To-day my son departed with both merchant boats on a trading mission, compelled by lack of assistance to serve in the Trade, since previously I have employed Frederik Christian as catechist and helper in the instruction of the Greenlanders but was now incapable, wherefore Niels was obliged to undertake both trade and instruction with them.
FROM HANS EGEDE’S JOURNAL, SEPTEMBER 1731
God, what an idiot my father is. He said this: I will not punish you. You have already received your punishment. Your punishment is to be you!
Now, again! The same thing happened last year, and the year before that. He’s getting worse, my bloody father. Am I any the wiser? Nope. Thinking I was to escape his beating, having already received my punishment as he so pointedly said, I allowed my shoulders to drop, and whereas normally I keep a keen eye on his hands, I was now inattentive for the briefest moment. I looked at him scornfully, thinking myself to be on the safe side, and yet he struck me such a blow as to rattle the teeth in my jaw, and sun and stars came raining down on me like it was the Apocalypse and I John of Patmos.
You lied! I said, wiping a smear of snot from my face with my sleeve. You said you weren’t going to punish me!
And he laughed and replied: A lie in the name of Jesus is a good lie, but a truth in the name of the Devil is a poor truth. Therefore I punish you so that you may learn your lesson.
A beast, that’s what he is. The beast itself from the Book of Revelation. That’s all I can say. I hate him.
Goodbye! I said.
Where do you think you’re going? he replied.
None of your business! I said.
You’re staying here!
Kiss my arse!
The Devil take you! he screamed at me, and the windows nearly rattled in their frames.
The Devil? The Devil is you! I told him.
He fell silent at that. Mother wept. Kirstine wept. Petronelle wept. I wept. Frederik Christian was as pale as a corpse. Rain was falling outside.
Goodbye, I said again, though quieter now. We won’t be seeing each other again.
Wrap up warmly! my mother called out after me, for I think she knew where I was intending to go, it not being the first time I had gone off and slammed the door behind me following an argument with the old man.
I carried my kayak down to the shore and then I paddled away into the fjord, away through curtain upon curtain of densely falling rain, and so furious with indignation I think I must have been going at a speed of some seven knots, because before I knew it I was well up the fjord, and then eventually I rested on the paddle, gliding slowly on as I listened to the heavy beating of my heart and the pouring rain. At last, I went ashore at a delightful looking place that seemed so very peaceful, and I sat down there on the ground and thought about what to do then and what on earth was going to become of me.
I am writing this back in the colony after my excursion, which nonetheless lasted a good couple of months this time. It was good for me to get away from it all and not have to look at my father’s sour face for a while. Master Kieding, please be kind and read this account of mine, and weed out the mistakes for me, for the written language is still a slippery eel in my hand, for which reason your help will be invaluable. Thank goodness you remained here in the colony with us and like us chose to place your fate in God’s hand when the King would no longer have to do with his deceased father King Frederik’s Greenlandic design, for even in the royal household there may be disagreement. I wonder if anywhere in the world there might be a father and son who honour and respect each other without squabbling and bickering and hating each other? I hardly think there is. I don’t know if you, Kieding, have a father still alive? Perhaps he died, since you have never spoken of him? I could almost think you to be a lucky man if that were the case. For it is as if the blood despises itself and wishes only for foreign blood by which to renew itself. Perhaps that’s why we Danish men are so fond of the native women.
I shall never learn, I say to the Master Kieding after having broken my third nib that same morning.
Oh, but you are improving, he says. It merely needs some correction here and there. You write as the wind blows, my boy, but still there is much good in it. It has life and soul and heart. So yes, carry on. Write the way you speak, and don’t bother about whether it is right or wrong for the time being, we shall go through it later with the pen. I will teach you to use the comma. No, I don’t care for commas. They’re like nails knocked squintly into a wall, while the full stops are hammered all the way in. I like them the best.
I think Kieding has become a kind of philosopher. He was rather hard-bitten when first he came here some years ago, always out and about with his helper, Thomas Tode, the one they called Knife-man, who went home on the ship. Now Kieding has grown a long beard and looks like a prophet, and in his blue eyes there is fjord and fell and sky, and a serene smile on his lips. A person can go to the Master Kieding with all his worries. He never judges you, and doesn’t say much, but he will listen. Often he sits in the house talking with my mother, though only when my father is out, for Father cannot abide that she speaks to him. I think he’s afraid she might say something unflattering about him that will not be to his advantage and thereby put a stopper to him being canonized. I don’t think they talk much about him, but more about philosophical matters in which I know my mother to be interested. Sometimes they will read a book together, and it will be neither the Bible nor Luther. My mother writes a lot too. Her fingers itch to hold the pen. She shows Kieding what she has written, and then they talk about it. But as soon as my father comes back she puts her writings away.
Now Pors and his men have gone home, and all the clamour of the colony with them. Such peace and quiet we could enjoy if not for my father, that devil. I tease him about it, knowing full well he dislikes to hear it. The Devil is you! Ha! At last I found his weak spot and will not relent from antagonizing him!
Nuuk, as we Greenlanders call the Godthåb peninsula, has always been a postal station for the natives between summer and winter, though never a place to settle permanently. Most of the year, even in the coldest time, they live in the skerries where they exist on their catches from the sea: whales, seals, birds. But during the reindeer hunt and the trout season and other seasonal hunts they live spread out over the land.
It was the time of the autumn hunt now, I realized, and I decided to go into the country to see if I could find a hunting party to join, and hunt like them with the harpoon and bow. I get along much better with them than with the Danish crew, not to mention my father, that Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub.
I hope he reads this. It will do him good.
The reindeer gather in great herds when the bulls are rutting and the cows are on heat, and then one may get close enough to shoot, much better than in the summer when they are more wary, or, one could say, sensible. So it is with us males. Once we catch a female rump in our sights, we think not to look after ourselves, but run panting after the lovely arse as it wobbles before us. The rutting males can be bad-tempered beasts if they think you will come between them and a female they’re lusting after. They can gore a man to death and cause great calamity if one isn’t careful. The best thing is to come up behind them, and if you succeed in getting close enough they will be easy prey, for they have nothing on their minds but to stick their cock inside a cunt.
Another way to hunt them is by baiting them and encouraging them to attack, and if you’re standing on the edge of a drop they will often fall into it and injure themselves, whereafter they may easily be finished off with the harpoon.
Another form of hunting, and this is the most common, is by driving them and rounding them up. Here the women and children will approach a herd from the sides and behind, driving them on by shrieking and striking rocks against each other, for then they think there is a rockslide and will set off on the move. The hunters then drive them towards a stone wall they have erected, with small openings through which the animals squeeze until almost standing on each other’s backs. On the other side of these openings, of course, stand the men, armed to the teeth, shooting their arrows into the beasts or else slashing their throats with a quick incision so that they will bleed to death within a short time. Then the men will go about and collect the dead reindeer. They may be spread over a very large area, meaning it can take days before they’re finished. It is a very productive form of hunting. I have seen the men cull a half-hundred reindeer in one go, and afterwards they are smeared with blood from head to toe, and such a bloodbath is pure joy.
But anyway I came to this secluded place where I went ashore and sat down on the ground and composed myself somewhat. My father’s words still rang in my ears: Your punishment is being you! What kind of a father would say such a thing to his own son? He would never speak like that to Frederik Christian, who is his pet. He always appeases him even if sometimes he is a complete cock and known to fornicate with men as well as women, and to indulge in drinking bouts with the Danish crew, who poke fun at him and call him Two-Kings. And well, he never did get Titia as you had planned for him, you and the Governor, Kieding. I thought it a shame, for it might have saved them both from damnation. But it suited my father well seeing as how, to all intents and purposes, it would have made her his daughter-in-law. She was a real thorn in his flesh, he was certain she was a Jew or a papist or both. A papist Jew. Even the thought of her made him see red, and so of course he refused to marry them, the King’s dispensation or no. Had he done so, married them, how would it all have turned out, I wonder? It’s impossible to say, but wholly innocent in the jomfru’s sorry fate, her now lying under the rocks with only bog water to drink, he is most certainly not, which he also well knows.
I have been thinking about another matter which I find to be rather sad. The natives have increasingly taken to using flintlocks when hunting. It was the Governor who introduced the practice of using these second-rate firearms as a means of payment. And now the natives are almost bound to their guns, and thereby to the Danes. Many barely know any more how to handle their former weapons, the harpoon and the bow and arrow. It is a shame. For what will they do now that Pors and his circus have gone and they no longer are able to lay their hands on new muskets, the old ones broken and their gunpowder run out, with no one to cast lead bullets for them? They will be forced to return to their old weapons, albeit they perhaps have forgotten how to use them.
I love my bow. I made it myself from the rib-bones of a whale, planing them into thin slivers no more than a couple of skrupler in width and binding them together with a thong of skin. For arrows I use barrel staves. They are firm and possess a certain weight, which is good for the flight of the arrow and its stability in the air, as well as for the force whereby it buries itself into the prey. For arrowheads I use shards of bone which I file down into shape. For fletchings I use the raven’s feathers, for they are easily had. Eagle feathers are better, but near-impossible to find. Now that Pors has left with all the equipment, we Danes will do well to learn how to hunt with the old weapons, for who knows when we might see a ship from the homeland again, bringing with it Danish wares. Perhaps King Christian will forget all about Greenland and us who live here, leaving us on our own for all time like the old Norsemen my father believes to inhabit the other side of the land, and then like them we will descend into heathen ignorance and worship Sila and Tornaarsuk and go about clad in skins talking gibberish to each other, until in a couple of hundred years a new Hans Egede arrives in the country to thrash the daylights out of my great-great-grandchildren, for thus does history repeat itself for ever and ever. But let tomorrow look after itself, and let every day be like the last, that’s my motto. I don’t think much about the future. I find the present to be a big enough mouthful on its own.
I trudged into the land with my bow slung over my shoulder and my sheath of arrows dangling at my side. I had sewn my trousers myself out of fox skin, a good and warm material, and moreover very soft and unrestricting. My cap was of lemming skin, for last year was a lemming year, as we know them from back home in Lofoten, and you could hardly put a foot forward without treading on one of the vicious little beasts. My vest was of sheep’s wool and on top of it I wore a sheepskin coat with the wool on the inside. I wore mittens of ox-skin too, though only in the night when I slept, for the weather in the daytime was fair and mild as the nights were bitterly cold. I had no tent with me, there being a limit to how much weight a kayak can bear before sinking to the bottom, but I did have with me a sleeping bag of reindeer skin. And so, with my sleeping bag on my back, I went off inland to see if I could find any native people, and of course I did.
I came to a settlement of two tents. Some women were there, and children, and a few old folk whose legs no longer allowed them to follow the hunt. I stayed with them for a couple of days, eating and sleeping with them. I went out hunting and bagged grouse and hare to pay for my keep. They praised me and said I was a true inuk, which means human being, and no greater accolade could be bestowed upon a Dane by any Greenlander.
I lay with one of their girls, whom I knew from before. She was very nice, and very enamoured too. I said I would marry her and take her back to the colony with me once my father had kicked the bucket or elsewise betaken himself to some other place. But she wouldn’t, she said, as they always do. They must always play unwilling and hard to get, it’s their way of showing how virtuous they are and not just available to anyone, but still I sensed that she would accept me taking her with me by force as is their custom. In their eyes a man must demonstrate that he means his courtship seriously, otherwise nothing will ever come of it. Usually they take the girl of their choice and drag her away by the hair. This gives rise to much shrieking and weeping, on the part not only of the girl herself but also of her family. But once they arrive home at his place all is well again.
I sat with her in the tent and listened as she told me the most frightful stories of killings and other gruesome deeds, probably something she was making up to frighten me away, for this is how they test a suitor, to see if he will put up or shut up, as my mother says. And so I was not deterred by these horrible tales, but merely laughed at them, and when I lay with her in the night she was tender and gentle, and gave herself up to me with soft lips and sweet words.
On the third day I broke up from the settlement to see if I could find those who had gone on the hunt further inland to the north. I kissed my betrothed goodbye and she cried the saltiest tears and told me she loved me and did not want me to leave, for as she said, when a man goes hunting he forgets all else, and of course there is something of a truth in it. Nevertheless, I had to go, and so it was goodbye, my dear, see you again when the hunt is over!
I had time to think as I walked, the landscape of the Northland being monotonous and allowing one’s thoughts to wander. Perhaps, I thought to myself, I have chosen a native girl for my wife in order to antagonize my father, for I knew that he would be apoplectic if he ever found out. I found myself wishing I had taken her because I was fond of her rather than to get my father’s back up, for as it stood I was in a way acting according to his mind rather than mine. Oh, if only he could go somewhere and die like a good father so that his sons might live as they wished instead of being either with him or against him.
And yet I do not wish him dead, because I love him.
Can a man be both an Egede and a savage?
Can he love as well as hate?
Can he be happy as well as distraught?
Can he be a Greenlander as well as a Dane?
Etc.
I walked over the land and was quite alone with myself and my thoughts. But then again, not entirely alone. For my father came creeping after me and I argued with him. He scorned me for one thing after another: I was cowardly, I was of poor character, I was a fornicator, the head on my shoulders was useless and ought more properly to hang between my legs and yield its place to my arse, I was a bad Christian, and so on. But I strode on to keep him at a distance. Clouds swept in from the sea and were dispersed by the Northland’s blue air. It was autumn, but the weather was mild. I shot a hare and roasted it over an open flame, the heather I used for tinder crackled so pleasantly and gave off such lovely smells. I drank water from the becks and picked mushrooms and herbs and gathered roots I found on my way, munching and chewing as I went. It would all have been so agreeable had it not been for the shadow of my father following me the whole time. I did not find the hunters, perhaps because I did not wish to find them, and so I returned to the settlement. My betrothed was quite bewildered to see me again so soon and could barely contain her joy. I sang a magic song, she said, so that you would get lost and fail to find the hunters. I was slightly annoyed by this, but also touched by it since it told me that she loved me, and I loved her too and wished that our love could be pure and unimpeded by my father’s shadow. It is only when one must part from one’s beloved that the extent of one’s feelings for her become clear, and we spent a long and happy night together, and the others in the tent were happy too on our behalf. But a man should not say to such girls that he loves them, nor should he be too tender and loving, for they do not care for it. It will then be to them as with lice and fleas, they will itch terribly and be as sulky as a horse in rain.
There was an old woman in the settlement, a widow who had fallen out with the other women because of some dispute. They had thrown her out of the tent in which she lived at the mercy of the group, always a perilous existence, and she had moved into the other tent only to find that they too would have nothing to do with her, nor even give her any of their food. It was the oldermand of the settlement who told me this.
The woman is a witch, he said. She cast a spell over one of the young women who was pregnant and caused her to give birth to a dead child which moreover was deformed.
I felt obliged to step forward with the voice of reason and say to him that he should tell them to think better of it. What you describe to me here is superstition, I said. I know the woman. She is not a witch.
I know, he said then, immediately standing down. It’s not me who says so, it’s the others. They’ve got it into their heads that she is a witch. They’re frightened of her.
Regrettably I had to take on my father’s role and try to talk them to their senses, even using the Bible’s words about loving thy neighbour and caring for the weak. Thus immediately I felt my father’s clammy hand upon me like a wet overcoat, and I looked upon them with his eyes and was quite able to see and feel what he so often had complained about, that they are falsely forthcoming when one speaks to them man to man, and act only according to their own minds as soon as one turns one’s back. And I said to them what my father would have said, it was as if he were speaking the words through my mouth: Leave the poor old biddy in peace, she has done nothing, and if I ever hear that you have harmed her in any way, I shall personally see to it that you are punished severely, for I was afraid they would kill her.
Yes, I completely agree with you, the oldermand jabbered wheedlingly, and then even called me palasi, which normally they will only call my father. I shall tell them what you have told me, palasi, and make sure they do her no harm.
Remember the commandment that says you must love your neighbour, I said again, and, as my father always says, if anyone should smite you on your cheek, then turn to him your arse and let him smite you there too.
The oldermand laughed at this and told me he would pass it on to the women and that he would personally make sure to give them one from behind if needs be. But perhaps you should tell them yourself, palasi, for they take no notice of me, they don’t respect me, and what are we to do and think if the old bird ups and dies all of a sudden, or if something else happens to her? After all, things do happen without our having any say in them.
I’ll speak to them, I promised him. Therefore, that same evening I spoke up in the tent in which all were gathered, for it had been rumoured that palasi would read and speak to them. I stood up in the midst of these people and spoke admonishingly to them, though I would rather have not, for as I have said I felt I had taken on the figure of my father and addressed the people I felt to be my friends and countrymen, or even my family, with my father’s voice, and thus had suddenly removed myself from them. Still, they listened kindly to what I had to say, albeit with the usual interjections, which always so enrage my father, and replied as follows: But you Danes also have the custom of killing your witches. You even burn them at the stake. Why should we not kill a witch?
Because she is not a witch, I told them.
Why is she not a witch? How can you be sure, palasi?
Because I know her, and she is not a witch.
But she sang about us and blew on the pregnant girl so that her child was born with a great big head and died. If she is not a witch, what is she then?
She is just a poor old hag, I said. All the rest is merely superstition, silliness and nonsense.
They smiled at me and I could tell they weren’t swallowing it and were intending only to do with the woman as they wished. I felt sorry for her. I wished so dearly to save her from the clutches of these ignorant people, but there was nothing I could do, I realized it as I looked at them, and I saw it too in the woman herself, who was sitting in a corner with her head bowed, listening to all that was said about her. I could tell that she had prepared herself for her final hour, and the very next day they indeed killed her.
I woke up to tumult and commotion outside the tent and knew immediately what was going on, and so I jumped up and ran out in order to intervene. What I saw then was a group of women running across the rocks armed with their men’s spears and knives. I shouted after them, Stop, in the name of the Lord! But they were in a blood frenzy and could not be halted. I don’t think they even heard my shouts. Then I saw the woman herself hurrying away with her loose hair flying behind her, naked and with flapping breasts, and I could see that she was out of her mind with fear, knowing full well that her fate could not be avoided, and yet she was unable to simply accept it. She turned several times and shouted something to her pursuers, angry and challenging at the same time, which only made the other women even madder and prompted them to start hurling their spears at her, though all of them missed. The woman shouted at them again, taunting them now, and the whole scene was like children playing a game of tag at school, and indeed I remembered how afraid I was that one of the boys, the smith’s son, would catch me and then of what he would do to me if he did, but this naturally was a different matter altogether. I was about to run after them and try to talk them into giving up their witch-hunt when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the oldermand with whom I had spoken so sensibly the day before and with whom I thought I had come to an agreement, but he said nothing, only smiled and gripped my shoulder firmly.
What are they doing to the poor woman? I asked him.
Oh, they’re only playing, he said. Let them have their fun. Silly women. It’s nothing for us men to watch. Come into my tent and eat with me.
But I wrenched myself from his grip and stood helplessly and watched as the women pursued the poor widow, and there was nothing I could do about it. My father would have known what to do.
The hunted woman had now reached a steep rock face and had begun to clamber up it. She quickly ascended several alens, remarkably adroitly, for she was driven by fear, clutching at the narrow ledges, her feet scrabbling for purchase, and before long it seemed almost as if she would escape her tormentors, who clearly were disinclined to risk climbing after her. But then, all of a sudden, she came to a halt and could reach no further. She clung to a small outcrop, dangling and taunting the other women, while they in turn shouted back quite as scornfully, knowing now that she was stuck and would either have to find her way down of her own accord or else fall, meaning that all they had to do was wait. Thus they settled at the foot of the cliff and began singing in piercing voices that went straight to the bone. The old woman was perhaps ten fathoms up, and I saw that she was struggling to keep hold, her eyes searching the rock face for some way to continue upwards, though what she might have done if she reached the top I do not know, naked as she was. Now again she moved her foot up to a small projection, but her hands could find no hold, her foot slipped and she fell with a scream into the midst of the waiting women below, who now descended on her like hideous crows upon a carcass and dragged her away. Some seconds passed before I caught sight of her again, but by then she was already dead and covered in blood, so they must have driven their knives into her too, to make sure.
They dragged the body to the shore where they cut her up and tossed an arm into the fjord, another onto the land. Another hag ran off with her head, though I don’t know where she took it, and thus they scattered her limbs and parts to the four winds, for much as Christian people they believe that man has a soul, or rather several souls, and that these souls will try to come together when a person dies. But if the body is cut up into pieces, the souls cannot find each other and the dead person will be unable to rise again. After this iniquity they washed the blood from themselves in the beck.
In the evening a kind of solemnity had descended over the people who gathered in the main tent. I ate with them, though without appetite I mostly just stared at the hunk of flesh I had been given, paralysed by the thought that it had once been part of a living creature. But then a man came up and sat next to me and comforted me. He spoke to me and said such events were simply their way. It was important to offer sacrifice and thereby atone for guilt and sins or else a native would go to the dogs with all his sorrows and hardships, which are so numerous in this harsh land. You Danes do the same, he said.
I told him that in Denmark we no longer burn witches or even believe in witchcraft. It is but old superstition, I said.
But you punish those who break your laws by separating the head from the body, by burning them at the stake, by whipping them in public and by pulling out their tongues. I have seen it myself, the man said.
Then I saw who he was. It was their sorcerer, Aappaluttoq, whom they call the Red One, and Frederik Christian’s father. I had not seen him for a long time and had thought him to be dead, for the last time I saw him he looked like a man condemned, but there he was next to me, lecturing me in his mild voice.
You’ve been to Denmark? I blurted.
Yes, many times, he replied.
When?
This winter, he said.
But you were not with any ship of ours?
He said nothing, but smiled and then began to tell me of an event that had taken place on a public square in Copenhagen where he had seen a woman have her head chopped off with a sword, after which the executioner had displayed it on a stake. She had given birth to a child in secret, he said, and had strangled it and got rid of it in a heap of horse-dung.
From the many details of his story I realized the event he was talking about had taken place at the scaffold by the City Hall. I asked him, who had told him about it?
I was there myself, he said with a smile. I saw it with my own eyes, and he pointed at his eyes with his index and middle fingers.
I understood that what he said was true, yet I could not for the life of me comprehend that he, a wildman, had been there, nor how he might have travelled to Copenhagen without passage on any ship and then come all the way home again to tell of it.
I have been to many places in the world, he said. It is something we do, we shamans. He did not say this to be boastful, but quite humbly, the way a priest might speak about God. Indeed, he was most kind and spoke not a hard word to me, even though he knew me to be my father’s son and despite the two men being the bitterest of enemies and my father repeatedly having striven to put him in chains.
The next day I went on an excursion with Aappaluttoq. He took me to a great herd of migrating reindeer and we spent the whole day from morning until evening following them on their wanderings, a veritable river of beautiful beasts. We did not shoot a single one of them, though we could easily have done so. I felt an enormous joy and delight at watching these animals without harming them. Aappaluttoq said we have plenty to eat, so why should we kill them?
Thus we wandered about the land for several weeks. We slept in old peat-huts or beneath the open sky, we caught fish in the streams and rivers, and in the evenings we lay talking about all manner of subjects, and I spoke a lot about my father in particular. These were probably the best weeks of my life and the most instructive, for I now had a good friend much older than myself, perhaps as old as my father, and it is good, I believe, for a young man to have an older friend who is more experienced than he. He told me too about his son and the pain of having lost him, how it felt as if he were dead without being dead, and how terrible it was to see him going about the colony in Danish clothing and that silly three-cornered hat. But it was not with bitterness he spoke of this. We talked a lot about faith as well, about the Christianity of the Danes and the beliefs of the natives, and in this he surprised me, for he said:
Jesus is the wisest man who ever lived. I know he loves us people, and us Greenlanders too.
Do you believe in him? I asked. Do you worship him? Have you read the Scriptures?
Yes, he said. I have a Bible I bought from a seaman, and have read it from beginning to end, for Albert Top – do you remember him, the missionary who was here some years ago? – taught me to read and write, and I was meant to be baptized too, but your father would hear nothing of it, and so it came to naught.
I believe that, I said. He was like that then. It was harder for a native to be brought before my father’s baptismal font than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
Jesus is the greatest, he went on with warmth in his voice. I feel his love and I believe he will guide us Greenlanders and help us become a united people who can live in peace and harmony with the Danes.
But then you will have to discard your shaman ways, I said, for I do not think they will find God’s favour.
Not to mention your father’s, he said with a laugh. They are heathen ways, I know, but I am loath to part with them, for a shaman is what I am, it is what I am able to do. Without them I am nothing to my countrymen, for they keep a firm grasp on the old customs and ways of living, but our children may become good Christians. We will teach them to believe in God and Jesus and the good works of love.
How many children have you got? I asked him.
Oh, a couple of boys, he said. But both mothers are dead now. I am alone and free. And the boys are beyond me. Can you tell me how Paapa is doing?
As far as I know he is doing well. He seems to be a good help to my father in his missionary work, and I think they are working together on the translation of some passages of the Bible.
His face lit up in a quiet smile. The Bible? he said. That’s something at least. I’m sure he can teach your father a thing or two there.
Yes, sometimes I think he’s the only person my father listens to properly, I said. The rest of us haven’t much standing with him.
Why is that? he asked. A native boy like him, son of a shaman. I don’t get it.
I think they keep a secret between them, I replied, not realizing what I was saying until the words were out. It’s as if they are in some alliance together. I don’t get it either.
He became pensive and did not speak for a while. Then he said, to be separated from one’s flesh and blood is painful indeed, and the other boy is not with me either, for which reason the pain is doubled. But I know not to be self-centred and to think only of what is best for them. I have sacrificed them, yet have done so for their own sakes. This is how it is. A father must offer his children as Abraham offered his son Isaac.
This conversation gave me much to think about. But otherwise our talks were mostly light-hearted, banter and tales, stories from the hunt, and he gave me much good hunting advice.
When at last we parted after such a long time in each other’s company in the wilderness, I found I had a good Christian friend in Aappaluttoq. Who would have thought it! I returned alone to the settlement, and my betrothed was glad to see me, it felt like I had come home. One day I went out hunting with her, her name was Arnannguaq, which means little woman. We killed a reindeer cow and its calf, and Arnannguaq taught me how to cut open the calf and remove the stomach, knot the intestine and drink the milk it had suckled from its mother. We drank this curdled milk directly through the open tap of the gullet, lifting the stomach and emptying it into our mouths, and very fortifying and nourishing it was. We ate what was in the stomach of the cow too, a warm and fermented mush whose slightly bitter taste I found refreshing, though one must make sure to eat it as soon as the animal is killed, for if one waits too long it takes on an insipid taste and becomes rather slimy in its consistency. We wandered about in the wilds together, Arnannguaq and I, smeared with blood from our catch, but we bathed in the streams and in the pools of still water that had become warmed by the sun, for the weather remained balmy and mild as never before in the years I have been in this land. I discarded what was left of my Danish clothing and wore skins from head to toe, which Arnannguaq sewed for me, and I considered her in every way to be my wife.
But what of our future together? I wondered. I could hardly stay there the rest of my life, or could I? What did I not have there, which I could find in the filthy confines of the colony? Nothing. And yet I was in two minds as to what to do with myself and my life. I had already sensed a boredom come over me when in the evenings I lay in the tent and listened to the talk and tales of my Greenlandic companions, which I found far too wearying and fantastic to hold my interest. These were but endless variations of the same horror stories, of ghosts with their heads under their arms and all sorts of terrible creatures who came to haunt the humans, and after a while one becomes tired of it. I found their hunting tales to be more entertaining, but there is a limit to how much a person can endure listening to such things.
The custom, previously mentioned, of scapegoating women as witches and evicting widows and old hags with the instruction to go to the fells and perish was still very much practised and was something I had difficulty coming to terms with. There was an old toothless wife who knew which way the wind had begun to blow. She could contribute nothing to the household and was unable even to tan hide, for she had not a tooth left in her mouth. And therefore she had to go.
One day she went around sadly, saying goodbye to the people with whom she had lived for a great many years, and I saw that her eyes were moist with tears and her lips trembled, yet her friends pretended not to care less and hardly looked up at her when she came to say farewell, for this is their way, not because they are without compassion, but because it makes parting that much easier. It was a heavy path to walk for such an old and worn-out woman.
I could not tolerate it. No, I said to myself, this has gone far enough! And so I went after her and, catching up with her, pulled her sleeve and said: Come back, dear woman, I shall not allow that you go away to die. I will help you with food and clothing.
She was so glad that she wept, and she followed me back to the settlement. We went inside the tent she had only just left behind her and sat down on my bench, smiling right and left, and the Greenlanders looked at her and said, What are you doing here, why have you come back?
It was qallunaaq, she said. He came and fetched me back. He will give me food and shelter.
Arnannguaq was not pleased with what to my own mind was this good Christian deed of mine. For the first time, she became angry with me and would not sleep with me any more, but said I could sleep with the old hag I had picked up in the fells instead, for obviously I was more fond of her, and she laughed out loud and mockingly, for the old woman was but skin and bone and as wrinkled as Methuselah’s grandmother. I tried talking sense to her, but by then she had already moved to another bench where another man had his pleasure with her. I was both saddened and in uproar, but what was I to do about it? I wished not to give up on the old woman whose life I had retrieved from the clutches of death. I think in a way she had taken the place for me of the widow they had killed before, and I refused to let her go. However it was far from pleasant to lie on the bench with her wrapped around me, wanting to perform certain services in gratitude, and I had to keep shoving her away all the time, telling her to keep her hands to herself, and this made her crabby and sulky and she told me she would rather have gone off into the fells, that it was my fault that she now lay there not knowing if she were fowl or fish, and hated by everyone.
A mood of ill-feeling arose in the winter-dwelling in which I had set myself up in the manner of some pater familias and I could feel it was directed towards me. Yet it was the old woman who had to bear the brunt, she on whom they took out their frustrations. Soon they were at it again, with nonsense about her blowing on their children in order to cause them harm, and then it was the old witch-business all over again. I knew full well that as soon as I left the settlement they would cast themselves upon the poor hag and drive her into the fjord, or in some other way cause her death, and so she clung to me and was quite from her senses with fear and anguish. Either I would have to bundle her onto my kayak and paddle her to the colony or I would have to accept that she be sacrificed like the widow before her.
It was December then, without firm snow on the ground, but windy and cold. A journey down the fjord in a kayak was a poorly attractive prospect, certainly so with a passenger on the deck. The Greenlandic men will often ferry their wives on their kayaks, where the women will sit on the rear, back-to-back with their men, but the extra weight presses such a small vessel down until it is more under the water than above it. I had only tried this twice with my sisters, and on each occasion the vessel had capsized and sunk, but that was inside the colony harbour where the water is shallow, so the only catastrophe was that we were soaked. But to paddle on a storm-lashed fjord in cold and darkness and with heavy waves coming in from the sea would be the certain death of both me and my passenger. And so I had little choice but to remain and await the relentless passage of events.
Now at once my friend Aappaluttoq appeared in the settlement, as if he had been called. I spoke to him of the problem, how they had got it into their heads that the old woman was a witch and now wished to kill her.
Let them kill her, he said. Her life is no longer of any worth. She is but an old hag.
I became angry with him and spoke to him harshly. I thought you were my friend, who believed in Jesus and the mercy of the Lord. But he shook his head and looking straight at me said: Who are you?
I was appalled that he was now so dismissive. After all our experiences together. Do you deny me? I said. It is as if you have become another. Do you not remember our time in the wilderness? The conversations we had? But he would have nothing to do with me and turned his back to continue carving his figures, speaking neither to me nor to anyone else, and then I understood that I had lost a friend, though without having any idea as to why.
And then my saviour came: my father.
One day a cry went up that a boat was approaching, and I ran out and saw right away that it was him, for it was obvious from his black coat and the staff he always carries with him, as if he were a bishop. What was I to do? Should I run into the fells and hide from him, or should I stay and receive him, and save the old woman? And what about Aappaluttoq?
I told Aappaluttoq to run to the fells, for they are coming to get you and take you back to the colony. But he was as sullen and bad-tempered as before, and completely unperturbed by what I said. So I stood on the shore and watched the boat as it came closer, and then my father jumped ashore and with him Frederik Christian, and my father came to me and looked at me and said, Look at the state of you, you look like a savage! And he kissed me and laughed, and said that I smelled like a savage too, and I walked with him up to the settlement where my father preached to them and Frederik Christian translated, and Aappaluttoq was there too, though they pretended not to know each other.
I told my father about the old woman, that she was in great peril, for they wished to kill her.
That’s their business, he said. It’s beyond our jurisdiction. Now, let’s go inside and get something to eat. I could devour a whole hind-quarter.
We were to leave again the next day, only something happened. I knew what was going on, but it passed over my father’s head. He gloated in the presence of Aappaluttoq for having his son with him, as if almost he held him up under his nose and said, Look, here he is, he is mine and there is nothing you can do about it. The people in the dwelling were not pleased to have him amongst them, for there was the matter of the old woman, whom they wished him not to see. But as is their way they were polite and fed him with great piles of meat, and I think perhaps his appetite and the way he could dispatch such enormous quantities endeared him to them, for in that way he resembled them. Indeed, his spirits grew higher as the evening wore on and he prattled on about the Creation and Moses and the burning bush, and dealt too with the story of Abraham and Isaac, a subject to which he always returns, for it is there that his own shoe pinches, the subject of fathers and sons. The usual discussion ensued between him and the natives. Why did the Lord tell him to sacrifice his son, and why did Abraham obey him? Such a thing is wrong, they said. He ought not to have agreed to it. He ought to have refused outright. You will not take my son. Anything else, but not him. And yet he agreed, my father told them, and the Lord rewarded him for his obedience. Better to be condemned by the Lord, they retorted. Nothing is more important than our children. And thus they kept on at him. I was translating, since Frederik Christian had gone outside, and I noticed that Aappaluttoq had crept out too. I could hear the murmur of their voices and knew then what was happening. But I said nothing. I thought it would do my father good to learn a lesson.
Not until it was time to sleep did he ask where Frederik Christian might have got to.
A silence descended, for everyone in the dwelling except my father had cottoned on, and in those seconds of total silence I could see that something occurred in my father. It was almost as when two people are fighting and one feels himself to be much stronger than the other, only then to be punched to the ground, where he sits on his arse for a moment unable to fathom how such a thing might have happened. But then he gave a cry and dashed out of the door, I following him.
I could see them on top of a crag. They stood side by side looking down at us, and then they were gone from sight. My father ran to the boat and fetched two flintlocks, handed me one and said, Now I shall put a bullet in that devil once and for all! This time he will not escape.
We climbed up to the place where we had seen them, but they were nowhere to be found. My father seemed to sniff the air, his nose twitching like a rabbit’s. And then he pointed. There they are!
Now the hunt was on, into the Northland. It is a difficult terrain in which to find one’s way, for the fells are low and look the same, and the land is dotted with small pools and bogs. Before long a person has become completely lost, with only the sun to keep his bearings. We clambered up onto the craggy tops and scanned the surrounding land, and on each occasion we caught a glimpse of the two fugitives. I think Aappaluttoq wanted us to see them, for that was his nature, he liked to tease people even if it carried with it a certain risk to his own person.
Night fell and we took shelter in a small cave where the ground was reasonably dry. There we lay and shivered with cold, hugging each other tightly until it became light again. My father loves warmth and good food, but he can be very enduring when needs be and can go without eating for several days if there is something he deems to be more important. We walked many hours that day, without food and with only water from the pools and becks to drink, and all the time we came upon small signs that revealed to us where Aappaluttoq and Frederik Christian had gone before us, a scrap of fabric, a small cairn on top of a ridge, the remains of a fire, an arrow drawn on the face of a rock with the coal of whatever they had burned. It was as if they were only just ahead of us the whole time, and my father hastened to reduce their lead, and yet it felt like we were hunting shadows and ghosts. I knew that Aappaluttoq would reveal himself to us when he felt it to be time and would himself choose the place where this would happen.
It was the following night. I stood on a high rock and saw the faint glow from a fire. My father clambered up to me and I pointed it out to him. Immediately he became incensed and began to run towards the place.
We reached the fire an hour later. It was now but smouldering embers, but on the ground next to it lay five grilled trout, as if served for our delectation and delight.
Don’t touch them, my father said. We shall not fall for his tricks.
But I was too hungry and could not resist their delicious aroma. I sat down and began to fill myself, and then my father did likewise.
He’s here, he said. I can feel it.
My father had eaten three of the fish, I the remaining two, and now we circled about, though keeping ourselves within distance of the fire. My father shouted into the darkness: Will you fight with me? Is that what you want? Then come and fight!
Suddenly there was a movement in the darkness to our right, down by the fire, a crouched figure approached it and sat down heavily on the ground. It was Frederik Christian. My father ran down to him, but something whistled through the air and skidded over the ground beside him. An arrow.
My boy, he called out. Has he harmed you?
But Frederik Christian said nothing. My father had loaded his musket now and raised it to his shoulder, sweeping the barrel through the air in front of him.
Come forth, spineless Satan!
Aappaluttoq responded with another arrow, this one penetrating the ground where my father stood. My father fired his gun, a blinding light flashing from the barrel, a thundering detonation which echoed among the crags. In that briefest illumination I saw Aappaluttoq. He was standing some short distance away, bare-chested, his bow raised at the ready. My father removed himself quickly from the light of the camp-fire.
Shoot, then! he shouted out. Shoot, for I am not afraid of your arrows.
Another arrow whistled in the air. It struck my father’s coat tail, and he leapt back in fright. The darkness would not allow him to reload his musket and he could not return to the light of the fire where he would be an easy target for Aappaluttoq’s arrows.
Can you see him? he asked me. If you see him, shoot on sight!
I could indeed see him, for my night-sight has always been good, and moreover the sky seemed also to be lighter now, albeit only slightly. But I did not shoot. I cannot remember what I felt. I was not afraid. More than anything, I felt a kind of composure.
My father began then to walk forward in the direction in which he believed the last arrow to have come. He had abandoned his musket and inched towards the shadow that was Aappaluttoq, though without being able to see him. But as he approached I think perhaps he picked out his shape, for his steps became at once more hesitant. And then I heard them wrestle. They grunted and groaned, and suddenly my father let out a roar and fell to the ground.
At last I wrenched myself from my paralysis and ran towards him. He was lying flat out on the ground. I called out to him: Father! Father!
Yes, I’m all right, he replied with no small measure of annoyance. No harm done. See if you can catch up with the beast. I think he ran that way.
As if to demonstrate to him my good intent, I ran this way and that, searching for Aappaluttoq. But he was gone. I helped my father to the fire. His nose was bloodied, but otherwise he was unharmed. Frederik Christian was still sitting there as if he were made of stone. My father hugged him and made a fuss of him. My boy, my boy, he said. I thought I had lost you. What on earth could have made you go with him? Tell me why you did so.
He told me to, said Frederik Christian.
And you wanted to? You wanted to be with him?
No. Yes. I don’t know. I went with him.
I could tell he was shaken by what had happened. He went into a kind of stupor and said no more.
We headed back to the settlement. It took two days before we found it. We saw nothing more of Aappaluttoq. When on the first night of the journey we bedded down in a hollow among the rocks my father told of the time he had received Frederik Christian, or Paapa as his name was then. You hung limply in your father’s arms, he said, and were pale and feeble. You looked like the Saviour himself taken down from the cross. For weeks you hovered between life and death and I felt the Lord himself had entrusted you to me, that you were a gift of grace from Him, but also a gift from this land, Greenland, and a sign to me that I must remain here and lead the savages to Jesus, and that you were to help me in this. To my mind you were a pact I concluded with the Lord. That’s why you are so precious to me, and it is why I shall never give you up, and no matter what happens to you I shall always be your earthly father, for this responsibility is given to me by the Lord.
It was the first time I had heard my father speak in such a way, so heartfelt it seemed he would burst into tears at any moment. It made me feel strange. It was as if my father had become someone else entirely, a human being of flesh and blood, it could almost be said.
I wonder, my good Master Kieding, now that this account of mine with the disclosures it contains has reached its conclusion, whether you might leave it somewhere so that my father might find it and read it. I should like to know what he thinks of it. I am not sure what to make of it myself. But now at least he will be able to see that I, his poorly talented son, have become more adept in the use of pen and ink, and also see himself as I see him, for I think it will do him good.
Nielsus Egidius Groenlandicus
Christmas 1731