NUUK, Greenland (news agencies) — Most Greenlanders are proudly Inuit, having survived and thrived in one of most remote and climatically inhospitable places on Earth.
And they’re Lutheran.
About 90% of the 57,000 Greenlanders identify as Inuit and the vast majority of them belong to the Lutheran Church today, more than 300 years after a Danish missionary brought that branch of Christianity to the world’s largest island.
For many, their devotion to ritual and tradition is as much a part of what it means to be a Greenlander as is their fierce deference to the homeland. The one so many want U.S. President Donald Trump to understand is not for sale despite his threats to seize it.
Greenland is huge — about three times the size of Texas; most of it covered in ice. Still, its 17 parishes are located across many settlements in the icy land and people endure the frigid Arctic climate to fill up church pews on Sundays.
Some even tune in to radio-transmitted services on their phones on a break from fishing and hunting for seals, whales and polar bears, as their ancestors have done for generations.
That rugged yet vulnerable lifestyle helps fuel people’s devotion, said Bishop Paneeraq Siegstad Munk, leader of Greenland’s Evangelical Lutheran Church.
“If you see outside, nature is enormous, huge, and man is so little,” she told media after a recent Sunday service in the capital city, Nuuk, where slippery ice covered the city’s streets.
“You know you won’t be able to survive by yourself,” she said.
That is, unless “you have faith,” she added. “God is not only in the building of the church but everywhere where he has created.”
Religiosity levels vary in Greenland as it does elsewhere. Sometimes being a member of the Lutheran Church here doesn’t mean one believes fully — or at all — in the church’s teachings, or even the presence of God.
Recently, Salik Schmidt, 35, and Malu Schmidt, 33, celebrated their wedding with family members, who joyously threw rice on them to wish them good fortune outside the red-painted wooden Church of Our Savior. Built in 1849, it is known as the Nuuk Cathedral.
Malu is spiritual but not religious; Salik is an atheist. Both said they’ll proudly belong to the Lutheran Church for life.
“Traditions are important to me because they pass on from my grandparents to my parents, and it’s been my way of honoring them,” Malu said later in their home while her sister babysat their daughter.
It also provides a sense of safety and permanence among change, Salik said.
“It’s something that is always there,” he said. “It brings joy to us.”
There are two Lutheran churches in Nuuk.
The Hans Egede Church is named for the Danish-Norwegian missionary who came to Greenland in 1721 with the aim of spreading Christianity, and who founded the capital city seven years later.
A short distance away stands the cathedral, and next to it, a statue of Egede remains on a hill in the Old District. In recent years, the statue was vandalized, doused with red paint and marked with the word “decolonize.”
Egede’s legacy is divisive. Some credit him for helping educate the local population and spreading Lutheranism, which continues to unite many Greenlanders under rituals and tradition.
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