50 Fun Facts About Vanuatu

Before independence, what was Vanuatu called?

The new name combines vanua ('land') and tu ('to stand'), which the first prime minister glossed as 'a country that has stood alone and will continue to stand alone'.

Which explorer named the islands in 1774 after an archipelago off Scotland?

On the same voyage he named New Caledonia after the Latin name for Scotland; Bougainville had called the group the Great Cyclades six years earlier.

Which navigator reached Vanuatu in 1606 and named its largest island La Austrialia del Espíritu Santo?

The Portuguese captain, sailing for Spain, thought he had found the great southern continent; his colony of New Jerusalem lasted about a month.

In which year did Vanuatu become independent?

Independence day was 30 July; the country joined the Commonwealth, the Francophonie and the UN soon after.

From 1906 the islands were run as a 'condominium', an unusual joint colony of which two powers?

There were two police forces, two legal systems and two currencies; locals nicknamed it the 'Pandemonium'.

Under the Anglo-French Condominium, what was the official citizenship status of native Ni-Vanuatu?

They could acquire neither power's nationality, while education and healthcare were left almost entirely to missionaries.

What was Walter Lini, Vanuatu's first prime minister, by profession?

He led the country for its first eleven years, joined the Non-Aligned Movement and opposed French nuclear testing in the Pacific.

Which country's troops did newly independent Vanuatu call in to end a secessionist revolt on its largest island?

British and French troops had been sent first but the French effectively neutered them; the rebel leader Jimmy Stevens surrendered on 1 September.

What did rebels who seized Vanuatu's largest island at independence call their republic?

The revolt was bankrolled by an American libertarian group, the Phoenix Foundation; Franceville was a real short-lived independent commune of 1889.

What is the capital and largest town of Vanuatu?

About 49,000 people, a sixth of the country, live there; a magnitude-7.3 earthquake in December 2024 damaged almost every house on its island.

Vanuatu's capital sits on which island?

The island also holds the Teouma cemetery, a 3,000-year-old Lapita burial site with the remains of 94 people.

What is the largest island in Vanuatu?

It also has the highest peak, Mount Tabwemasana, and the second town, Luganville, which grew out of a huge American wartime base.

Vanuatu is described as a Y-shaped archipelago of roughly how many islands?

About 65 are inhabited; France also claims two of them, Matthew and Hunter, as part of New Caledonia.

What is Vanuatu's national language, an English-based creole?

More than 95% of its words come from English, laid over Melanesian grammar; the national anthem 'Yumi, Yumi, Yumi' is written in it.

The name of Vanuatu's creole language ultimately comes from a French term for what?

'Beach-la-Mar' was 19th-century sailors' mangling of bêche de mer, the sea cucumbers traders came to collect.

In Vanuatu's national creole, the ubiquitous little word 'blong' does the job of which English word?

So the republic is 'Ripablik blong Vanuatu'; the language is spoken as a first language mainly in the two towns.

Vanuatu has the highest density of languages per head of any nation. About how many indigenous languages are spoken there?

That averages only around 2,000 speakers per language; all but three Polynesian outliers belong to the Southern Oceanic group.

The famous land-diving ritual, in which men leap from tall wooden towers, is performed on which island?

Guinness says the g-force at the bottom of a dive is the greatest experienced by humans anywhere outside the industrialised world.

What is tied around a land diver's ankles before he jumps from the tower?

The towers stand 20 to 30 metres tall; the vines are chosen to stretch just enough for the diver's head to brush the ground.

Land diving is traditionally performed to ensure a good harvest of which crop?

The legend told to David Attenborough in 1959 traces it to a wife who leapt from a tree with vines round her ankles to escape her husband, who jumped after her and died.

Which monarch watched a land dive during a 1974 royal visit to the islands?

The colonial administration talked Anglican villagers into staging an out-of-season jump for the tour.

In 1995 the land-diving islanders sought royalties from which industry?

The commercial version had been popularised by A. J. Hackett in New Zealand in the 1980s.

Mount Yasur, a volcano that erupts hourly yet can be approached on foot, is on which island?

Its glow is thought to be what drew Captain Cook to the island in 1774; it has been erupting almost continuously for centuries.

On which date do John Frum cargo cult followers parade, believing he will return then?

The movement dates from at least the late 1930s and grew after 50,000 American troops arrived in the war; it still has adherents in parliament.

By mimicking the wartime American presence, what did Vanuatu's cargo cults hope to bring about?

The GIs' wealth, informality and relative racial equality had badly undermined the colonial powers' authority in just three years.

Vanuatu's Yaohnanen tribe revered which British royal as a mountain spirit's divine son?

Legend told of a pale-skinned spirit's son who sailed away to marry a powerful woman; the Duke, having visited with the Queen, fitted the bill.

Wartime Vanuatu was the setting for which James Michener book, later a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical?

At the peak of the deployment some 50,000 Americans were on the islands, more than the entire native population.

'Million Dollar Point' on Vanuatu's largest island got its name because of what?

When the Americans left in 1945 they sold what they could cheaply and pushed the rest — jeeps, bulldozers, crates of Coke — off the shore; it is now a dive site.

The SS President Coolidge, now a famous wreck dive, sank in 1942 after striking what?

The former luxury liner's sailing orders omitted the safe channel; the captain ran her aground so 5,000-plus troops could walk off, and only two men died.

What is the national dish of Vanuatu?

It is a pudding of grated root vegetables baked in banana leaves in an earth oven; very little island food is fried.

Which mildly narcotic pepper-root drink was first domesticated in northern Vanuatu 3,000 years ago?

It is now one of the country's biggest cash crops, and its farmers often use the money to buy food rather than grow it.

In Vanuatu, what is a nakamal?

It is where the men gather to drink in the evening; villages also keep separate male-only and female-only areas.

The tusk of which animal appears on Vanuatu's flag as a symbol of prosperity and tradition?

Pigs with rounded tusks are the great measure of wealth across the islands and are worn as pendants; the tusk on the flag encloses two namele leaves.

Copra, long Vanuatu's main export, is the dried flesh of what?

A crash in its price in the early 1990s helped bring down the first government; beef and cocoa are the other big farm exports.

What is the currency of Vanuatu?

There is no income tax, capital gains tax or inheritance tax; the country long operated as an offshore tax haven and flag of convenience.

Vanuatu's six provinces — Malampa, Penama, Sanma, Shefa, Tafea and Torba — get their names how?

Torba, for instance, is the Torres and Banks islands; the provinces have existed only since 1994.

Mount Tabwemasana, Vanuatu's highest point, rises to roughly what height?

Most of the islands are steep and young, with unstable soils and little permanent fresh water.

Which ranking of wellbeing, life expectancy and ecological footprint put Vanuatu first in 2006 and 2024?

It is published by the New Economics Foundation; Vanuatu is the only country to have topped it twice.

Where did Vanuatu rank on the 2021 WorldRiskIndex of countries most exposed to natural disasters?

Cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes all threaten it; there were 58 magnitude-7-plus quakes between 1909 and 2001 alone.

Cyclone Pam, which devastated Vanuatu in March 2015, was what category of storm?

The lands minister called it the worst disaster ever to hit the country; Cyclone Harold followed in 2020.

In 2017 Google added the lava-lake crater of which Vanuatu island's volcano to Street View?

Marum crater's lava lake vanished after a fissure eruption in December 2018; a colossal eruption there around 200 CE reshaped settlement across the islands.

Roughly how much did Vanuatu charge for citizenship under its investment scheme in 2023?

Passport sales brought in over 30% of government revenue, mostly from Chinese buyers; the UK withdrew visa-free access in 2023 over the scheme.

In 2018 Vanuatu became one of the first countries in the world to ban what?

Cutlery, disposable plates and even artificial flowers were added to the list in 2020.

What was Vanuatu's population at the 2020 census?

About 80% live in rural areas, and the average household keeps five pigs and sixteen chickens.

Missionaries John Williams and James Harris were killed in 1839 on which Vanuatu island?

The same island's sandalwood, discovered in 1825, had already drawn a rush of traders; converts later syncretised Christianity with kastom beliefs.

What was the labour trade that shipped Ni-Vanuatu men to Queensland and Fiji called?

At its height more than half the adult men of some islands were working abroad; Australia barred the trade in 1906.

As of 2024, how many Olympic medals has Vanuatu won?

The country's most played sport is football; its Olympic hopes have rested mostly on beach volleyball and athletics.

Vanuatu was one of the last places on Earth to record a COVID-19 case. When did it happen?

The country was recovering from Cyclone Harold at the time; its isolation kept the virus out for eight months after the pandemic began.

What is the name of Vanuatu's national Council of Chiefs, which advises on culture and language?

It is elected by district councils of chiefs; the country's unicameral Parliament has 52 members.

Which 2013 prime minister was the first non-Ni-Vanuatu to hold the office?

Of mixed French-Tahitian ancestry and a naturalised citizen, he led the first government to include the Green Confederation.