Note 170 — Chapter XIV

Missionary activity in Greenland, then a possession of the Norwegian crown, was commenced in 1721 by Hans Egede, who to that end set on foot a combined commercial and missionary company in Bergen. This mission was afterwards supported by the Danish-Norwegian Government, and after the separation of 1814, by which Denmark retained the Norwegian possessions of the Faroe Isles, Iceland, and Greenland, by the Danish Government alone. Ten years after Egede’s arrival in the country, Count Zinsendorf, who had heard of his mission, despatched three Moravian brethren to Greenland. These also formed a little congregation, and the German or Hernhutt mission has likewise obtained a footing. It has now a few stations in the Godthaab district, and one or two in the extreme south of the country. The peculiarity of these Hernhutt communities, so far as I could gather, is that in them the natives have sunk to an even greater depth of misery than elsewhere.