Frederik Nielsen: N. F. S. Grundtvigip Tussiusiai kalaallisuunngiortitat. Nuuk 1985

Resumé

Grundtvig in Greenlandic

N. F. S. Grundtvigip Tussiusiai Kalaallisungortitat, Nuuk 1985

By Signe Michelsen

In 1985 the Greenland publishers Pilersuiffik (Nuuk/Godth.b) published a selection of Grundtvig’s hymns and songs translated into Greenlandic by the poet Frederik Nielsen. His translations represent a bold and many-sided choice, covering both the hymns and the bible-story songs as well as the fatherland songs. Translating Grundtvig is terribly difficult. Translating Grundtvig into Greenlandic is a noble feat. A language whose structure is completely different from Danish: a poly-synthetic language whose words consist of so many elements (stems and affixes) that a single word can constitute a whole sentence sequence.

The background to Frederik Nielsen’s translations of Grundtvig is his own inspiration from youth. Nielsen was born in 1905 and has been a significant poet in Greenland as well as an educationist and a politician. From 1956-67 he was head of the Greenland Radio. He was the first Greenlander to graduate from a Danish college of education (T.nder), and during his time at college he lived with a family strongly influenced by Grundtvig. The decisive moment came when he took part in a grundtvigian meeting in 1927, where for the first time he heard the hymn: All Creatures that were Given Wings (Alt, hvad som fuglevinger fik). He writes of the experience in his memoirs: “That was when I had the conviction that grundtvigian Christianity was the form of Christianity and the Christian way of life that best agreed with me.” In 1934 on the recommendation of Knud Rasmussen, he had had his novel Tuumarse (Thomas) published in Greenlandic. He himself translated it into Danish in 1980. He has since written a number of novels and poems, some of the latter having been translated into Danish. He is still a productive writer and has also sought to inspire his compatriots as a translator, among other things of a selection of Danish poems from 1980.

As examples of his Grundtvig translations two are singled out here: All Creatures that were Given Wings and O , Christian Lot! (O, Christelighed). They are published in a retro-translation to Danish, but the original texts to the hymns in question are printed in Greenlandic.

It is clear that there are ideas and concepts in Grundtvig that are impossible to translate. On the other hand the Greenlandic language enforces a greater simplicity than in Grundtvig. This can actually lead to very beautiful passages, as in the two last stanzas of O , Christian Lot!. They contain the essentials and express them with spontaneity and intensity. The Greenlandic poet, Kristian Olsen, reviewing Frederik Nielsen’s hymn translations, writes: “Having read them through Grundtvig’s many word-pictures, he has somehow imbued them with Grundtvig’s spirit.”