Remember the Statue Don Jr. Posed with in Greenland? Here's the Incredibly Christian Story Behind it
The territory of Greenland has recently been in the news.
President Donald Trump has been angling to take over the North Atlantic island from Denmark, noting the strategic importance of controlling the rare earth minerals on the icy piece of land, especially as the United States competes with China for technological dominance.
When Donald Trump Jr. and Charlie Kirk visited Greenland in early January, they paused to take a photo underneath a statue in the small capital city of Nuuk.
I thought I saw you in the background Charlie. Remember..you heard it here first …the capital of Greenland is Nuuk…Let’s name is “NUUK YORK CITY” in honor of my fellow favorite NYer President Trump. pic.twitter.com/9JuKpsWkJe
— Johnny St.Pete (@JohnMcCloy) January 7, 2025
The man who that statue seeks to honor also happens to be the man who brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to the island of Greenland some three centuries ago.
Hans Egede, born in Norway, embarked on his study of theology in Copenhagen starting in 1704, quickly gaining an interest in overseas evangelism, according to a biography from Gospel Fellowship Association Missions in Greenville, South Carolina.
Egede was interested in the stories of Norse explorers who settled the North Atlantic, recalling that Eric the Red colonized Greenland in 983.
That led him to wonder whether the colony still existed, and whether they had a minister to teach them about Jesus.
“No word of the survivors had come to Norway for several centuries. What had happened? Was there still a remnant left in Greenland? One day, as he stood looking west, he thought of his countrymen,” the biography said. “Were there any there? What was their state?”
Egede was determined to make a missionary voyage to the island.
He appealed to the monarchy several times, asking for assistance with reaching Greenland, writing in one letter that “all Christians have a duty toward missions so long as any heathen exists.”
After 13 years, a merchant finally funded his voyage. Once he arrived, Egede found that the Greenlanders were untaught pagan Inuits, rather than descendants of the Norsemen. He did, however, find “ruins of houses and a church that most certainly had been built by the Norsemen” several centuries earlier.
Egede embarked on efforts to learn the local language, baptizing the first Greenlander in 1725.
The missionary spent a total of 15 years preaching the gospel in Greenland.
One explorer sent to the unsettled eastern coast of Greenland by the monarchy recounted meeting Egede and his family.
“I’ve taken the greatest possible pains to find out the reason why the minister and his wife year-after-year keep on doing this work in Greenland and suffering such inconvenience from it, besides having spent everything they possessed in Norway in order to be able carry it out,” he wrote.
The explorer quoted Egede as saying that he “wished to live and die here in order to teach the savages the knowledge of God.”
The account added that “he only tries to work for the honor of God even if it should cost him his life,” rightly remarking that “such a man is worth his weight in gold.”
Egede indeed went to great lengths to teach the knowledge of God, even across profound cultural barriers.
Visit Greenland noted that Egede translated the line “give us this day our daily bread” in the Lord’s Prayer to “give us this day our daily seal,” as the Inuit could not grow bread but instead survived on the local seal population as their staple food.
Egede spent the final two decades of his life teaching at a missionary college in Norway.
His sons later returned to Greenland and continued his work.
Egede wrote in his diary that “only the honor of God and the teaching of the poor, ignorant people have been and always will be my one and only aim, nay, the eternal wish of my heart until my death.”
Americans currently have their sights on Greenland because of the economic and military opportunities the island presents.
But they should by no means forget the legacy of the man who once set his sights on the island, not only for the physical good it could offer him, but for the spiritual good he could offer its people.
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