Rasmussen, Christian Vilhelm

RASMUSSEN, rās-mū´sen, CHRISTIAN VILHELM: Danish missionary to Greenland; b. in Skrodsbjäirg near Kjöge (28 m. s.w. of Copenhagen), Denmark, Nov. 25, 1846. He was educated at Herlufsholm (B.A., 1865) and Copenhagen (Candidate in Theology, 1872) ; was missionary in Jakobshavn in the northern part of Greenland (1873 1895), having charge for about fifteen years of the missionary work in the colony of Umanak and oversight of the work in Egedesminde. On his return to Denmark, he was appointed provost of Lynge and Uggelöse (1896); since 1904 he has been lector, giving instruction to the Greenlandic catechists; he also assists the bishops and the minister of state in matters pertaining to church and education in Greenland. Besides translating Balslev's Bible History (first Danish ed., 1844) into Greenlandic, he has written a valuable Greenlandic grammar, Grönlandsk Sprogläre (Copenhagen, 1888), and, with J. Kjer, has given philology its first Danish Greenlandic dictionary, Dansk-Grönlandsk Ordbog (1893). In the new Greenlandic Bible, the translation of the books from Joshua to Esther is his work.

John O. Evjen.