Habakkuk movement
The Habakkuk movement was a religious movement that existed in Greenland at the end of the 18th century around the self-proclaimed prophet Habakkuk and his wife Maria Magdalene.
Habakuk was a Greenlander who was born in 1755 with the name K'erĸeĸ in the colonial district of Sukkertoppen . Around 1776 he married Maria Magdalene, a Greenlandic woman of the same age. Both lived on Kangerlussuatsiaq (Evighedsfjorden), at the mouth of which Kangaamiut lies. Both were baptized on April 8, 1776 by the missionary Berthel Laersen .
In the winter of 1787/88, Mary Magdalene claimed to have had revelations regarding her husband's infidelity and other wrongdoings. She told the local population about new visions and a following began to form around her and her husband. After a few months they both proclaimed themselves prophets. A cult of the dead developed , in which it was assumed that the dead were still in an intermediate stage between dead and alive. The couple gained more and more followers and the population had to deliver their catch, which brought trade in the area to a standstill. Not only the ordinary population, but also the Greenlandic part of the trade and church employees joined the movement without the colonial administration being able to intervene.
The movement dissolved in 1790 after Berthel Laersen's son Frederik Berthelsen intervened and the population lost faith in the transcendent gifts of their prophets. In 1794 both rejoined the community. Habakuk died on November 23, 1798 and his wife on September 14, 1802.
There were several other cases of such movements in Greenland later. In 1803 the cult briefly revived. In 1853/54 the hunter Matteus appointed himself prophet Gabriel in Narsarmijit and formed a community around him, which could not be ended by the European side either. Here, too, the followers lost faith when the pronouncements were not fulfilled. In 1875 Jonasine Anine Amalie (Inequnarneq) (1853-1909) from the north of the colonial district of Upernavik declared herself to be the Virgin Mary and with her revelations also gathered some followers before this movement quickly disappeared again. The Habakkuk movement was the first time that the Greenlanders opposed the Danish colonialists.
The action is received by Kim Leine in his 2012 novel Profeterne i Evighedsfjorden .