Henrik Lund

Who is Henrik Lund?

Henning Jakob Henrik Lund was a Greenlandic Lutheran priest, poet, and public figure born in 1875. In 1912 he wrote the lyrics to "Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit" ("Our Ancient Land"), a poem addressing Greenland as an aging mother who has always sheltered and provided for her children. The text was later set to music by fellow Greenlander Jonathan Petersen in 1937 and formally adopted as Greenland's national anthem, becoming one of the earliest and most enduring works of modern Greenlandic-language literature. The anthem was translated into Danish in 1916 by the linguist William Thalbitzer, remaining for many years the only Greenlandic song rendered into Danish, which helped secure it official recognition. Lund's poem is associated with the early Greenlandic movement toward greater self-governance in the years surrounding Greenland's first Landsråd (provincial council) reforms. Alongside contemporaries such as Mathias Storch, Lund belongs to the first generation of Greenlandic priests and writers whose hymns, poems, and public texts helped shape a modern Greenlandic-language print culture in the early twentieth century.

Sources: Henrik Lund, "Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit" (1912) · Wikipedia, "Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit"