How Greenland got the Bible

Greenland has been within the news recently. Despite a Christian presence for a thousand years, Greenland has only had the entire Bible since 1900. This is the story …

Greenland

Greenland is a big island at the highest of the Atlantic Ocean. The northern part lies throughout the Arctic Circle, and the southern tip is within the Atlantic Ocean. It lies between Baffin Island in Canada and Iceland.

The native language of Greenland is understood in English simply as Greenlandic, but is named “Kalaallisut” by its own speakers. Greenlandic is an Inuit language (formerly referred to as Eskimo). It is linguistically related to other languages spoken by the Inuit peoples across the Arctic north, from the Canadian coasts of Labrador, northern Quebec, and Baffin Island, west to Alaska and into Siberia.

Norse Settlement

From the yr 986, parts of the coast of Greenland were settled by people (often called Vikings) from Iceland and Norway. They got here in large longboats led by Erik the Red, as recalled in sagas. They called the country Greenland to entice settlers and were converted to Christianity concerning the yr 1000.

From Greenland, some Norse went on to explore North America, and stays have been present in northern parts of Canada, which was likely the primary Christian presence on the American continent. A cathedral was in-built Greenland in 1126. Slowly, contact was lost between them and the remainder of the Norse world.

Hans Egede, Apostle to Greenland

Meanwhile, within the Lofoten Islands of northern Norway, Lutheran pastor Rev Hans Poulsen Egede (1686–1758) grew up hearing rumours and stories concerning the old Norse settlements in Greenland. People discussed whether or not they were still Catholic and had missed the Reformation, or in the event that they had lost their faith altogether. Egede was determined to search out out and produce them into the Lutheran Church.

From 1711, Egede sought permission from King Frederick IV of Denmark and Norway to guide a quest to search out the lost colony and establish a Christian mission there. King Frederick IV gave consent and re-established the old colonial claim to the island of Greenland. Egede formed “Det Bergen Grønlandske Compagnie” (Bergen Greenland Company) with investment from merchants, the king, and a missions college.

The Greenland Company was awarded broad powers to control. Ships left in 1721 with Egede, his wife, and 4 children, together with forty prospective colonists. They established a town they called Godthåb (Good Hope) and spent months exploring different areas. They found no living Norse settlements, but they did find some stays of where that they had been. What Egede didn’t know, but what we now know through archaeology, was that the Norse settlements had died out across the mid-1400s. The ruins of an ancient church might be seen at Hvalsey, and the stays of the cathedral at Garðar were present in 1926.

Instead, Egede encountered the Inuit communities. He stayed in Greenland and adjusted the aim of his mission to evangelising the Inuit Greenlanders, reintroducing Christianity to Greenland after a spot of about three centuries. He learnt the local language and, in about 1730, reduced it to writing using a writing system based on Danish. He translated parts of Scripture for them, starting with the Psalms and the Pauline Epistles. He created a dictionary in 1750 and a grammar in 1760. He became referred to as the “Apostle to Greenland”.

Poul Egede and the New Testament

Hans Egede’s son, Poul Egede, grew up in Greenland among the many local people and was fluent within the language. The Gospels were printed in Copenhagen in 1744, revised and printed with Acts in 1758. The complete Greenlandic New Testament was printed as “Testamente nutak” in 1766. From 1733, the gospel spread largely through Moravian missions, which spread across the island. Poul Egede also produced an edition of the metrical Psalms, which was published in 1788.

Danish Bible Society

A second translation was produced by Otto Fabricius, a Danish missionary, who produced a latest and higher Greenlandic New Testament in 1794. The first edition was destroyed within the Great Fire of Copenhagen in 1795, and a reprint was published in 1799. Later, Niels Giessing Wolf revised Fabricius’s New Testament on behalf of the Danish Bible Society. The revised New Testament was published in 1827.

Kleinschmidt Bible

A Moravian missionary, Johan Conrad (referred to as Samuel) Kleinschmidt, who was born in Greenland in 1814 and spoke German, Danish, and Greenlandic, worked on translating the New Testament into Greenlandic from the German Lutheran version. In 1822, this was published by the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS). He created a grammar in 1845 and worked on the Old Testament. Later, a Moravian missionary called Valentine Müller revised this 1822 New Testament, which was printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) in 1851.

Samuel Kleinschmidt died in 1886, and the interpretation work was accomplished after his death by H. F. Jörgensen, Chr. Rasmussen, and J. Kjer. The revised New Testament was published in 1893, and the Old Testament was accomplished at the tip of the last decade. The Old Testament was combined with the 1893 version of the New Testament to create the primary full Bible in Greenlandic. It was published in Copenhagen by the Danish government in 1900 and have become referred to as the “Kleinschmidt Bible”. It shaped Greenlandic Christian vocabulary and spirituality for generations, becoming the usual church Bible well into the 20 th century. The New Testament was revised in 1936.

Politics

When Norway gained independence from Denmark in 1814, Greenland remained under Danish rule. In 1979, Greenland achieved home rule from Denmark but stays a constituent country of the Kingdom of Denmark, together with the Faroe Islands. In 1982, a few years before Brexit, Greenland was the primary country to carry a referendum to go away the European Economic Community (EEC) and left by a really narrow majority. In June 2009, the federal government of Greenland declared Greenlandic to be the only official language.

New Translation 1999

In 1973, the spelling system was overhauled with an in depth orthographic reform to make it easier to learn. Work on a latest translation into Greenlandic began within the Nineteen Eighties, using the brand new orthography. A fresh translation of the Old Testament appeared in 1990. The complete modern Greenlandic Bible was published by the Danish Bible Society in 1999, after sixteen years of labor. It was made available in Greenland, and it may possibly be found online on the Danish Bible Society website.

Today, most Greenlanders consider themselves to be Christian, with the overwhelming majority related to the Lutheran Church of the Diocese of Greenland, which is a diocese of the Church of Denmark.