Frederik Berthelsen

Frederik Berthelsen (nickname Naparutaq ; born April 27, 1750 in Nuuk ; † January 13, 1828 ibid) was a Greenlandic catechist and missionary .

Life

Frederik Berthelsen was the son of the Danish missionary Berthel Laersen (1722–1782) and his Greenlandic wife Susanna (around 1722–1779). A theological training with a Dane in Nuuk failed because of his insufficient knowledge of Danish. Instead, from the age of 15, he helped his father as a catechist in the Sukkertoppen colony (now Kangaamiut ). When his father died in 1782, Frederik, as the newly appointed head catechist, had to keep the mission going on his own until a new missionary came there. A few years later the Habakkuk movement flourished , which soon degenerated and lost all control of the Church and trade over the Greenlanders. Because of his Greenlandic origins, Frederik Berthelsen managed to end the movement. From 1795 to 1797 he worked for a short time in Nuuk. When the Danish-English gunboat war broke out in 1807 , connections between Denmark and Greenland were broken and most of the Danes left Greenland. In 1814 there was only one missionary in the whole country with the Norwegian Bernhard Hartz (1781–1822) and so in times of need Frederik Berthelsen, who until then was only a catechist, was appointed by Hartz as the first and for a long time only Greenlander to be a missionary as which he worked in Nuuk until 1827. He died a year later at the age of 77.

Frederik Berthelsen was married three times in his life. On February 1, 1772 he married Edel, the daughter of the hunter Job, from Greenland. After her death in 1775, he married Hedevig on September 24, 1776. She died in 1799 and Frederik married Augusta that same year on July 29th, who survived him and died in 1832. About his second wife, he was the grandfather of Rasmus Berthelsen (1827-1901).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} biography in Dansk Biografisk Leksikon
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Biography in Biografisk Leksikon for Grønland