Hans Poulsen Egede, the apostle of Greenland, was a Norwegian of Danish descent.  He was born in the Northlands, in the parish of Trondenaes, on January 31, 1686.  His grandfather and his father before him had been clergymen in Denmark, the former in the town of West Egede, whence the name.  Graduated in a single year from the University of Copenhagen, “at which,” his teachers bore witness, “no one need wonder who knows the man,” he became at twenty-two pastor of a parish up in the Lofoden Islands, where the fabled maelstrom churns.  Eleven years he preached to the poor fisherfolk on Sunday, and on week-days helped his parishioners rebuild the old church.  When it was finished and the bishop came to consecrate it, he chided Egede because the altar was too fine; it must have cost more than they could afford.

“It did not cost anything,” was his reply.  “I made it myself.”

No wonder his fame went far.  When the church bell of Vaagen called, boats carrying Sunday-clad fishermen were seen making for the island from every point of the compass.  Great crowds flocked to his church; great enough to arouse the jealousy of neighboring preachers who were not so popular, and they made it so unpleasant that his wife at last tired of it.  They little dreamed that they were industriously paving the way for his greater work and for his undying fame.

The sea that surges against that rockbound coast ever called its people out in quest of adventure.  Some who went nine hundred years ago found a land in the far Northwest barred by great icebergs; but once inside the barrier, they saw deep fjords like their own at home, to which the mountains sloped down, covered with a wealth of lovely flowers.  On green meadows antlered deer were grazing, the salmon leaped in brawling brooks, and birds called for their mates in the barrens.  Above it all towered snow-covered peaks.  They saw only the summer day; they did not know how brief it was, and how long the winter night, and they called the country Greenland.  They built their homes there, and other settlers came.  They were hardy men, bred in a harsh climate, and they stayed.  They built churches and had their priests and bishops, for Norway was Christian by that time.  And they prospered after their fashion.  They even paid Peter’s Pence to Rome.  There is a record that their contribution, being in kind, namely, walrus teeth, was sold in 1386 by the Pope’s agent to a merchant in Flanders for twelve livres, fourteen sous.  They kept up communication with their kin across the seas until the Black Death swept through the Old World in the Fourteenth Century; Norway, when it was gone, was like a vast tomb.  Two-thirds of its people lay dead.  Those who were left had enough to do at home; and Greenland was forgotten.

The seasons passed, and the savages, with whom the colonists had carried on a running feud, came out of the frozen North and overwhelmed them.  Dim traditions that were whispered among the natives for centuries told of that last fight.  It was the Ragnarok of the Northmen.  Not one was left to tell the tale.  Long years after, when fishing vessels landed on that desolate coast, they found a strange and hostile people in possession.  No one had ever dared to settle there since.