Flemming A. J. Nielsen And Thorkild Kjærgaard:The First Greenlandic Book
 Ever since the arrival of Norse peasants in south-west Greenland in the second halfof the tenth century there have been links between the immense island (2.2 millionkm2) in the north-eastern corner of the American hemisphere and the Scandinavianworld. At the end of the twelfth century, the ancestors of today’s Inuit, a whale- andseal-hunting people speaking a language of the Eskimo-Aleut group, migrated fromEllesmere Island across the narrow Smith Sound to northern Greenland. Within twoand a half centuries, the Norse peasants had, it seems, been exterminated by the Inuit,but Greenland was never forgotten in Scandinavia. In the European world it was generallyrecognised that Greenland was Norwegian territory. In 1380 Norway enteredinto a union with Denmark, and the dream of restoring connections with Greenlandtherefore became a shared Danish-Norwegian dream, although it seemed less and lesspracticable as time went by and the Davis Strait between Baffin Island and Greenlandbegan to teem with Dutch and British whalers and trading ships.However, in 1721 the course of history changed. A Norwegian priest, Hans Egede(1686‑1758), who had been offering his services for more than a decade, was appointed‘Royal Missionary in Greenland’ and was given the necessary support for an expeditionaiming to re-establish the old connection and to reintroduce Christianity into Greenland.Egede’s Greenlandic adventure succeeded, and over the course of the eighteenthcentury Greenland was reintegrated, bit by bit, into the multicultural, multinationalDanish-Norwegian state and society.In 1814 Norway was divided as a result of the Napoleonic Wars. Mainland Norway(what we know as Norway today) was ceded to Sweden while the remote Norwegianislands in the North Atlantic (Greenland, the Faroe Islands and, until 1944, Iceland)were annexed to the kingdom of Denmark.Being a true officer of the Danish-Norwegian empire, where every child had tobe taught to read and appreciate Luther’s Small Catechism, Egede struggled fromthe outset with the exotic Greenlandic language, not just to learn to speak a vaguelyunderstandable ‘kitchen-Greenlandic’ but also to acquire the deeper understandingof phonetic and grammatical structures that was needed in order to develop a writtenversion of the language.During Egede’s fifteen years in Greenland (1721‑36), all the documents pertainingto the mission were handwritten. This was true also for the basic Christian texts inGreenlandic which Egede and his helpers began to produce and distribute among thegrowing number of converts from as early as 1723. Back in Copenhagen in 1736, Egede founded the so-called Seminarium Groenlandicum. The purpose of this institution wastwofold: to teach basic Greenlandic to new missionaries and catechists before they wentto Greenland, and to produce books printed in Greenlandic in order to have a moremajor and focused impact on Greenlandic society than the sporadic effects obtainablewith handwritten texts that were constantly being altered by being laboriously copiedout by hand again and again.The first book published in Greenlandic as part of this programme was a spellingbook containing reading exercises based on Luther’s Small Catechism in addition to acollection of prayers and eight hymns translated from the Danish, comprising a total offorty pages prepared by Egede and printed in Copenhagen in 1739 to be sent to Greenlandthe same year. As a bridge between written and printed culture in Greenland, thissmall book marked an important milestone in early modern Greenland. Until now it hasbeen known only from uncertain and elusive bibliographical sources – sceptical voiceshave even doubted whether it ever existed, but two copies of the book have recentlybeen located and identified in the holdings of the Royal Library. Our article providesa thorough study of the book: how it came to be forgotten, how it was rediscovered,the nature of its contents and details of its typographical layout.Less than a century after Hans Egede’s arrival in Greenland, almost everybody inwestern Greenland had learned to read and write, and the local vernacular had becomea literary language. Later, in 1861, Greenland’s first newspaper was established.It was written and edited from the outset by Greenlanders eagerly discussing their ownaffairs. As a result of the discussions, scattered groups of individuals throughout theenormous but thinly populated island coalesced into a nation, and, thanks to Egede’sendeavours and those of his many successors throughout the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies, Greenlandic is today the only native American language that is used for anyand every purpose by its speakers, whether it be literature, pop music, government,church services or legislation.
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Sep 18, 2024
Nina Berre + 2
Open Access
