Hans Poulsen Egede (31 January 1686 – 5 November 1758) was a Dano-Norwegian Lutheran missionary who launched mission efforts to Greenland, which led him to be styled the Apostle of Greenland. He established a successful mission among the Inuit and is credited with revitalizing Dano-Norwegian interest in the island after contact had been broken for about 300 years. He founded Greenland's capital Godthåb, now known as Nuuk. Background Hans Egede was born into the home of a civil servant in Harstad, Norway, nearly north of the Arctic Circle. His paternal grandfather had been a vicar in Vester Egede on southern Zealand, Denmark. Hans was schooled by an uncle, a clergyman in a local Lutheran Church. In 1704 he travelled to Copenhagen to enter the University of Copenhagen, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Theology. He returned to Hinnøya Island after graduation, and on 15 April 1707 he was ordained and assigned to a parish on the equally remote archipelago of Lofoten. Also in 1707 he married Gertrud Rasch (or Rask), who was 13 years his senior. Four children were born to the marriage – two boys and two girls. Greenland At Lofoten, Egede heard stories about the old Norse settlements on Greenland, with which contact had been lost centuries before. Beginning in 1711, he sought permission from Frederick IV of Denmark-Norway to search for the colony and establish a mission there, presuming that it had either remained Catholic after the Danish–Norwegian Reformation or been lost to the Christian faith altogether. Frederick gave consent at least partially to re-establish a colonial claim to the island. Egede established the Bergen Greenland Company () with $9,000 in capital from Bergen merchants, $200 from Frederick IV of Denmark and Norway, and a $300 annual grant from the Royal Mission College. The company was granted broad powers to govern the peninsula (as it was then considered to be), to raise its own army and navy, to collect taxes and to administer justice; the king and his council, however, refused to grant it monopoly rights to whaling and trade in Greenland out of a fear of antagonizing the Dutch. Haabet ("The Hope") and two smaller ships departed Bergen on 2 May 1721 bearing Egede, his wife and four children, and forty other colonists. On 3 July they reached Nuup Kangerlua and established Hope Colony () with the erection of a portable house on Kangeq Island,