King Frederick IV established the Royal Mission College to organize and fund Protestant missions under royal patronage. This institution later became a key sponsor of Hans Egede’s proposed Greenland mission and helped connect religious goals with state planning.
Hans Egede issued a written defense of his plan to travel to Greenland to search for the lost Norse settlements and renew Christian mission work. The publication was part of a long effort to overcome resistance and win backing from merchants and officials.
Egede helped organize a Bergen-based trading company to raise money and obtain privileges for a Greenland expedition. The company combined commercial aims (trade and whaling) with the mission goal of re-establishing contact and authority in Greenland.
Egede, his family, and other settlers departed Bergen in a small fleet to begin the Greenland mission and colony effort. The voyage marked the practical start of Denmark-Norway’s renewed push to assert a lasting presence in Greenland.
Egede reached Greenland’s west coast and set up the first settlement on the island later known as Kangeq (which he called Håbets Ø, “Island of Hope”). This landing is widely treated as the start of the Dano-Norwegian reoccupation of Greenland after centuries without sustained contact.
After arrival, Egede struggled to communicate because he had only limited language aids, while his children learned Greenlandic more quickly and helped him. These early years shaped the mission’s approach, showing that conversion and teaching would depend on building local language skills.
By the mid-1720s, Egede’s group had begun baptizing Inuit children, indicating that the mission was taking root despite hardships. This step also signaled a shift from the original goal of finding surviving Norse settlers toward sustained work among Inuit communities.
The Bergen Greenland Company collapsed financially, weakening the original mixed trade-and-mission model for supporting settlement. Even so, the effort had already re-established a foothold that the Danish-Norwegian state could build on more directly.
Major Claus Paarss, appointed governor, moved the settlement from Hope Island (Kangeq) to the mainland opposite and fortified it under the name Godt-Haab (later Godthåb, now Nuuk). The move aimed to strengthen security and administration, and it tied the mission more tightly to colonial governance.
Moravian missionaries reached the Godthåb area, adding a new Protestant group with distinct methods of preaching and community life. Their presence broadened the religious landscape and increased competition and cooperation in how Christianity was taught in Greenland.
A smallpox outbreak spread through Greenland and caused severe loss of life, including in areas near the colony. The epidemic disrupted both mission and trade, reshaped settlement patterns, and became a major turning point in Egede’s view of the mission’s immediate future.
Egede’s wife, Gertrud Rask, died in Greenland during the crisis years following the smallpox epidemic. Her death removed a major organizer and supporter of the mission community and contributed to Egede’s decision that he could no longer remain in Greenland.
Egede departed Greenland and returned to Copenhagen after about fifteen years, exhausted and discouraged, while his sons and other staff continued the work. His return shifted his role from on-the-ground missionary to organizer, writer, and advisor shaping policy and training from Denmark.
In Copenhagen, a dedicated Greenland seminar (Seminarium Groenlandicum) was established, and Egede was employed to help lead missionary training and advise authorities. This institutionalized the Greenland mission, making it less dependent on one person and more like a long-term state church project.
Egede received the title of bishop for Greenland and served as a consultant to mission authorities while based in Copenhagen. The appointment symbolized that the Greenland effort had become a recognized part of the Danish-Norwegian church and colonial system, even as day-to-day work continued in Greenland without him.
Poul Egede, Hans Egede’s son, published a Greenlandic translation of the four Gospels in Copenhagen. This was a practical milestone: it supported teaching in the local language and showed that the mission was evolving toward literacy, translation, and long-term religious instruction rather than short-term settlement hopes.
Hans Egede and the Danish Reoccupation and Mission to Greenland (1721–1736)