Greenland (Denmark) / All works
Novel
Ersinngitsup piumasaa
Not translated into English
Hans Lynge · 1938
Synopsis
The Will of the Invisible: two brothers, Ulloriaq and Saamik, discover that the man they call their father killed their real father. From this revelation comes a story in which Inuit belief serves as living knowledge, not as dead heritage; Den Store Danske notes allusions in it to Jonah and to Jesus, as well as to romanticism and to Andersen's “The Snow Queen”.
Context
The novel appeared in 1938 in a small mimeographed print run, became a book only in 1967 and was translated into Danish in 1990 under the title Den usynliges vilje. Den Store Danske notes that the Greenlandic title does not distinguish the masculine from the neuter, an ambiguity lost in the translation. In 1988 Per Langgaard made it, together with Frederik Nielsen's Tuumarsi, the subject of a computer-assisted analysis, in the journal Folk.
Who it is for
A novel from the first Greenlandic literature, readable in Danish; no French or English translation has been found.
Prizes and reception
The Danish encyclopaedia reads in it the Inuit belief presented as a source of knowledge, not as a fixed heritage.