Writer, translator, and linguist born in Qoornoq (Groenland) in 1905 – died in 1991.
Frederik Nielsen, also known as Frederik Jørgen Niels or Frederik “Fare” Jørgen Niels Nielsen, was born on September 20th, 1905, in Qoornoq, a fishing village in the municipality of Sermersooq, in southwestern Greenland. At the age of four, Frederik Nielsen lost his father, hunter Niels Hans Morten Nielsen, in a kayaking accident. He and his mother Juliane Ane Jocebha Holm then moved in with his grandparents, in Godthåb (now Nuuk).
From the 1920s to the 1950s, Frederik Nielsen’s professional career and involvement in public life focused on education, the modernization of Greenlandic media, and politics.
From 1921 to 1927, he studied at the Greenland Seminary (Ilinniarfissuaq), in Godthåb, where he met Pavia Petersen and Hans Lynge, both of whom were also to become important figures in Greenlandic literature. Frederik Nielsen pursued and completed his studies in Denmark in 1931, at Tønder State Seminary, a teacher training college, thus becoming the first Greenlandic student to complete his teacher training in Denmark. He returned to Greenland to teach in Egedesminde (now Aasiaat), on Greenland’s west coast, before being transferred to a school in Godthåb in 1936. In 1941, his pedagogical expertise earned him a position as school board advisor for the regions of Greenland. After being appointed principal of a school in Julianehåb (now Qaqortoq) in 1947, he was made an advisor for southern Greenland. Frederik Nielsen’s name remains strongly associated with the development of public education in Greenland.
Following his career in education, Frederik Nielsen shifted his focus to news media and information, taking the lead of a brand-new Greenlandic radio station in 1957, the Greenlandic Broadcasting Corporation (Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa, KNR). He held this position until his retirement in 1969. Throughout his tenure, he worked towards the development of mass media, which had previously been non-existent in Greenland, managing the delicate balance between Danish- and Greenlandic-language content in the radio’s programming schedule. He ushered in a new era of information, in a country where, previously, the only journalistic organ had been the bi-monthly, bilingual newspaper Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten.
Frederik Nielsen’s work as a teacher and radio broadcaster led him to take on political responsibilities at both local and national levels, as his cousin Andreas Nielsen had done. From 1948 to 1951, Frederik Nielsen sat on the Julianehåb Community Council; in 1949, he served as deputy under Klaus Lynge on the Greenland National Council (Grønlands Landsråd), before becoming a full member from 1951 to 1954.
Alongside his professional and political activities, Frederik Nielsen was also a man of letters. A poet, novelist, essayist, and translator, he is now considered one of Greenland’s most important novelists, along with Mathias Storch and Augo Lynge. His novel Tuumarsi (“Thomas”), published in 1934, recounts the story of a man’s life and his human and spiritual trials; it is set in 19th-century Greenland, where Christian culture and traditional Inuit practices such as seal hunting coexist. The book offers an interesting counterpoint to most Greenlandic literature of the 1930s, which is marked by patriotic romanticism. Tuumarsi was reissued in 1973, then translated into Danish (1980); the Danish translation was the basis for a 2016 English translation. In 1943, Frederik Nielsen also became the first Greenlandic author to publish a collection of poems—Kristen Poulsen was the second, four years later. Frederik Nielsen’s collection, entitled Qilak, nuna, imaq (literally: “Sky, land, sea”), is an homage to Greenlandic nature. It was reissued in 1962, though some of the poems had already been reprinted in 1956 in a bilingual (Greenlandic, Danish) anthology that included, among others, works by Rasmus Berthelsen. These initial publications by Frederik Nielsen were followed by a story with supernatural overtones, Arnajaraq (1948). This story, strongly inspired by Snow White, by the Brothers Grimm, was reissued in 2000. Frederik Nielsen is also known for a tetralogy of novels published between 1970 and 1988 and composed of Ilissi tassa nunassarsi (1970), Siulittuutip eqquunnera (1982), Inuiaat nutartikkat (1983) and Nunaga siunissat qanoq ippa? (1988). The tetralogy is set in medieval Greenland, where the Thule culture from Alaska and Canada is gradually replacing the Dorset culture. The last volume was translated into Danish in 1991 under the title Mit land – hvorhen går din fremtid? (literally: “My country – where is your future going?”).
Frederik Nielsen’s body of work expresses his love for Greenlandic culture and history, a love that was also reflected in his involvement in publishing and in the organizations that promote Greenlandic culture and language; these included the Greenland National Museum (Nunatta Katersugaasivia Allagaaterqarfialu, NKA) as well as the Language Secretariat of Greenland (Oqaasileriffik). Frederik Nielsen took part in the 1973 reform of Greenlandic spelling, which replaced the system established by Samuel Kleinschmidt in the second half of the 19th century. He also contributed to Greenland’s literary heritage through his work as a translator, which he produced between the mid-1970s and the late 1980s. In addition to Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales and to the Old Testament, he translated into Greenlandic a selection of hymns and songs by the Danish Romantic author N. F. S. Grundtvig; these were published in Nuuk in 1985. He was also involved in a working group aiming to produce a Greenlandic-Danish / Danish-Greenlandic dictionary.
This highly diversified professional and intellectual career, which made Frederik Nielsen a key player in his country’s culture, also earned him a number of awards and honours. He was made a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog in 1952 and received a promotion within the order in 1965. From the 1970s onwards, Greenlandic society also granted him recognition: in 1972, he was awarded the Rink Medal, in 1984 the Greenlandic Government awarded him the Greenlandic Culture Prize (Grønlandske Kulturpris), and in 1991, he received the Nersornaat Medal of Merit.
Frederik Nielsen died in 1991, leaving behind an important literary and cultural legacy. Farip Aqqutaa Street in Nuuk is named after his nickname, “Fare.”