Hans Egede | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1686-01-31)January 31, 1686 Harstad,Denmark-Norway (now Norway) |
| Died | November 5, 1758(1758-11-05) (aged 72) Falster, Denmark-Norway (now Denmark) |
| Spouse | Gjertrud Nilsdatter Rasch |
| Children |
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| Church | Church of Norway (Evangelical Lutheran) |
| Writings | Published the journal of his journey to Greenland |
Offices held |
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| Title | National Saint of Greenland |
Hans Poulsen Egede (31 January 1686 – 5 November 1758) was a NorwegianLutheran priest and missionary who launched mission efforts toGreenland, which led him to be styled theApostle of Greenland.[1][2] He established a successful mission among theInuit and is credited with revitalizing Danish-Norwegian interest in the island after contact had been broken for about 300 years. He founded Greenland's capital Godthåb, now known asNuuk.
Hans Egede was born into the home of a Danish-born civil servant, the priest son Povel Hansen Egede, and the Norwegian-born Kirsten Jensdatter Hind, daughter of a local merchant, inHarstad, Norway, nearly 150 miles (240 km) north of theArctic Circle. His paternal grandfather had been avicar inVester Egede on southernZealand, Denmark. Hans was schooled by an uncle, a clergyman in a localLutheran Church. In 1704 he travelled toCopenhagen to enter theUniversity of Copenhagen, where he earned abachelor's degree intheology. He returned toHinnøya Island after graduation, and on 15 April 1707 he was ordained and assigned to a parish on the equally remote archipelago ofLofoten. Also in 1707 he marriedGertrud Rasch (orRask), who was 13 years his senior. Four children were born to the marriage – two boys and two girls.[3]
At Lofoten, Egede heard stories about theold Norse settlements onGreenland, with which contact had been lost centuries before. Beginning in 1711,[4] he sought permission fromFrederick IV of Denmark-Norway to search for the colony and establish a mission there, presuming that it had either remainedCatholic after theDanish–Norwegian Reformation or been lost to theChristian faith altogether. Frederick gave consent at least partially to re-establish a colonial claim to the island.[3]
Egede established theBergen Greenland Company[5] (Det Bergen Grønlandske Compagnie) with $9,000 in capital from Bergen merchants, $200 fromFrederick IV of Denmark and Norway, and a $300 annual grant from theRoyal Mission College.[6] The company was granted broad powers to govern the peninsula (as it was then considered to be), to raise its own army and navy, to collect taxes and to administer justice; the king and his council, however, refused to grant it monopoly rights to whaling and trade in Greenland out of a fear of antagonizing theDutch.[7]
Haabet ("The Hope") and two smaller ships[5] departedBergen on 2 May 1721 bearing Egede, his wife and four children, and forty other colonists.[8] On 3 July[5] they reachedNuup Kangerlua and established Hope Colony (Haabets Colonie) with the erection of a portable house onKangeq Island, which Egede christened the Island of Hope (Haabets Ø). Searching for months for descendants of theold Norse colonists, he found only the localKalaallit people and began studyingtheir language.
A common myth states that, as the Inuit had no bread nor any idea of it, Egede adapted theLord's Prayer as "Give us this day our dailyseal". Egede at first tried the word "mamaq" but it does not mean "food", as Hans Egede thought, but "how delicious!" This first attempt stems from 1724, when he had only been in the country for three years and he has probably often heard someone say "mamaq!" It was not long before he came up with the word "neqissat", "food". When Egede's son Poul published the four Gospels in print in 1744, he used the word "timiusaq". This word was already written down by Hans in 1725 and is used by Greenlanders as an explanation of how bread looks. The old dictionaries suggest that at that time one could use the word “timia” in the sense of “bone marrow” or, as Samuel Kleinschmidt wrote in his dictionary in 1871, “the inner, porous part of the leg or Horn". “Timiusaq” therefore originally means “it which resembles bone marrow ”. Today, this word is used in it ecclesiastical languages in the sense of "wafer" and in North Greenland in the sense of "ship's biscuit".[9]
By the end of the first winter, many of the colonists had been stricken withscurvy and most returned home as soon as they could. Egede and his family remained with a few others and in 1722 welcomed two supply ships the king had funded with the imposition of a new tax. His (now ship-borne) explorations found no Norse survivors along the western shore and future work was misled by the two mistaken beliefs – both prevalent at the time – that theEastern Settlement would be located on Greenland's east coast (it was later established it had been among the fjords of the island's extreme southwest) and that a strait existed nearby communicating with the western half of the island. In fact, his 1723 expedition found the churches and ruins of theEastern Settlement, but he considered them to be those of the Western.[8] At the end of the year, he turned north and helped establish a whaling station onNipisat Island. In 1724 he baptized his first child converts, two of whom would travel to Denmark and there inspireCount Zinzendorf to begin theMoravian missions.
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In 1728, a royal expedition under MajorClaus Paarss arrived with four supply ships and moved the Kangeq colony to the mainland opposite, establishing a fort named Godt-Haab ("Good Hope"), the futureGodthåb. The extra supplies also allowed Egede to build a proper chapel within the main house.[4] More scurvy led to forty deaths and abandonment of the site not only by the Danes but by the Inuit as well.[8] Egede's bookThe Old Greenland's New Perlustration (Norwegian:Det gamle Grønlands nye Perlustration) appeared in 1729 and was translated into several languages,[3] but King Frederick[7] had lost patience and recalled Paarss's military garrison from Greenland the next year. Egede, encouraged by his wife Gertrud, remained with his family and ten sailors.
A supply ship in 1733 brought threemissionaries and news that the king had granted 2,000rixdollars a year to establish a new company for the colony underJacob Severin.[10] TheMoravians (their leader wasChristian David) were allowed to establish a station atNeu-Herrnhut (which became the nucleus of modernNuuk, Greenland's capital) and in time astring of missions along the island's west coast.[11] The ship also returned one of Egede's convert children with a case ofsmallpox.[8] By the next year, the epidemic was raging among the Inuit and in 1735 it claimed Gertrud Egede. Hans carried her body back to Denmark for burial the next year, leaving his sonPoul to carry on his work. In Copenhagen, he was named Superintendent of the Greenland Mission Seminary (Seminarium Groenlandicum) and in 1741 the LutheranBishop of Greenland. A catechism for use in Greenland was completed by 1747. He died on 5 November 1758 at the age of 72 inStubbekøbing atFalster, Denmark.[12]
Egede holds the legacy of anational "saint" of Greenland. The town ofEgedesminde (lit. "Memory of Egede") commemorates him. It was established by Hans's second son, Niels, in 1759 on the Eqalussuit peninsula. It was moved to the island ofAasiaat in 1763, which had been the site of a pre-Viking Inuit settlement. His grandson and namesakeHans Egede Saabye also became a missionary to Greenland and published a celebrated diary of his time there.
TheRoyal Danish Geographical Society established theEgede Medal in his honour in 1916. The medal is in silver and awarded 'preferably for geographical studies and researches in the Arctic countries'.
A crater on the Moon is named after him: theEgede crater on the south edge of theMare Frigoris (the Sea of Cold). The historical fiction novel "The Prophets of Eternal Fjord" narrates a tale of a missionary priest under Egede's instruction embarking upon Greenland to convert its indigenous peoples to Christianity.
Statues of Hans Egede stand watch over Greenland's capital in Nuuk, outside ofVågan Church (Lofotkatedralen) inKabelvåg and outside ofFrederik's Church (Marmorkirken) in Copenhagen.[2] Egede's statue at Frederick's Church in Copenhagen was vandalized with the word "decolonize" spray-painted on its base on June 20, 2020, duringworldwide protests against memorials of colonial figures. Another Egede statue in Nuuk, Greenland was likewise vandalized ten days later.[13] In a subsequent vote, 921 voted to keep the statue while 600 wanted it removed.[14]
Hans Egede gave one of the oldest descriptions of asea serpent, now believed to have been agiant squid. On 6 July 1734 he wrote that his ship was off the Greenland coast when those on board "saw a most terrible creature, resembling nothing they saw before. The monster lifted its head so high that it seemed to be higher than thecrow's nest on themainmast. The head was small and the body short and wrinkled. The unknown creature was using giant fins which propelled it through the water. Later the sailors saw its tail as well. The monster was longer than our whole ship".[15]
Media related toHans Egede (category) at Wikimedia Commons
Works by or aboutHans Egede atWikisource
