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The chapter focusses on post-1721 developments, analysing the Dano-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede’s struggle to fit the new observations he made in Greenland into the framework of established ideas promoted in the texts he had read prior to his arrival. The transition from reading about Greenland in books to observing the land in situ led to a crisis of representation as the archive of knowledge that had been stored up over the centuries became difficult to reconcile with experience. The most significant error perpetuated in several texts was the idea that the Eastern Settlement was located on the east coast. Rather than dismiss the many expeditions that sought to reach this fabled settlement as irrelevant to the colonial project that eventually developed on the west coast, the chapter proposes that the search for the settlers and their resource-rich lands is significant for understanding Denmark’s political, religious, and commercial ambitions in Greenland. Attention is also paid to the maps Egede drew of Greenland as they are visual records of how traditional perceptions were allowed to coexist with new empirical data.
Hans Egede (1686–1758), the famous missionary and natural historian in Greenland, was one of very few known Norwegian alchemists. This article seeks to place Egede’s alchemy in the context of the European alchemical tradition by identifying his sources in alchemical literature. Through an analysis of Egede’s account of an alchemical experiment performed by him in 1727, Ole Borch, Johann Joachim Becher, and Michael Sendivogius are identified as his main sources. Egede’s procedure and choice of materials are shown to be based on texts by these authors. The article argues that Egede’s alchemical interest was more pervasive than hitherto understood, through the demonstration of connections between his alchemical studies and his work as a natural historian. Further it is argued that Egede’s alchemy was not unique or anachronistic but exemplifies the continued belief in and practice of transmutational alchemy in Denmark-Norway in the early decades of the eighteenth century.
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