42 A SUMMER IN GREENLAND 
fact that I did not understand a single word. The 
men sat on one side of the church and the women 
on the other; all joined heartily in the many hymns 
that were sung. Spittoons were provided and occa- 
sionally used by the officiating clergyman. 
There is, no doubt, a persistent attachment to 
certain old superstitions behind the apparent ac- 
ceptance of the Protestant religion. Situations 
sometimes arise when the tact and common sense 
of the representatives of the church or of the 
Danish residents are severely tried; it is at times 
necessary to explain to the more intelligent natives 
seeming contradictions between passages in the 
Bible, literally rendered, and current practices. 
One of the many instances of the clash of deeply 
rooted pagan ideas with the teaching of the Church 
that had come under his notice was related to me 
by Mr Porsild. An old Eskimo woman, who had 
become mentally deranged, was being treated as 
one possessed of a devil by the people of the small 
Settlement, where there were no Europeans, by 
methods which would soon have proved disastrous. 
A young Dane arrived in time to save the situation 
so far as the woman was concerned: he bluntly 
told the natives that their talk about devils was all 
nonsense. ‘But how,’ was the reply, ‘can that be, 
when we read of people possessed of devils in the 
Lord’s own book?’ 
At many localities on the east coast north of 
Angmagssalik traces of old Settlements have been 
found, and it has been suggested that the east coast 
may have been colonised originally by Eskimoes 
