Karkar

The Karkar are the people of Karkar, a volcanic island in the Bismarck Sea off the north coast of New Guinea, dominated by a central volcano with two nested calderas. They speak Waskia, a Papuan language used on roughly half of the island and in a few mainland villages. It serves as the common language between Waskia villages and those speaking Takia, an Oceanic tongue reshaped by long contact with Waskia.

European ships began to reach the island in the sixteenth century: the Spanish navigator Inigo Ortiz de Retes sighted it in 1545, and the Dutch voyage of Willem Schouten and Jacob le Maire named it High Island in 1616.