Taissumani, Feb. 12
Inuit Language Pioneer - Otto Fabricius, Part 1
Otto Fabricius
KENN HARPER
Otto Fabricius was born in Denmark on March 13, 1744, the son of a clergyman, who was a friend of Hans Egede, the first missionary to Greenland.
Greenland was often a topic of conversation at the vicarage where Fabricius grew up and Hans Egede was a frequent visitor. Otto’s older half-brother had been a missionary to Greenland for a short time, returning home when Otto was 20.
Educated largely at home, Fabricius graduated in 1762 with honours in geometry, arithmetic and astronomy. Of course he also studied theology, as well as oriental languages.
He also attended the Seminarium Groenlandicum, founded by Hans Egede, where Bishop Poul Egede was professor of Greenlandic after his return from Greenland.
At the age of 24, Fabricius went out as a missionary of the Lutheran Church to Frederikshaab on the west Greenland coast. For the first three years there, he had a room in the collective bunkhouse built for the Danes living there, but increasingly he wanted to be among the Greenlanders.
In the summer of 1770 he made what was, for a missionary at that time, a major move. He left the colony, and moved 30 kilometres south, to a spot called Iluilarssuk — it means “the lovely peninsula” — and moved into a spacious “Greenlander house,” that is, a house of stones, turf and timber, that stood high above a small lake.
He lived there for three years, living as the Inuit did. He wore skin clothing, and learned to hunt seals from a kayak as his friends, the hunters, did. Indeed it was his seal-hunting costume that gave rise to his Greenlandic name — Erisaalik — “the one in the water-proof kayak-dress,” a reference to the distinctive costume that the hunter wore when at sea in his kayak.
Fabricius believed that the Inuit became destitute when confined to the restricted environment of the trading station, and he encouraged their dispersal along the coast to have better access to seal-hunting.
He had begun to learn Greenlandic before he even left Denmark and had of course made considerable progress in mastering the language during his three years at the Frederikshaab colony.
But once he had moved out of the colony, as the only white man at his remote location, Fabricius’s facility with the language increased rapidly. He hunted, and talked of hunting and community life with his neighbours.
Each day he gained in experience and knowledge, and recorded what he had learned in the privacy of his hut. It was a busy life. “My sojourn at Iluilarssuk gave me more to do than ever before,” he wrote.
Fabricius’s health suffered as a result of the hardships of his chosen life. The idyll lasted only three years before he had to bid farewell to his beloved Greenlanders and return, against his will, to Denmark. His total time in Greenland was only six years.
He continued to study and research, first in Norway and then in Denmark proper. His famous work, Fauna Groenlandica, was completed in Norway and published in 1780. That same year he was elected a member of the Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. He became lecturer in Greenlandic (replacing Paul Egede) in 1789.
A portrait of Fabricius shows a dour, stern-looking man. But he was a man with an enthusiastic passion for research. He was orthodox and conservative when it came to religion, and remained, for the rest of his life, a staunch and stubborn defender of the interests of the Greenlanders.
He, unlike most other missionaries, had lived alone among the Greenlanders, observed their customs intimately and documented their language systematically.
Next week, I will tell about more of the work of Otto Fabricius.
Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
