Hans Egede
Hans Egede | |
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Denmark-Norway | |
Spouse | Gertrud Egede nee 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 |
Part of a series on |
Lutheranism |
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Hans Poulsen Egede (31 January 1686 – 5 November 1758) was a
Background
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, in
Greenland
At Lofoten, Egede heard stories about the
Egede established the
Haabet ("The Hope") and two smaller ships
A common myth states that, as the Inuit had no bread nor any idea of it, Egede adapted the Lord's Prayer as "Give us this day our daily seal". 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 custom".[9]
By the end of the first winter, many of the colonists had been stricken with
In 1728, a royal expedition under Major
A supply ship in 1733 brought three
Legacy
Egede became something of a
The Royal Danish Geographical Society established the Egede 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: the Egede crater on the south edge of the Mare 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 and outside of Frederik'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, during worldwide 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 a
Gallery
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Egede's own 1722 map of the area around "Habets Oe"
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Egede's own 1723 map of Greenland
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Egede's own 1724 map of western Greenland
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1747 map based on Egede's descriptions, by Emanuel Bowen
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Sea serpent reported by Hans Egede in 1734, probably a giant squid
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"Great Sea Serpent" according to Hans Egede
References
- ^ Hans Egede (Dansk biografisk Lexikon,) https://runeberg.org/dbl/4/0425.html
- ^ a b Sara Shannon. "Hans Egede, The Apostle of Greenland". James Ford Bell Library at University of Minnesota. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 19 June 2013.
- ^ a b c Hans Egede. Explorer, Colonizer (Missionary Gospel Fellowship Association Missions. Greenville, SC) "Egede, Hans (1686-1758) - Gospel Fellowship Association". Archived from the original on 20 August 2008. Retrieved 31 May 2009.
- ^ a b Del, Anden. "Grønland som del af den bibelske fortælling – en 1700-tals studie Archived 2012-07-15 at the Wayback Machine" ["Greenland as Part of the Biblical Narrative – a Study of the 18th Century"]. (in Danish)
- ^ a b c Oswalt, Wendell H. Eskimos and Explorers. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1999.
- ^ Doody, Richard. The World at War: "Greenland 1721–1953".
- ^ a b Marquardt, Ole. "Change and Continuity in Denmark's Greenland Policy" in The Oldenburg Monarchy: An Underestimated Empire?. Verlag Ludwig (Kiel), 2006.
- ^ a b c d Mirsky, Jeannette. To the Arctic!: The Story of Northern Exploration from Earliest Times. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998.
- ^ Nielsen, Flemming A. J. (2019). "Giv os i dag vor daglige sæl – om den grønlandske version af Fader Vor" (PDF). ILISIMATUSARFIK. p. 12. Retrieved 15 January 2021.
- ^ Grove, G.L. "Sewerin Sewerin, Jacob, 1691–1753, Handelsmand". (in Danish)
- OCLC 528755280.
- ^ "Hans Poulsen Egede Archived 2011-07-20 at the Wayback Machine". The Mineralogical Record.
- ^ BBC (16 July 2020). "Hans Egede: Greenland votes on colonial Danish statue". BBC.
- ^ "The Copenhagen Post". 22 July 2020.
- ^ J. Mareš, Svět tajemných zvířat, Prague, 1997
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)
- Barüske, Heinz Hans Egede und die Kolonisation Grönlands (Zeitschrift für Kulturaustausch, vol. 22 (1972) Nr.1)
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 9 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
External links
- Media related to Hans Egede (category) at Wikimedia Commons
- Works by or about Hans Egede at Wikisource
- Hans Egede entry in online Norwegian history book (in Norwegian)
- Hans Egede on Norwegian stamp
- SS Hans Egede