Daniel Jacob Danielsen

Daniel Jacob Danielsen (born 15 June 1871, died 16 October 1916) was a Faroese missionary and humanitarian worker. In 1901-03 he was in Congo Free State as a missionary for Congo Balolo Mission with base in Bonginda. He was primarily an engineer on the missonary boat that sailed up and down the Congo River to and from the missionary station.

In 1903 Danielsen was sent home from the mission as accusations were hold against him that he had been violent against some of the locals (later it turned out that the accusations had been false.) On his way back to the shore he met Roger Casement who at that time was British consul in Congo. Casement had been anointed to write a report on the atrocities that were being made against the natives by Belgian soldiers. Congo was at that time a personal property of King leopold II of Belgium and he exploited the local population fiercely to profit from increased rubber demand. Methods of coercion included whipping, hostage-taking, rape and murder, and burning of gardens and villages. (The most famous atrocity, the severing of a hand or foot, was undertaken by native soldiers to prove to their white officers that they had not wasted ammunition, and was not a punishment for rubber shortfalls.) Casement was in a desperat need for an engineer to steer his boat up the Congo River as his initial engineer couldn't continue. Danielsen joined Casement and they travelled together for a couple of months. What Danielsen did next to being an engineer was being a photographer and he took several atrocity photographs of people who had been mutilated and later he showed them in meetings back in England and later in the Faroe Islands.

In 1904 Danielsen moved to the Faroe Islands with his wife, Lina, where he become one of the most profilic evangelists for the Brethren movement in the Faroe.[1]