This book is a fiction. It runs closer to actual historical events than its predecessor The Prophets of Eternal Fjord. But it should not be read as a reliable historical account, for it is most certainly not. Most of the characters in the novel were real people and appear under their own names. While I have made use of their biographies, of which several may be found online, I have also taken considerable liberties with them. Many of the events that take place in the novel took place in the real world too, though of course many have been fabricated to suit my own purposes. Often there is greater truth and economy in fiction than fact. I found a precise and vivid account of the period to be Louis Bobé’s biography of Hans Egede. Mads Lidegaard’s Grønlændernes kristning (The Christianization of the Greenlanders) provided a more concise review, while Finn Gad’s Grønlands historie (The History of Greenland) was also enlightening. I made good use of all three of these books, as well as several more noted in the bibliography.
I refer with some consistency to ‘the Danish colony’ and to ‘the Danes’ who live there, though most were in fact Norwegians and a number were Germans. Since however they were subject to the Danish king, I found it convenient to refer to them accordingly as one.
Fiction writers and historians – sorcerers and scholars – do different things. We do best not to encroach into each other’s domains. How many historians have written novels of literary merit? How many novelists have produced historical research good enough to pass through academic peer review? Not many, I imagine. And yet, as my list of acknowledgements attests, we depend on each other. Let historians write histories then, and let novelists write stories. I do the latter.
Kim Leine
Hafnia, this year of our Lord 2017