ABSTRACT
The chapter begins with the story of the little girl, who started crying every time she heard about God. It presents the little crying girl as evidence of a new emotional community established among converted Inuit in Eighteenth-Century Greenland. The present chapter is divided into four sections: the first describes Greenland's lack of cultivation and the Inuit inhabitants' lack of distinction from the surrounding nature, and the second explains how the Inuit evaded confessing their faith. The third and fourth sections explain how sadness, interpreted through the prism of contemporary Christian hymns and medical beliefs, came to be considered the key signifier of the genuine Inuit confession of faith. The chapter suggests that Paul Egede understood the girl's tears as a sign that the mission was about to succeed and Christianity would prosper in Greenland. Paul's report of the little crying girl stems from 1740, and situations where crying had turned into sly civility can already be noted in 1742.
