6 i 



them come to understand and speak pretty well. Some of them 

 get so far as to be able to preach a Danish sermon. But they 

 have not much use for this language, for all the instruction in 

 the schools is conducted in Greenlandic. The Greenlanders seem 

 to find great difficulty in learning to talk correct Danish; in 

 all North Greenland, I only met with three or four of them 

 who could speak it tolerably well. 



At the Danish colonies, there are special school-houses. At 

 the Eskimo settlements, the children come to the teacher in his 

 private hut; tlie teacher here is generally an old seal-hunter, 

 who likes to make a little extra income by teaching. Boys and 

 girls go to school together, every day or every other day, with 

 the usual vacations. They are taught reading, writing and 

 arithmetic. Their handwriting is good, but they find great 

 difficulty in learning to spell correctly according to Klein- 

 schmidt's orthography, and likewise in learning arithmetic. They 

 have Greenlandic text-books {Atuainiutit Vol. I — II), in which 

 they are given the fundamental elements of geography, natural 

 history, and the history of the world, besides biblical literature 

 and the catechism — in short about the same information about 

 the earth and its inhabitants as is imparted in the schools of 

 the civilized world. — In their homes, they learn from those 

 about them the Eskimo domestic customs and mode of living; 

 the boys, for instance, learn to paddle a kajak and to use fire- 

 arms and harpoons. Here they also become acquainted with the 

 many traditions which have been handed down from heathen 

 times and which we call superstitions. The tales are full of 

 them. It is especially at the isolated settlements, where Euro- 

 peans seldom come, that these national traditions still flourish 

 and find room in the minds of the people along side of the 

 ideas of Christianity. In these places — and they are the 

 majority — the Danish Greenlanders still live in a strange 

 confusion of posthumous heathendom and primitive Christianity. 



The lit(!rature which is printed in the native language 



