| Summary: | The landscape of western Greenland is strikingly rocky. No trees, only shrubs of varying kinds. From October to April the ground is covered in snow-a bit further in from the coast the land is covered in ice all year. In 1721 the primary food was seal, whose skins, intestines, and fur served multiple purposes. Reindeer and walrus, as well as different kinds of birds, whales, and fish were also main ingredients in the diet. These were the conditions that met the Danish missionaries when they first arrived in Greenland in 1721. So how would you translate Matt 7:16: "Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles;" into Greenlandic? And how would you go about translating Rev 5:5-6, where the lion of Judah is the Lamb? What about camels or doves? And what about the really important words, such as king or God, spirit and sin? These issues in translation are not limited to translating the Bible in Greenland alone. They are issues that have confronted Bible translators in many parts of the world, where the limits and limitations of language come to the fore and radically test the flexibility of the message and the creativity of its bearer.
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