Adam Olearius's ‘About the Greenlanders’

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Scheffel, David
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1987
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology; Geography, Planning and Development; Greenland; Traveller; Gottorp; greenlander*; Polar Record
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247400008408; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247400008408

Abstract The 17th-century German traveller and writer Adam Olearius is best known for his account of travels in Russia and Persia, first published in 1656. Parts of this work have been translated into English under the title ‘The travels of Olearius in seventeenth-century Russia’. Among hitherto untranslated sections is the chapter ‘Von den Grünländern’, an early and well-researched account of Greenland and its inhabitants, prompted by his examination of a party of three Greenlanders in Gottorp, Schleswig, in 1656. This article is a translation of the chapter, with an introduction to Olearius and his background.