Danish Missionary Research Articles

“A Danish corner in the heart of Lebanon”

This article investigates the role of Danish missionary and nurse Maria Jacobsen (1882-1960), working in Lebanon among Armenian refugees and orphans from ca. 1920 to 1960. The background of the Armenian-Danish relationship in the Middle East goes back to the early twentieth century with the arrival of Danish female missionaries and health workers from the organization Kvindelige Missionsarbejdere [KMA, The Female Mission Workers] in the Ottoman Empire. During the Armenian Genocide, Jacobsen and her Danish colleagues played crucial roles as relief workers and witnesses to the persecutions. After the war, the Danes continued their vocation and religious duty in the form of practical relief work among refugees and orphans in Lebanon, while at the same time promoting Protestant beliefs and values to the refugee community. The Bird’s Nest, an orphanage for Armenian children in Jbeil (Byblos), north of Beirut, became KMA’s main welfare project in the country. From its establishment in 1922, this large institution was headed by Maria Jacobsen until her death in 1960. The article explores the ways in which Jacobsen and the KMA situated Danish faith-based relief in the new post-WWI Middle East. It also looks at the relations to and negotiations with the local Armenian society.

Kristendom i grænseland

This article discusses general historiographical perspectives emerging from a religious encounter between Danish missionaries and the Bachama people in northern Nigeria in the twentieth century. The general points relate to the role of Christian missionaries in the making of modern Christianity. It is argued that missionaries should be seen as the spearheads of modern Christianity through their experience of religious pluralism and relativism in religious encounters outside Europe. The paper uses the concept of the border to characterise a particular “borderland Christianity” emerging from missionary situations. By way of conclusion it is argued that the borderland experience of missionaries was made part of Western Christianity and constitutes a potentially important but neglected part of the historical development of Christianity in the modern world.

The Circulation of Danish Missionary Literature 1880–1944

The article investigates the outreach of missionary literature through a survey of the nonfictional books on the main Danish-missionized areas published in the period 1880–1944 by Danish missionary organizations. A statistical, bibliometric mapping of titles and subjects shows that out of 637 Danish nonfictional printed books on India, China, and Africa from 1880 to 1944, missionary literature constitutes 307 titles, corresponding to 48.2%. On this basis it is fair to say that the missionary message had a monumental presence in comparison with the many varying agendas and approaches existing in other books. Furthermore, the article maps the channels of circulation that missionary literature traveled through and shows that these channels moved across the missionary organizations to the revivalist community, which constituted the traditional recruitment base of Foreign Mission. But it also demonstrates that the rest of society was virtually cut off from this circuit. In conclusion, 48.2%, and at times much more, of the Danish literature dealing with large parts of the world was consumed by between 10 and 15% of the population, where missionary organization members proved to be an even smaller part and yet the greater consumer group. These results only apply to Denmark, but it is reasonable to assume that the same relationship between a very large bulk of literature and a very small readership also pertains elsewhere.

Colonialism and orthodoxy in Greenland

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.

Adam’s escape: Children and the discordant nature of colonial conversions

The article traces the fundamental incoherency that structured the Danish Missionary Society’s work at a boarding school for low-caste ‘heathen’ children in South India in the 1860s and 1870s. Through elaborate disciplinary methods, the missionaries set out to Christianize and civilize the Indian children’s morality, social behaviour and bodily comportment. Yet, the missionaries’ perceptions of ‘the Indian child’ also reflected the contemporary bolstering of racial thinking in Indian colonial society, resulting in doubts whether Indian children could in fact become true Christians. This paradoxical endeavour shows how children became a site for the production of difference that sustained colonialism.

Between consent and coercion: Danish Missionaries and Tamil parents in late nineteenth century South India

Between consent and coercion: Danish Missionaries and Tamil parents in late nineteenth century South India

Code of Conduct for the Danish Missionary Council (Dansk Missionsråd)

International Review of MissionVolume 96, Issue 382-383 p. 371-376 Code of Conduct for the Danish Missionary Council (Dansk Missionsråd) First published: 25 March 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6631.2007.tb00618.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume96, Issue382-383July‐October 2007Pages 371-376 RelatedInformation

Otto Fabricius and the seals of Greenland

The life of the Danish missionary, cleric, philologist, naturalist and ethnographer Bishop Otto Fabricius (1744-1822) is reviewed in the first part of this volume. He served as a missionary in Southwest Greenland in 1768-73 and spent his leisure time gaining experience of and collecting information on all products of nature. His work, and his importance as a cleric and as the author of contributions to the study of the Greenlandic language are briefly mentioned: but the greatest importance is attached to his contribution to the sciences of natural history and ethnology. The work that made him famous is Fauna Groenlandica (1780), written in Latin and describing 473 animal species from Greenland, of which 130 were new to science. Although his daily duties were related to his ecclesiastical posts, he continued to conduct and publish scientific studies throughout his life.
 Most of this work was written in Danish, and the distribution therefore limited; however, his ethnographical works have been translated into English (Holtved 1962). Some later writers’ evaluations of Fabricius’ contributions to the study of natural history are mentioned, and an attempt is made to explore the character of the man behind the work.
 The second part of this volume contains a complete, literal translation into English of Otto Fabricius’ comprehensive treatise on the seals of Greenland (1790 & 1791). A modern-style list of his references is compiled, supplemented with examples of illustrations found in these works.
 Otto Fabricius’ contributions to the study of seals are evaluated in the third part of this volume. They enjoy a unique position, since they reflect the intimate knowledge of these animals he was able to obtain by living among seal hunters, as a seal hunter himself.
 First he established the existence of four seals species in Greenland besides the common seal (Phoca vitulina), and provided their names to O.F. Müller (1776); secondly he presented precise descriptions of all five species in Fauna Groenlandica. Ten years later he published the treatise on the seals of Greenland; and finally he wrote a detailed description of the seal hunting implements used by the Greenlanders (1810). A comparison with the works of previous and contemporary authors demonstrates that Fabricius’ contributions in this field rank high, particularly because of their stamp of personal and direct observation and experience. This was acknowledged by contemporary scientists, and was still recognized well into the nineteeth century; but today the name and work of Otto Fabricius seem to be known only to a few specialists.

Menneske først - Grundtvig og hedningemissionen

Ordet »universel« kan for det forste betegne faenomener, der er almene i den forstand, at de enten findes eller kan findes over alt i den verden, vi har kendskab til. Men, for det andet, anvendes ordet »universel« ogsa til at betegne det altomfattende perspektiv i en taenkning, der retter sig mod verden som helhed. I det folgende skal sogelyset rettes mod et emneomrade, hvor Grundtvig har arbejdet med universelle faenomener og perspektiver, nemlig evangeliets udbredelse til ikke-kristne folkeslag. I Grundtvigs levetid og i det vaekkelsesmiljo, han og hans tilhaengere bl.a. ogsa henvendte sig til, var missionen blandt hedninger et emne, der var genstand for ganske saerlig opmaerksomhed. Som indgang til denne undersogelse* skal gives en kort praesentation af Grundtvigs digt »Menneske forst og Christen saa«**, et digt der fra tid til anden har vaeret inddraget i droftelsen af Grundtvigs forhold til hedningemission. Vi begynder med at rette sogelyset mod denne tekst med henblik pa at identificere nogle af de problemer, som tilbagestar med hensyn til tolkning og datering.

Российские миссионерские журналы о деятельности скандинавских религиозных миссий в конце XIX-начале XX века<br>(Scandinavian missions in the materials of the Russian Orthodox magazines (from the late 19th and early 20th centuries))

The Russian Orthodox magazines - Pravoslavny Blagovestnik, Missio- nerskoe obozrenie, Amerikansky pravoslavny vestnik, and others - are important and interesting sources. These periodicals describe missionary activity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Naturally, these magazines were primarily concerned with the missionary attempts of the "Great Powers". But the work of Scandinavian missions was also covered. The material can be divided into three categories: historical reviews, statistics, and so-called "missionary problems". The reviews deal with the history of all influential Scandinavian missionary organizations - The Norwegian Missionary Society, The Norwegian Covenant Mission, The Danish Missionary Society, The Church of Sweden Mission. The statistical material - the number of missionary organizations and missionaries, native assistants, converts, financial support - offers a chance to compare Scandinavian missionary activity on an international scale. At the turn of the 19th century the problems between missionaries and native inhabitants became very topical. These problems, too, were touched upon in Russian religious magazines. On the whole, the role of Scandinavian missions in the missionary movement was evaluated in an objective manner.

Otto Fabricius' "On the Floating Ice in the Northern Waters"

The mantuscript of the following paper on floating ice in the Arctic, by Otto Fabricills, was discovered in the Banks Collection of the Sutro Branch, California State Library, San Franicisco, by the librarian, Mr. Richard H. Dillon. Information on the life of Fabriciius is not generally available, andfew are aware of the remarkable knowledge of ice, cturrents, and win1ds in the Arctic possessed by this eighteenth-century Danish missionary to Greenlanld. It is for this reasoni that the paper is of particular value. Center headings have been added; the manuscript itself had none. The bracketed explanatiotns are by Mr. Dillon.-EDITORIAL NOTE.

The Polar Eskimos 1

A NTHROPOLOGISTS are now beginning to realise the necessity of supplementing the methods of a general ethnographic survey by a more intensive study of smaller groups within limited areas. A good example of this class of investigation is provided by the account of the Polar Eskimos by Dr. H. P. Steensby, who was a member of the expedition commissioned by the Danish Missionary Society in 1909 to establish a station in Greenland.