Note 686 — Chapter II

Rink, born in 1819 in Copenhagen, spent much of the interval from 1853 to 1872 in Greenland. Pilling (Bibl. Eskimo Language, p. 80) gives the best account of Rink’s publications. His principal book is Grönland geographisch und statistisch beschrieben (Stuttgart, 1860). The English reader has access to his Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, translated by Rink himself, and edited by Dr. Robert Brown (London, 1875); to Danish Greenland, its people and its products, ed. by Dr. Brown (London, 1877). Rink says of this work that in its English dress it must be considered a new book. He also published The Eskimo tribes; their distribution and characteristics, especially in regard to language. With a comparative vocabulary (Copenhagen, etc., 1887). He also considered their dialects as divulging the relationship of tribes in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute (xv. 239); and in the same journal (1872, p. 104) he has written of their descent. Rink also furnished to the Compte Rendu, Congrès des Américanistes, a paper on the traditions of Greenland (Nancy, 1875, ii. 181), and (Luxembourg, 1877, ii. 327) another on “L’habitat primitif des Esquimaux.”