63 



Nowhere else have the Eskimo so long been under the 

 influence of more advanced civilization and nowhere else have 

 they progressed so far in enlightenment as in Danish Greenland. 

 They would never have attained to this result by their own 

 efforts alone, for they live too isolated and too scattered. If 

 a great many of the Greenlanders now-a-days are able both 

 to read and write their own language, and if their knowledge 

 and their ideas about life and the world approximate our own, 

 it is first and foremost due to the civilizing work of the mis- 

 sionaries. This work was begun by Hans Egede and his 

 son Paul in the first half of the 18*^ century. The former, a 

 poor Norwegian clergyman, succeeded in waking in Norway and 

 Denmark in the year 1721 a proselytic and mercantile interest 

 for Greenland and its inhabitants. This interest gained ground 

 especially because it was hoped that there might be found some 

 remains of the old Norse colonies in Greenland, about which 

 there had been no accounts for about three centuries. Hans 

 Egede managed to get to Greenland, and the natural conditions 

 for communication with Europe brought about that the scene 

 of his activity was laid in South Greenland in the district around 

 Godthaab Fjord. The colony of Godthaab has ever since main- 

 tained its prerogative as the chief centre for the spreading of 

 foreign civilization in Greenland. 



At present, there are 12 Danish colonies up there, beside 

 many small trading-places. At the colonies there are colonial 

 managers and clergymen, shops and churches. Both at the 

 colonies and at the small trading-places, there are native 

 school-teachers, who besides taking charge of the instruc- 

 tion of the children, act as assistants to the Danish clergymen; 

 they read the opening and closing prayers, play the organ etc. 

 These so-called ,,kateket"s (in Greenlandic in the singular ajoqe) 

 are trained at the seminaries in Godthaab and Jakobshavn, where 

 they have to go through a course lasting from 4 to 5 years. 

 Of foreign languages, they learn only Danish, which most of 



