Far North · Modernised and illustrated edition
A Description of Greenland
Modernized, illustrated English edition of A Description of Greenland (Det gamle Grønlands nye Perlustration) by Hans Egede (1721-1736).
He founded Nuuk, baptised the Inuit and swore he had seen a sea monster off Greenland.
Read more ↓- about 230 pages
- Paperback
- English
- 18th century
Countries covered: Greenland
About this book
In 1721, a Norwegian pastor sets sail with his whole family for Greenland, a land cut off from Europe for more than three centuries. Hans Egede will live there for fifteen years among the Inuit of the west coast and found the colony of Good Hope, the future Nuuk.
Back in Denmark, he draws up an inventory of this country at the edge of the world. First there is the mystery of the Norse colonies founded by Erik the Red, one wiped out, the other nowhere to be found, and two centuries of royal expeditions sent towards an eastern coast that the ice makes inaccessible. Then there is nature: icebergs mistaken for ships, northern lights, the midnight sun, whales and narwhals, and the Kraken, of which the naturalist is wary, even as he describes the enormous beast that rose from the sea in 1734 off his colony.
Then comes the heart of the book: the life of the Greenlanders observed at close quarters. Seal hunting by kayak, winter houses, weddings and mourning, sung duels to the sound of the drum, a language into which the mission translates the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, the séances of the angekuts and the land of souls.
Learned and sceptical, admiring and disdainful by turns, Egede wants to understand this people as much as to convert it. Between the naturalist's inventory and the pastor's hope, which of the two outlooks will prevail?
Product details
- Publisher
- Itinerarium Éditions
- Series
- Far North
- The author
- Hans Egede
- Date of the journey
- 1721-1736
- Modern edition by
- Hélène Garnier
- Language
- English
- Format
- Paperback, 6 × 9 in (15.2 × 22.9 cm)
- Pages
- about 230
The author
Hans Egede
Hans Egede was born in January 1686 at Harstad, in the parish of Trondenes, in northern Norway, and became a pastor after studying theology in Copenhagen. While chaplain at Vågan, in the Lofoten Islands, he became convinced that the descendants of the old Norse settlers of Greenland had to be found and brought the Gospel. Leaving Bergen in 1721 with his family, he spent fifteen years among the Inuit of the west coast, where he led the colony that would become Godthåb, today's Nuuk. Back in Denmark in 1736, he trained missionaries, received the title of Bishop of Greenland and published in 1741 his description of the country, translated into English in 1745. The man known as “the Apostle of Greenland” died at Stubbekøbing, on the island of Falster, on 5 November 1758.
All books by Hans Egede →The journey mapped
In the Same Place, Through the Centuries
-
David Cranz, The History of Greenland (1761-1762)
In 1733, in Egede's lifetime, Moravian Brethren from Herrnhut settle next to his colony and found New Herrnhut; relations between Lutherans and Moravians are not always peaceful.
Read a free edition → -
William Scoresby, Journal of a Voyage to the Northern Whale-Fishery (1822)
A Whitby whaler and a recognised man of science, William Scoresby sails in 1822 along the east coast of Greenland, the coast Egede dreamed of reaching in small boats and where the lost Eastern Settlement of the Norse was still…
Read a free edition → -
Fridtjof Nansen, The First Crossing of Greenland (1888)
In 1888, the young Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen and five companions land on the east coast of Greenland and cross the ice sheet on skis, from one shore to the other, for the first time.
Read a free edition → -
Knud Rasmussen, Nye Mennesker (1902-1904)
Born in 1879 in Ilulissat, on Disko Bay, the son of a Danish pastor and a partly Greenlandic mother, Knud Rasmussen has spoken Greenlandic since childhood.
The modern editor
More in this series
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