PRAY FOR GREENLA

ND

GREENLAND

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Greenland is the largest island on earth with 75% of its land covered by the earth’s only ice sheet apart from the Antarctic.

Scoresby Sund -  the largest and longest fjord system in the world.

Scoresby Sund

RELIGION IN GREENLAND

95 % of the people in Greenland would call themselves Christian but less than 5% are evangelical believers.

POLITICS

Greenland is an autonomous state within the Kingdom of Denmark. It joined the EEC with Denmark but withdrew in 1983.

From Greenland’s icy mountains, from India’s coral strand;Where Afric’s sunny fountains roll down their golden sand:From many an ancient river, from many a palmy plain,They call us to deliver their land from error’s chain.

Nuuk  is the capital and largest city of Greenland. It is the seat of government and the country's largest cultural and economic centre. It has a population of 16,500.

HISTORY From 2500BC to 800BC Greenland was inhabited by Saqqaq peoples.

Saqqaq peoples were physically adapted to extremely cold climates. They lived in small tents and hunted seals, seabirds, and other marine animals.

From 986AD, Greenland's west coast was settled by Icelanders and Norwegians, through a contingent of 14 boats led by Erik the Red. 

These settlements continued through to the 15th century and then came to an end for unknown reasons.

NORSE GREENLANDERS

The last written records of the Norse Greenlanders are of a marriage in 1408 in the church of Hvalsey — today the best-preserved Nordic ruins in Greenland.

HANS EGEDE

Hans graduated as a theology student and in April 1707 he was ordained and assigned to a parish on the remote archipelago of Lofoten. At Lofoten, Egede heard stories about the old Norse settlements on Greenland, with which contact had been lost centuries before. He was intrigued and concerned and felt a call from God to go as a missionary to Greenland.

LOFOTEN

A HAZARDOUS ENTERPRISE

Hans faced discouragement from every direction. He appealed to his church, to the government and to the king for help to make his call from God a reality, all to no avail. All his friends and relatives and even his wife discouraged him from such a ‘hazardous enterprise’.

Through his prayers, his wife changed her mind and became a steadfast supporter of his plans. He moved the family to Bergen to find a practical way of reaching Greenland.

In Bergen, he studied all that he could find concerning Greenland, particularly from the journals and the logs of whaling and fishing vessels of those who had plied those waters.  After 13 years he found a merchant willing to finance an expedition. 

A HAZARDOUS ENTERPRISE

Their first contacts with the Greenlanders were less than encouraging.  Hans wrote: ‘Their first appearance seemed to me very miserable.’  They were untaught, pagan savages, and his heart of compassion went out to them. 

A sea serpent reported by Hans Egede in 1734

A HAZADOUS ENTERPRISE

The family spent the long winter days and nights studying the language and attempting to communicate with the local people.  Their boys picked up the language very quickly and were a tremendous asset.  Hans began to teach some of the more aggressive of the Greenlanders, and one intelligent young man was the first to be baptized in 1725.

Egede’s own map of Greenland

Nuuk's main road Aqqusinersuaq with Hotel Hans Egede on the right

HANS EGEDE

The Greenlanders said: ‘You would have done for us what not even our own kinfolk would have done.  You have fed us when we were famished.  You have buried our dead who otherwise would have been the prey of foxes and ravens.  Above all, you have told us of God, and we may now die happily in hope of a better life hereafter.’

Hans Egede – ‘Apostle of Greenland’ – Founder of Nuuk.This statue was erected in his honour in what is now the capital city of Greenland.

In the drab grey landscape it is the houses that provide the colour!

Spectacular scenery and the Aurora Borealis can be seen in Greenland

AN INUIT FAMILY IN GREENLAND, 1917.

School children in Upernavik start their first day of school wearing traditional colourful Greenlandic costumes

PRAYER POINTS

Travel conditions are extremely harsh, and communities along the coasts isolated; those outside the larger settlements have very little chance to hear the gospel.

Pray for the historic Protestant churches in Greenland that have largely lost sight of the gospel that motivated Hans Egede to go as a missionary to Greenland.

Pray for missionaries and church planters to be raised up amongst the evangelicals in Greenland.

Thank God for airstrips now built in several remote towns, opening these places for ministry. Pray that these opportunities will be taken.