Hans Poulsen Egede was a Dano-Norwegian Lutheran missionary who launched mission efforts to Greenland, which led him to be styled the Apostle of Greenland.
14 Facts About Hans Egede
2.
Hans Egede established a successful mission among the Inuit and is credited with revitalizing Dano-Norwegian interest in the island after contact had been broken for about 300 years.
3.
Hans Egede founded Greenland's capital Godthab, now known as Nuuk.
4.
Hans Egede was born into the home of a civil servant in Harstad, Norway, nearly 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
5.
At Lofoten, Hans Egede heard stories about the old Norse settlements on Greenland, with which contact had been lost centuries before.
6.
Hans Egede established the Bergen Greenland Company with $9,000 in capital from Bergen merchants, $200 from Frederick IV of Denmark and Norway, and a $300 annual grant from the Royal Mission College.
7.
Hans Egede was granted broad powers to govern the peninsula, to raise its own army and navy, to collect taxes and to administer justice; the king and his council refused to grant it monopoly rights to whaling and trade in Greenland out of a fear of antagonizing the Dutch.
8.
The extra supplies allowed Hans Egede to build a proper chapel within the main house.
9.
Hans Egede, encouraged by his wife Gertrud, remained with his family and ten sailors.
10.
The ship returned one of Hans Egede's convert children with a case of smallpox.
11.
Hans Egede carried her body back to Denmark for burial the next year, leaving his son Poul to carry on his work.
12.
The historical fiction novel "The Prophets of Eternal Fjord" narrates a tale of a missionary priest under Hans Egede's instruction embarking upon Greenland to convert its indigenous peoples to Christianity.
13.
Statues of Hans Egede stand watch over Greenland's capital in Nuuk and outside of Frederik's Church in Copenhagen.
14.
Hans Egede gave one of the oldest descriptions of a sea serpent, now believed to have been a giant squid.