Hans Poulsen Egede (January 31, 1686 – November 5, 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 hundreds of years. He founded Greenland’s capital Godthåb, now known as Nuuk.

Norwegian missionary Hans Egede gave one of the oldest descriptions of a Sea Serpent.

Egede wrote that on July 6, 1734, his ship sailed past the coast of Greenland when suddenly those on board “saw a most terrible creature, resembling nothing they saw before. The monster lifted its head so high that it seemed to be higher than the crow’s nest on the mainmast. The head was small and the body short and wrinkled. The unknown creature was using giant fins which propelled it through the water. Later the sailors saw its tail as well. The monster was longer than our whole ship.”

His description of a snake-like creature with an elongated sharp snout and covered with wrinkled hard skin hardly appears to be a giant squid (Architeuthis), with one of the tentacles mistaken for a tail, which some have used to explain the sighting.

Charles Paxton’s hypothesis is that the famous Egede sighting of 1734 might actually have been of a whale penis, which has been supported with some remarkable photos. Others have mentioned it merely as a misidentified whale.

Hans Egede returned to Copenhagen in 1736 to become principal of a seminary that trained missionaries for Greenland. In 1741, he was named bishop of Greenland. He established a catechism for use in Greenland in 1747. Egede died November 5, 1758 at the age of 72 at Falster, Denmark.