Hans Egede

Hans Egede
Johan Hörner, Hans Egede, c. 1745, Danish Museum of National History
Born	(1686-01-31)January 31, 1686 Harstad, Northern Norway
Died	November 5, 1758(1758-11-05) (aged 72) Falster, Denmark
Spouse	Gertrud Egede nee Rasch
Children	Niels Egede, Paul Egede, and two girls
Church	Church of Denmark (evangelical Lutheran)
Writings	Wrote a journal about his Journey to Greenland
Offices held	Ordained pastor Missionary to Greenland
Title	National Saint of Greenland

Hans Poulsen Egede (January 31, 1686 – November 5, 1758) was a Norwegian-Danish Lutheran missionary who launched mission efforts to Greenland, which led him to be styled the Apostle of Greenland. He established a successful mission among the Inuit and is credited with revitalizing Dano-Norwegian interest in the island after contact had been broken for hundreds of years. He founded Greenland's capital Godthåb, now known as Nuuk.

Background

Hans Egede was born into the home of a civil servant on Hinnøy, in Harstad, Norway several hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle. The son of a vicar priest in Vester Egede on southern Zealand, Denmark. He was schooled by an uncle, a clergyman in a local Lutheran Church. In 1704, he left for Copenhagen to enter the University of Copenhagen where he earned a bachelor's degree of theology. He returned to Hinnøy and in April 1707, he was ordained and assigned to a parish on an equally remote archipelago of Lofoten. The same year he married Gertrud Rasch. Hans and Gertrud would have four children - two boys and two girls.

Greenland

Egede was at Lofoten when he heard stories about the Old Norse settlements on Greenland, with which contact had been lost years before. In May 1721, he asked Frederick IV of Denmark for permission to search for the colony and establish a mission there, presuming that it had remained Catholic after the Danish Reformation or lost the Christian faith altogether. Frederick gave consent at least partially to reestablish a colonial claim to the island.

Several vessels left Bergen on May 12, 1721, and arrived on the coast of Greenland on July 3. He wrote a journal about his journey to Greenland, and published it. Egede was sent to seek the old Norse colony on Greenland but he found no survivors. The last communication with that colony had been over 300 years earlier. He did, however, find the Inuit and started a mission among them. He studied the Inuit language and translated Christian texts into it. This required some imagination as, for instance, the Inuit had no bread nor any idea of it. So the words of the Lord's Prayer were translated by Egede as the equivalent of "Give us this day our daily harbor seal".

Egede founded Godthåb (now Nuuk), which later became the capital of Greenland. In 1724, he baptized the first children. The new king, Christian VI of Denmark, recalled all Europeans from Greenland in 1730. Egede remained, however, encouraged by his wife Gertrud. Egede's book "The Old Greenland's New Perlustration" (Norwegian: Det gamle Grønlands nye Perlustration) appeared in 1729 and was translated into several languages.

In 1733, the Herrnhut missionaries of Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf were allowed to establish New Herrnhut, south of Nuuk. In 1734, a smallpox epidemic broke out which spread through the Inuit and claimed Gertrud Egede in 1735. Hans Egede left his son Paul Egede in Greenland and traveled on August 9, 1736 with his daughters and his son Niels to Denmark. He returned to Copenhagen in 1736 to become principal of a seminary that trained missionaries for Greenland. In 1741, he was named bishop of Greenland. He established a catechism for use in Greenland in 1747. Egede died November 5, 1758 at the age of 72 at Falster, Denmark.

Legacy

Norway claims that Hans Egede was a citizen of Norway. Egede became a national saint of Greenland. The town of Egedesminde (literally: memory of Egede) commemorates him. It was established by Niels Egede, Hans' second son, in 1759 on the Eqalussuit peninsula but moved to the island of Aasiaat in 1763, which had been the site of a pre-Viking Inuit settlement. A statue of Hans Egede stands watch over Greenland's capital in Nuuk.

Other information

Hans Egede gives one of the oldest descriptions of a sea serpent commonly believed to have been a giant squid. Egede wrote on July 6, 1734 that his ship sailed past the coast of Greenland when suddenly 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 the crow's nest on the mainmast. 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".

Gallery

• 
  Sea serpent reported by Hans Egede, in 1734.
• 
  The "Great Sea Serpent" according to Hans Egede.
• Statue in Harstad, Norway
  Statue in Harstad, Norway
• Statue in Nuuk, Greenland
  Statue in Nuuk, Greenland

Other sources

• Bobé, Louis Hans Egede: Colonizer and Missionary of Greenland (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1952)
• Ingstad, Helge. Land under the pole star: a voyage to the Norse settlements of Greenland and the saga of the people that vanished (translated by Naomi Walford, Jonathan Cape, London: 1982)
• Garnett, Eve To Greenland's icy mountains; the story of Hans Egede, explorer, coloniser missionary (London: Heinemann. 1968)

Notes

This article incorporates material translated from the Danish and German Wikipedia articles on Hans Egede.

External links

• Hans Egede entry in online Norwegian history book in Norwegian
• Hans Egede on Norwegian stamp
• SS Hans Egede