The Legend of Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere: Franz Josef Glacier's Māori Name
Franz Josef Glacier carries an older name — Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere, "the tears of Hine Hukatere." Behind it is a Māori love story of grief and frozen tears that gives the ice, and the river that flows from it, a meaning worth carrying up the valley with you.
Long before a European geologist gave it an emperor's name, the glacier was known to Māori as Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere. The name is not decorative. It holds a story that Ngāi Tahu have told for generations, and it frames the glacier as something born of human emotion rather than mere ice and gravity. Knowing it changes how the place feels — and it's a story the guides still share on the ice today.
The story in brief:
- Hine Hukatere — a fearless climber who loved the high mountains.
- Wawe — her lover, swept to his death by an avalanche.
- The tears — her grief froze into the glacier; the Waiho River carries them still.
The story
Hine Hukatere was a young woman who loved the high mountains. She was a fearless and skilled climber, at home among the peaks of the Southern Alps in a way few were. She fell in love with Wawe, a young man from a coastal people, and she persuaded him to climb with her into her beloved mountains.
Wawe was not the mountaineer that Hine Hukatere was. High on the tops, an avalanche swept him from the mountain to his death. Hine Hukatere was left utterly broken by grief. She wept, and wept, and her tears flowed down the mountainside. The gods, moved by her sorrow, froze her tears as they fell — and those frozen tears became the glacier. That is why it is called Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere, the tears of Hine Hukatere.
Two names, one glacier
The name most maps use — Franz Josef — dates only to 1865, when the geologist Julius von Haast surveyed the glacier and named it after Franz Joseph I, the Austro-Hungarian emperor of the day. The Māori name is far older. In 1998, under the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act, the glacier was officially given the dual name Franz Josef Glacier / Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere, recognising the name that came first.
| Name | Origin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere | Ngāi Tahu, pre-European | The tears of Hine Hukatere |
| Franz Josef Glacier | Julius von Haast, 1865 | Named for Emperor Franz Joseph I |
| Official dual name | Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act, 1998 | Both names recognised together |
Why the story still matters
There's a poignancy to the legend now that the glacier is in retreat. A story about frozen grief takes on a second meaning when the ice itself is shrinking year on year. For Ngāi Tahu, Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere is a taonga — a treasure — and watching it retreat carries a grief of its own. Visitors who know the story tend to look at the ice a little differently: not just as a spectacular landscape, but as something with a name, a history and a people who hold it dear. Our history guide covers how the guiding tradition and the dual naming came to be.
The land the story is written on
The legend maps onto real features you can visit. The Waiho River — the tears — pours from the terminal face and braids down the valley. Lake Mapourika, which the Franz Josef Glacier: 2-Hour Scenic Lake Mapourika Cruise crosses, is meltwater the glacier carved and left behind long ago. Even the steep valley itself is the path the ice cut. Reading the landscape through the legend turns a scenic drive into a story you can stand inside. The geology guide explains how the ice shaped all of it.
Where to encounter the legend
You don't need to hike the ice to feel the story. The Franz Josef Nature Tour walks the valley the glacier carved, alongside the Waiho River of the legend, with a guide to tell it. The lake and kayak trips cross Lake Mapourika, itself carved by the glacier long ago. And the Franz Josef Glacier 25-Minute Helicopter Flight with Snow Landing sets you down on the "tears" themselves. Any of them becomes richer with the legend in mind. Our things-to-do guide covers them all.
A landscape with a name
Franz Josef Glacier is a geological wonder — a fast-moving river of ice that flows almost into rainforest. But it is also Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere, a monument to love and loss carried in the language of the people who named it first. Both truths belong to the same ice. Carry them both up the valley.
Telling the story respectfully
The legend belongs to Ngāi Tahu, the iwi whose rohe (territory) includes the glacier, and it's shared here with that in mind. When guides tell it on the ice, they tell a living tradition, not a tourist anecdote. Visitors can honour that simply by listening, by using the Māori name alongside the European one, and by remembering that the glacier is a taonga to the people who have known it longest. The dual naming in 1998 was an act of recognition, and using both names keeps that recognition alive.
What the name teaches about the place
There's a lesson folded into the legend that outlasts the story itself. Hine Hukatere's tears became something permanent and beautiful, and now that permanence is slipping — the ice she wept is retreating up the valley. A name given in grief has become, unexpectedly, a name about impermanence. Standing at the viewpoint or on the ice, that framing gives the retreat a weight that a bare statistic never could. It's why so many visitors say the glacier moved them more than they expected, and why the story is worth carrying with you before you go. A landscape you've been told a story about is never just scenery again; it becomes a place you feel you already half know, and that recognition stays with you long after you've driven back down the coast.
Read more about the ice in our history of the glacier and how it works, and see every way to experience it among the Franz Josef Glacier tours on our homepage.