Hans Egede

Who is Hans Egede?

Hans Egede was a Norwegian-Danish Lutheran priest known as the "Apostle of Greenland." Believing that descendants of the medieval Norse Greenlandic settlers might still survive there, he petitioned the Danish-Norwegian crown for support and set sail for Greenland in 1721 with his family and a group of colonists and traders. He founded a mission and trading colony at Håbets Ø, which grew into Godthåb, present-day Nuuk, in 1728, marking the beginning of continuous Danish presence in Greenland. Egede learned Kalaallisut, compiled early grammatical material, and worked to translate portions of Christian teaching for the Inuit population, while also documenting Greenlandic natural history, geography, and Inuit customs. His mission endured severe hardship, including a smallpox epidemic in 1733-34 that devastated Inuit communities near the colony. He returned to Denmark in 1736 and later served as titular bishop of Greenland, publishing Det gamle Grønlands nye Perlustration (1741), an influential early account of Greenland. His legacy as coloniser and missionary remains debated in Greenland today.

Sources: Hans Egede, Det gamle Grønlands nye Perlustration (1741) · Finn Gad, The History of Greenland (Vol. II, 1973)