Hans Egede

Life events

1. Born — 1686

   Hans Poulsen Egede was born on 31 January 1686 in Harstad, Norway, to Povel Hansen Egede, a Danish-born priest, and the Norwegian-born Kirsten Jensdatter Hind, daughter of a local merchant.

2. Educated — 1704

   In 1704 Egede travelled to Copenhagen to enter the University of Copenhagen, where he earned a bachelor's degree in theology before returning to Hinnøya Island.

3. Ordained — 1707

   On 15 April 1707 Egede was ordained and assigned to a parish on the remote Lofoten archipelago; that same year he married Gertrud Rasch, who was 13 years his senior at age 34.

4. Pilgrimage — 1721

   Egede departed Bergen on 2 May 1721 aboard Haabet ('The Hope') with his wife, four children, and forty colonists; on 3 July they reached Nuup Kangerlua and established Hope Colony (Haabets Colonie) on Kangeq Island.

5. Other — 1724

   In 1724 Egede baptized his first child converts among the Inuit, two of whom subsequently travelled to Denmark and inspired Count Zinzendorf to begin the Moravian missions to Greenland.

6. Wrote — 1729

   Egede published Det gamle Grønlands nye Perlustration (The Old Greenland's New Perlustration) in 1729, an account of Greenland that was translated into several languages.

7. Consecrated — 1741

   After returning to Copenhagen following his wife Gertrud's death in 1735, Egede was named Superintendent of the Greenland Mission Seminary and in 1741 was consecrated Lutheran Bishop of Greenland.

8. Died — 1758

   Egede died on 5 November 1758 at the age of 72 in Stubbekøbing on the island of Falster, Denmark.

Relationships

Documented claims

• Egede's mission to Greenland, launched in 1721, revitalized Danish-Norwegian interest in the island after contact had been broken for approximately 300 years, earning him the title 'Apostle of Greenland'. (likely)
• In 1728 Egede helped establish the fort of Godt-Haab ('Good Hope') on the Greenland mainland, the settlement that became Godthåb and is today known as Nuuk, Greenland's capital. (likely)
• While translating the Lord's Prayer into Greenlandic, Egede initially used 'mamaq' for 'food', but the word meant 'how delicious!'; he later adopted 'neqissat', meaning 'food', in a catechism completed by 1747. (likely)
• On 6 July 1734, Egede recorded one of the oldest surviving descriptions of a sea creature off the Greenland coast — now believed to have been a giant squid — describing it as raising its head above the crow's nest and longer than the entire ship. (likely)
• A supply ship arriving in 1733 brought a smallpox case to Greenland; by 1735 the epidemic had killed Egede's wife Gertrud, and he carried her body back to Denmark for burial, leaving his son Poul to continue the mission. (likely)