Colonialism and orthodoxy in Greenland

Abstract

In this article I follow the struggles between a Danish missionary, Niels Hveyssel, and a Greenlandic ‘heretical’ movement in the late eighteenth century in Greenland. The so-called Habakuk affair was the first unauthorized Greenlandic appropriation of Christianity. The movement lasted a couple of years and its demise is usually credited to the intervention and control of head catechist Frederik Berthelsen. After outlining some historical currents, I explore Hveyssel's reports to the missionary college outlining the turn of events, in order to examine and highlight the assumptions of gender, superstition, self-mastery, rationality and race underlying the correspondence. I thus trace how Hveyssel represents himself as master of the Greenlanders, especially the catechists who worked with him, and how he differentiates and makes preferences along racial lines. Finally, I place Hveyssel's representation within what I call the ‘Protestant pastorate’. The Protestant pastorate is the Protestant power structure in its Danish context, including its modes of subjectification and control.