His body lies in a black marble sarcophagus in the “Navy Church” at Copenhagen.  The Danish and Norwegian peoples have never ceased to mourn their idol.  He was a sailor with a sailor’s faults.  But he loved truth, honor, and courage in foe and friend alike.  Like many seafaring men, he was deeply religious, with the unquestioning faith of a child.  There is a letter in existence written by him to his father when the latter was on his death-bed that bears witness to this.  He thanks him with filial affection for all his care, and says naively that he would rather have his prayers than fall heir to twenty thousand daler.  His pictures show a stocky, broad-shouldered youth with frank blue eyes, full lips, and an eagle nose.  His deep, sonorous voice used to be heard, in his midshipman days, above the whole congregation in the Navy Church.  In after years it called louder still to Denmark’s foes.  When things were at their worst in storm or battle, he was wont to shout to his men, “Hi, now we are having a fine time!” and his battle-cry has passed into the language.  By it, in desperate straits demanding stout hearts, one may know the Dane after his own heart, the real Dane, the world over.  Among his own Tordenskjold is still and always will be “the Admiral of Norway’s fleet.”

HANS EGEDE, THE APOSTLE TO GREENLAND

When in the fall of 1909 the statement was flashed around the world that the North Pole had at last been reached, a name long unfamiliar ran from mouth to mouth with that of the man who claimed to be its discoverer.  Dr. Cook was coming to Copenhagen, the daily despatches read, on the Danish Government steamer Hans Egede.  A shipload of reporters kept an anxious lookout from the Skaw for the vessel so suddenly become famous, but few who through their telescopes made out the name at last upon the prow of the ship gave it another thought in the eager welcome to the man it brought back from the perils of the Farthest North.  Yet the name of that vessel stood for something of more real account to humanity than the attainment of a goal that had been the mystery of the ages.  No such welcome awaited the explorer Hans Egede, who a hundred and seventy-two years before sailed homeward over that very route, a broken, saddened man, and all he brought was the ashes of his best-beloved that they might rest in her native soil.  No gold medal was struck for him; the people did not greet him with loud acclaim.  The King and his court paid scant attention to him, and he was allowed to live his last days in poverty.  Yet a greater honor is his than ever fell to a discoverer:  the simple natives of Greenland long reckoned the time from his coming among them.  To them he was in their ice-bound home what Father Damien was to the stricken lepers in the South seas, and Dr. Grenfell is to the fishermen of Labrador.