everyone must die and follow Sido to Adiri.

The road there has landmarks. On one telling Sido walked it: to a point called Muba, where a nibunibu shrub stood with sweet-scented leaves; to Bauda, where one of the ceremonial trees that the Kiwai hang with garden produce spoke to him like a man and asked if he meant to stay; and on through Wavoi and Rigimuba, where nobody lives. On another he went into the belly of a great rockfish at Boigu, which swam with the tide until it reached the point of Adiri. The two men of the place were out spearing fish. They speared this one between the eyes and hauled it ashore, and when the girl opened its gut on the beach, she found a man inside.

What Sido did next made Adiri worth dying for. He lit a fire for people who had never had one. He lay with the girl in the night, and from his seed sprang up taro, sweet potatoes, bananas and coconuts across the whole ground. He called up the east wind, the north-west wind, the west wind and the south-east wind, and the leaves rustled and fruit dropped, and the three men woke to find gardens where there had been bare sand. Then he cut posts with a stone axe and built a house as long as the distance from Mawata to Daru. The men asked him what such a house was for when there were no people to fill it. Sido told them to wait. One storyteller said the house was simply Sido himself: he passed into the skin of a pig, split open his stomach and spread out the sides like a roof, head to the west, so that the dead enter from the east end. Another gave the house a name, Nemogu, and put words in Sido’s mouth. He had made the road first. If he had not died, people would not die, and since he had, they must follow him.

That house is where the returning dead find themselves. The man from Mawata, whose name was Asai, told his village what happened after the dancing on the beach. His father said they had a master, Dirivo, and when Dirivo called, they went inside. Two heavy spars stood at the door. They jumped between them, and the spars shut behind them with a clack, and Asai thought: my home is finished, I cannot go back. Inside were Sido and a young girl, whom Sido offered him as a wife. Anyone who does as Sido says there loses his reason, forgets his home, and stays in Adiri for ever. Asai was too busy staring at the place to look at her. Everything was full of light, he said, fine people, a fine place. Sido saw he was ignoring the girl, led him back to the door, and when the spars lifted, kicked him out. Asai flew through the air and woke up at home in the middle of his own funeral wailing.

A Mawata woman named Amara told a matching story. She saw the two posts, heavy as iron, clashing together to keep everyone out, and they lifted to let her through. There was a great crowd of spirits and her dead husband among them, and boys playing on the beach. The food at Adiri came in red, blue and white, alongside ordinary coconuts, sugar-cane, bananas and taro. Her husband would not let her eat any of it. If she ate, he told her, she would be dead for good. When her time was up he turned her to face home and struck her on the back, and she flew out between the bars.

Adiri has one real danger, and it is kindness. The welcome, the music, the wife and the food are all ways of making a new arrival stop wanting to leave. Refusing them is the only way back that the tales describe; a newcomer who takes the spirit wife can never return to life. Another Mawata man turned back part way along the road because he missed his wife and children, broke a branch off a tree at the point where he stopped, and later took the village to see it. The branch was where he said it would be.

The dead are not always sealed in. In other tales a spirit in Adiri sent a cassowary to lure a boy named Wiobari all the way west, where he married two spirit wives and later rode home on bamboos that stretched across the distance, and a man named Moiso was dragged there by a speared fish (another teller said to Mabuiag instead) and came back by canoe. Landtman’s index calls Adiri, Dirivo and Sopuma the rulers of the dead. And when the first white men came sailing along the Mawata coast in a whaleboat, the people took them for spirits of the dead returning from Adiri.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Adiri?

Adiri is the land of the dead of the Kiwai people of southern Papua New Guinea. It lies at the far western edge of the world, where the sun and moon go down, and the spirits of all the dead travel there. Most of what is known about it comes from the folk-tales Gunnar Landtman recorded among the Kiwai between 1910 and 1912.

Who created Adiri?

Adiri already had a few underground inhabitants, men named Adiri, Dirivo and Sopuma in some tellings, but it was the hero Sido who made it a home for the dead. After becoming the first man to die, Sido travelled west, lit the first fire there, made gardens grow, and built an enormous house for the spirits.

Why do people die in Kiwai mythology?

In the Kiwai tales, Sido tried to shed his old body in a grave and take a new one, which would have let people escape death. He was prevented, and when his mothers later gave him water to drink from his own skull, his death was sealed. From then on everyone must die and follow Sido to Adiri.

How does someone come back from Adiri?

In Kiwai stories the few who returned were people who refused what Adiri offered. A Mawata man named Asai ignored the spirit wife Sido gave him and was sent home, and a woman named Amara went back because her husband would not let her eat the food of the dead.

What does Adiri look like?

Adiri is a western beach with gardens of taro, bananas, coconuts and sugar-cane and one enormous house said to be as long as the distance from Mawata to Daru. Two heavy posts at the door clash together, lifting only to let the dead in or send the living back.