On this day I journeyed with my beloved Frederik Christian to visit the Greenlanders who were settled a good Danish mile from us up the Baal’s River. We remained there for two days in order to instruct them and their children.
FROM HANS EGEDE’S JOURNAL, DECEMBER 1728
By God, it is winter again already. The summer was cold and rainy, but the autumn was mild. Snow fell in October, though it did not settle. Now we are well into December and the snow is thin on the ground, but holy mother of God the weather is raw and we shiver to the bone. Yet my father’s word is law and if he is set on sailing, then we sail. The winter’s darkness is upon us, the coast is sombre and forbidding, the sea a sour and inky milk. But I love the darkness, one collects oneself in a way that is quite inconceivable when the sun flits about the sky from morn to eve, wreaking its havoc on the mind.
I grew up with darkness, first at Vågan in the Lofoten isles and now here, to where we came when I was ten years old. But I know the light too. Darkness or light, according to the season. Now I am eighteen.
I am his son, the youngest. My elder brother is Poul. He is departed to Copenhagen, to the seminary to earn his ruff and a powdered wig for his lice. My father has instructed me to write about our trip so that I might become more practised in using the quill. It was Mr Top who taught me to write, a priest who assisted him the first few years, though now returned. But it seems I am better suited to handling a musket than quill and ink, for my efforts are so many smudges and smears and my sisters laugh and tell me I am quite black about the mouth from licking the nib.
Now I shall endeavour to tell of the recent excursion into the fjord. Not that it was in any way unusual. As so often before, it was an outing without purpose, but so it goes. Life is as meaningful as we wish it to be, as someone said – I think in fact it was Mr Top. No matter, I think my father would kill me if he heard me say such a thing. And so I have put it in writing instead. I give my thanks to the Master Kieding for having taken on the task of mentoring me in the art of writing now that Mr Top is gone. Mind, good master, that my father does not read this. In writing, Mr Top told me, a person may pour out their heart and confide to the paper their innermost thoughts and secrets. It is almost like confessing one’s sins to the priest. No doubt he will read this anyway, my father, and I shall be compelled to suffer his beating. One is never too old for a slap in the face. Not even my mother . . . But now I will tell of the excursion.
If only the boat had been watertight. Yet it was lacking several ribs and the wood was quite mouldering and rotten. We had constantly to bail. It was a chalup, as they are called, a rowing boat with a sail. One is quite mobile in such a vessel, and it may be drawn up onto the land. The best, however, are the natives’ skin boats. Their capacity for carrying cargo is so very great and they are exceedingly seaworthy. They have their women row them, so they are not stupid. The women can suckle their infants whilst rowing, drawing their drooping breasts back over their shoulders where the infant, suspended in a pouch on their backs, latches on and will not release until the last drop has been wrung, and in this way they need not waste time on it. Long and dangling breasts are therefore considered an ideal for the beauty of their women, as is a good set of teeth, useful in the tanning of hides, and moreover small noses and inward-pointing feet, though the advantages of these latter properties are unclear to me. But what I meant to say was that the largest of these skin boats, called the umiak, is the best craft of all for the transport of people and equipment about this land.
We sat together on the stern thwart, my father and I, bobbing in unison. I held the rudder and the sheet of the little jib, and had thus plenty to do. He was not wearing his cassock, both of us clad in ordinary linen clothing and coats, sturdy boots and skin hats whose ear flaps were tied under our chins, and by the living God, with his great beak of a nose he looked most of all like a falcon with its leather hood pulled down over the eyes. And yet through and through he is a cleric, even when submerged in the tub at home, as naked as Adam, with Mother scrubbing his back. I imagine the time he came out of his mother’s womb, the midwife holding him aloft to exclaim, and here we have the Pastor Egede!
My dear brother Poul departed with the ship this August. If only it had been me. He would have preferred to become a sea captain than prepare for the priesthood, but our father would say to him that in such case he would build him a gallows and hang him on it, for which reason his dreams have come to naught. A happy journey to you, brother! Now my ears are doubly boxed, for he lays not a hand on Frederik Christian and is so tender towards him as if he were the very Christ child in his own high person. Still, as my father says, I am thick-headed. Priest you will never be, he says, but a merchant. And thank God for it. Rather a shopkeeper than a prelate, any day. Of course, I say nothing of it. One must be careful as to what passes one’s lips, for though a person may be thick-headed, a clip round the ear hurts all the same. In any case, my neck is not right for the ruff. I have tried on my father’s and it was as tight as hell, nor is it my way to force things upon people that they would prefer to be without. Surely it is for themselves to decide if they wish to become Christian. For my sake they can believe in that fellow Tornaarsuk as much as they want. My father though thinks him to be the Devil, an old man convinced him of it. Tornaarsuk is a volatile spirit with whom one is advised to deal with the utmost caution, but he is also good, perhaps the strongest of all their spirits. Sila is milder, gentler, an altogether brighter spirit, whereas Tornaarsuk is dark and rambunctious. I like Tornaarsuk, and if I were a native shaman I would endeavour to make him my helping spirit, though again my father would kill me for saying so. So yes, I am only glad that my brother is to be a man of the Lord and not me. A dress belongs on a woman, and the cross is a murderous weapon. I think it wrong to go about with such a thing around one’s neck. And now no doubt I will be boxed about the ear again when he reads this, but be that as it may. I am to be a merchant, my father and brother are men of the cloth, and as such this colony place will remain a family business much as a roadside inn.
Often I sail on my own. I have my own kayak, built by my own hand. I cannot fit into a native kayak, being fuller about the arse than them. I have much pleasure in my kayak and enjoy getting away from the colony, out into the good and quiet wilderness. I’ve been all sorts of places. I think that of all the white men here I know the fjord system the best. It is called Baal’s River and was named by some Englishmen. Now, however, they have begun to call it the Godthåbsfjord. There are many foreign place names along the coast, especially Dutch, for the Dutchmen and the Englishmen have sailed here for more than a hundred years. It was the Dutch who set fire to our houses up north at Nipisane, a trading station founded by my father, and they trade illegally still with the natives. My father is enraged by them. Often I will sail with my foster-brother Frederik Christian too. He is a couple of years younger than me, although he is unsure as to exactly how old he is. Nonetheless, he is both baptized and confirmed, and my father seems to have plans for him and will train him as a catechist. There is something particular about the two of them which is impenetrable. I think he is the only one of the family my father really loves. He came to us some years ago. My father and mother took him in, for he was sick, and wrenched him from the claws of death, from the heathen darkness and certain damnation. But when he became well again his father wanted him back and my father for his part would not return him, so they were forced to hide him away whenever his father came sniffing about the Hope Isle where we were settled at the time. And thus there is bad blood between them, his father and mine. He is the one they call Aappaluttoq, the Red One. They say he is a murderer.
I suspect there is not a missionary in any colony on earth who is less inclined to baptize than my father. Were he a merchant and Christianity the ware he wished to sell, he would surely be compelled to go with a beggar’s staff. He has baptized barely two score natives in all, and they are now dead nearly to a man. At the same time, he is ruthless when it comes to shamans and witches and all such native diableries. I have seen him raze to the ground an entire skin-tent full of natives in the business of lantern games. He pulled the whole dwelling down, kicked away the blubber lamps and cooking pots and thrashed his walking staff about, causing the poor people to run away half-naked and screaming to hide from him in the wilderness.
But now back to our excursion. Frederik Christian sat on the floor of the boat at my father’s feet. His head see-sawed with every pull of the oars. By God, how comical a person can look when they are falling asleep. The sail was up, though with barely a wind to fill it but the slightest breeze from the south-west. I strove to slacken and tauten, but it flapped so limply and to little use at all. The four oarsmen had their work cut out to bring us to our intended haven before darkness. My father wished to visit some settlements inside the fjord, some fifteen Danish miles from the colony, where there lived some natives. Although the air is considerably colder there in winter, the weather is much calmer than on the sea and there is always a plenitude of hare and reindeer, the river teeming with fish waiting to be stabbed by anyone who wades into its waters. There it was that the ancient Norsemen settled in the olden days. They had the right idea. I would much rather have lived then than now if I could choose, for I think the old Norsemen had a more enjoyable time of it than we and were that much more relaxed in life. In summer one may find traces of their settlements, foundation walls and stone circles. There are many delightful places there. Valleys of the lushest grass, bushes and vegetation so tall as to reach above one’s head, small waters milling with trout, and a mildness to the air that is quite astonishing if one only knows the land from its coast and the skerries where the colony lies. My father has often said it would be a more suitable place for a Danish colony, tucked inside the bottom of the fjord, and knowing him as I do he has likely not abandoned the thought, for when first an idea comes to him it will stick and not be removed. That’s the way he is, the old man. Otherwise we would not be here in Greenland at all, but back home in Lofoten. One might even cultivate cereals and beet and cabbage there. However, living there would mean seeing barely the shadow of a native. One can journey for days without passing a single inhabited hut, so it is best to know where they are settled before embarking on any excursion. We are here for the Mission, my father says, not for creature comforts, nor to revive the Norsemen’s agriculture. But still I know he yearns for the gentle valleys and green swathes inside the land, as I myself likewise. It is a longing that resides in every Norwegian, I suppose, but for the Greenlanders the interior is but a temporary refuge. The skerries are their own earthly paradise, to where they forever yearn.
How marvellous it was to get away from the filthy colony, the drinking and whoring and all the misery that has come upon this otherwise so pure and splendid land. When we Danish subjects shake our heads at what is happening here, we must ask ourselves what thoughts the natives must have of these new colonists whose behaviour is more outrageous than that of any savage. Certainly it is no positive testimony to whatever it is the Danish crown might have to offer them.
My father sat there on the thwart and said nothing. He had been silent ever since sailing from the colony. He sat writing in a book, reading his Luther, the one with the table talk from which he always reads aloud to us and which he carries with him everywhere, for which reason barely two pages remain joined. When my father is silent, and especially when he is reading Luther at the same time, it generally means that he is angry or discontented about something. But when he screams and scolds and shouts it is most often because he is glad and contented. It is his way of having a laugh, though genuine heartfelt laughter is something I cannot recall ever having issued from his mouth. Has the sun ever shone inside his mind? It has been my mother who has been the source of the lighter moments in our lives, though she is no humorist exactly, and so much older than him to boot.
I knew what was irking him, having seen the mark left on her cheek by his most recent display of affection, by the looks of it a rather savage blow with the back of his hand. He had been brooding over her wilfulness for days and opined that women were rich in shite though impoverished in thought, for which reason their arses were broad and their shoulders narrow. I have no idea what she might have said to him, but clearly it was sufficient for him to erupt and strike her. It happens not nearly as frequently as with us children, whom he will beat about the ears at the slightest provocation, for he knows that such a blow is his own shame, not hers, and I think too that when one is a woman and is beaten by one’s husband, the pain of it is dulled by the awareness that in a way one has got the better of him. Christ, a palaver it must be to be married. I shall keep well out of it. Such constellations are not for me, for I would be bound to compare any woman with my mother, which would hardly redound to the former’s benefit, though if I did happen to find one to match her, then I would surely find myself unworthy.
But now he sat there, absorbed in Luther. I found myself thinking how little it would help him in his torment, and how more likely it would only make things worse.
The wind had dropped. We took down the sail, it seemed more a hindrance than a help, and continued by the oars alone. We realized by then that we would not arrive before dark. Yet there are always points from which one may take one’s bearing in Greenland, even when the night is at his darkest, for the darkness is never as dense as at home. Always there is snow and ice, absorbing even the faintest light from the stars and moon and reflecting it back even when the sky is cloudy and one cannot see a single one of those heavenly bodies with the naked eye. The profiles of the fells are never quite obscured, but remain visible like cut-outs in front of a fire. It is a phenomenon I know from back home, but which is not seen further south where the night can be pitch-dark, as in Bergen where we resided until leaving for Greenland. I was fond of Bergen. Good coffee they had there. Moreover, one’s travels were by land, for the town lies not on an island, but on the mainland.
As the darkness descended about us, we became gripped by a sense of unease. All we could hear was the creaking of the oars in the rowlocks, the blades scooping the water, the low-voiced chatter of the rowers. My father was compelled to close his book, and I sensed his disquiet. We left the lanterns unlit, for they seem only to shine inwards, producing a sphere of light that renders the surrounding darkness quite impenetrable.
It was Frederik Christian who first sighted the gleam, despite him having fallen asleep. Abruptly, he sat up as if stirred by a loud noise and peered out to his right before pointing and exclaiming – aajikkua!
The rowers paused on their oars and turned, and all of us stared into the darkness.
Can you see it, Niels? my father asked.
Yes, I see it, I replied. The faintest of gleams I could only make out if I looked at it askew, for it is as if the edges of one’s visual field are more sensitive to light than the middle.
Dwelling or open fire? my father asked.
A peat house. I can at any time distinguish between open fire and the warm glow of a blubber lamp seen through a window of gut-skin.
The boat scraped against the sand. We jumped ashore and moored. The dwelling lay half dug into the slope that faced the bay, and the air was thick with smoke and the smells of simmering meat which always make my father drool so, for he is an insatiable meat-eater.
We crawled through the entrance and emerged into a large room containing perhaps a score of them, naked to a man and glistening with sweat in the great heat. We removed our outer layers and our boots so as not to suffocate immediately on coming in from the cold fjord. They showed us a place to sit on the side bench beneath the glughole. The oldermand gave us meat and boiled fish, of which there was plenty, and we ate greedily, for there is nothing like the cold to build up a hunger, and my father in particular devoured as much as he could shovel inside him. He says his stomach is a cavernous hole that can never be filled. In this he is like the natives, for they too can put away enormous amounts of meat, causing them to bloat and be dormant for days afterwards, as if they had drunk themselves into oblivion.
I had noticed their angakkok, who stared at us sullenly from a corner. It was Aappaluttoq, father of Frederik Christian. No doubt he had been up to his tricks when we came and interrupted them in their entertainment. I sensed only too well that we were unwelcome, yet hospitality is more important than anything for the natives, it is a kind of boasting to them, and demonstrative of their wealth, so they said nothing. Still, I could tell that Frederik Christian was rather uncomfortable with the situation. He ate his meal quickly, then said to me that he would go down to the boat and sleep with the rowers.
No, stay here, my boy, my father said to him, ominously mild in voice. I know their sorcerer is making eyes at us. But let us teach him a thing or two.
And so my foster-brother was compelled to seat himself again, though he was far from happy with it. His eyes kept glancing towards the angry angakkok, and I watched him.
I wish to tell you about our saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, my father said.
I translated his words. Several of the natives nodded appreciatively. One said, we know your angakkok. He was indeed a great angakkok. But did he not kick the bucket a very long time ago?
He died for our sakes. Now he is in Heaven, at his father the Lord God’s side.
When I translated this they looked astonished.
Naalagaq? they said. This is the word for ‘lord and master’ in their language, but they could make neither head nor tail of the notion.
Now Frederik Christian had to intervene, much against his will. He whispered to my father, they think you mean the Governor, for he too they refer to as naalagaq.
Ah, I see, said my father, two lords by the same name. That will not do. We must find some other name for our Lord. No, tell them there is a Lord in Heaven who is God and of whom there is but one, and then there are earthly lords, of which there are many, including Pors in the colony and King Frederik who is blessed by God, and other kings in other countries. But can you not find a good word for it, my boy, so that they may distinguish one from the other?
Must I? Frederik Christian replied. He seemed indeed reticent. Am I to name God? Would that not be blasphemy?
My dear boy, said my father, do not concern yourself unnecessarily. I stand between you and the Lord and will shoulder the blame if needs be.
Well, said Frederik Christian, when I teach them I tend to call him Guuti. Then they know we are speaking about a heavenly lord rather than an earthly one.
Excellent, said my father. A simple derivation from the Danish. I knew you’d come up with something, and of course these deranged people need a name for the Lord in their own tongue. The name is hereby in force and will be used henceforth. I shall notify Lange and Miltzov so that they may circulate it. Thank you, my boy. And now we shall talk about the Devil. Do they know who he is?
I call him Tiaavulu, Frederik Christian replied. But they know nothing about him from before.
To conquer him is to know him, my father said. These sorry people have been easy prey for the Devil. That is why they live in such squalor and filth. But we shall help them from the gutter of ungodliness. Tell them, my boy.
They want to know what a gutter is, Frederik Christian said after a brief exchange. I’m not sure I know either.
The gutter is that part of a street in which a person expels his urine and excrement, my father said.
They wash their hair in their urine, said Frederik Christian.
Indeed, they are the Devil’s children, my father replied, and I could tell he was becoming impatient and that he for his part could tell that Frederik Christian was reluctant to translate for him for fear of annoying his countrymen and, more especially, his father. So my father began to preach to them in his homespun blend of northern Norwegian and Greenlandic in which, unhappily, he came to confuse the doer with the done-to. Christ, how ridiculous it sounded to a person who knew both languages well, and how singular he looked as he stood there in the middle of the dwelling, his long shadow a hunched and crooked figure enlarged upon the wall by the flickering blubber lamps. And all the time I could see Frederik Christian become increasingly uncomfortable, while their angakkok at the same time smiled maliciously from his corner. The latter knew well that my father before long would lose his temper, that he would make a fool of himself, and that he, the angakkok, would then stand as the wiser man in the eyes of his own. My father began now to rail against their house god, Tornaarsuk, only then to proceed to the sea-woman Arnaqquasaaq and thereafter to inveigh further against Ilisiitsut and angakkoks, witches and sorcerers, and Inua and Sila, jumbling all into a single hotchpotch he then condemned to the eternal flames of Hell. This tirade did not please the natives at all. Increasingly they became dejected and scowling to look at, whereas their angakkok’s grin only widened, for he knew my father was divesting himself completely of his believability, and quite without his help or incitement.
But who is God? a native ventured to ask.
God is God, replied my father. He hath built us.
Built?
Created, Frederik Christian translated.
God hath built us, my father went on. He is our property.
We belong to him, Frederik Christian translated.
We may do with him as we please.
He can do with us as he pleases.
We may strike him!
He can punish us.
We may kill him!
He can kill us.
God is God, and all are above him.
No one is above God.
Even you, said my father, pointing now directly at the angakkok, well knowing that the natives loathe to be pointed at, that they take it to be a challenge and a threat upon their lives. Yes, I have seen you, and yet I tell you, you too are above God.
God decides over you too, Frederik Christian translated, his voice now a barely audible croak, for the man was his own father by blood.
At first Aappaluttoq said nothing. He sat and considered his son with an oddly sorrowful gaze. But then he did something that was far stronger than any word. He spat on the floor right in front of where my father stood, and then he said, I spit on your God.
My father had not expected such a reply and was rendered quite speechless for a moment. But presently he spoke: Sneer you not at God, you Satan. If you were alone I would put you in chains and drag you to the colony and place you in the stocks we have made for people such as you.
I cannot be enchained by you, said Aappaluttoq.
Oh, that’s right, I’d forgotten, my father replied mockingly. For you can fly and conceal yourself behind the moon. But I say to you that the King’s irons are stronger than any sorcerer’s trick, and the flames of Hell await to consume your flesh, you wretched individual, for you are condemned. I would have met you halfway before, but you wished it not, for you are irreconcilable. I can do no more for you.
You stole my son, Aappaluttoq then said, and a great silence descended. All ears were on this exchange between my father and the angakkok, for surely they feared them both and were unable to make up their minds with whom to side.
You remember, I take it, that he was ill, my father said. The boy was at death’s door, and I took him unto me in order to give him care and comfort, and indeed he became well again. Should I have left him to die?
When I came to take him back, you would not let him come to me, Aappaluttoq replied. You chased me from the settlement and forbade me to come anywhere near my own son.
He wished to stay with us, it was his own decision. He was brought up a Christian. Such a child cannot be given over to a heathen, and certainly not to any sorcerer.
But now you are grown, said Aappaluttoq to his son. How fine and strong you are.
Frederik Christian gave no reply to this.
Look at me, said Aappaluttoq, but Frederik Christian would not look at him, and then, not without gloating, my father said: He is yours no longer. He belongs to the Lord. I have plans for him. Together with my son Poul he is to carry on the missions here in this land when I am gone from it.
Aappaluttoq whispered some words to his son, unintelligible to the rest of us. He reached out and touched his arm as if to caress him, and straight away my father shouted: Touch him not, you devil, I know what you’re playing at, you will blow on him, but you shall see it has no force, for it is heathen theatre and mummery and I have only laughter for such things! And with that he laughed loud and rattlingly, and several of the children in the dwelling began to cry. But Aappaluttoq seemed not to hear him and continued to speak whisperingly to his son, while he, Frederik Christian, sat between the two and looked so very shameful and dejected.
When later we lay down to sleep, tempers had abated. The oldermand had spoken conciliatory words to my father, and Aappaluttoq had withdrawn to his corner where he sat carving a figure from a piece of driftwood. But we all of us slept uneasily that night and were visited by nightmares and unpleasant dreams. I myself dreamt I had got lost somewhere in the interior. I found myself in a great, open flatland where no fells or lakes could be seen, nor anything else that might indicate to me where I was. Quite undifferentiated was the land, and the sun was hidden behind the cloud. I wandered and wandered, not knowing if I was getting anywhere or merely walking in circles. Such a dream.
We rose early. The natives were still asleep when we crawled out through the passage. The house had grown cold, for the women who looked after the lamps had fallen asleep too. We pulled on our clothes and went down to the shore where we clambered into the boat, shaking the rowers awake, and then began the long excursion further into the fjord. My father praised Frederik Christian for having resisted the onslaught of his heathen father. But when light came, he took his Luther from his bag and settled himself to read, and I’ll be damned if I know what the idea of that excursion was, for all we achieved by it was to make fools of ourselves in front of some natives, though of course the fact of this never occurred to my father at all.
Now I shall close this account, my good Master Kieding. Perhaps you will look at my wrist for it feels now like it is broken. The pen is harder to command than the paddle.
Niels Egede
The Colony of Godthåb
December, 1728