Missionsblad for Børn portrays children as central characters in the various texts but also stages children as active voices by letting the children themselves narrate their experiences, often in the form of letters. In the aforementioned Fredrik Roode story, for example, the missionary framing of the death bed scene asserts itself at the narrative level from the very beginning and introduces the daughter of a missionary as the narrator: ‘This time I first let a child relate. It is the daughter of missionary Anderson in Pacaltsdorp in South Africa, who in a letter describes the event here depicted. She writes thus:’.
1 ‘Dennegang lader jeg først et Barn fortælle. Det er Datter af Missionær Anderson i Pacaltsdorp i Sydafrika, hvilken i et Brev skildrer det Optrin, som her er afbildet. Hun skriver saaledes:’ (Missionsblad for Børn, February 1847, p. 15). This sentence is almost verbatim to the German text. In the earlier English versions, however, this is not the first sentence in the text, nor is it identical: ‘The following incident, communicated by one of Mr. Anderson’s daughters, will be regarded with peculiar feelings by the friends of missions’ (The Missionary Magazine, 1836, p. 419; The Gambier Observer, 16 November 1836); ‘One of the daughters of Mr. Anderson, of the London Missionary Society, communicates the following particulars of the death of this particular Youth, at Pacaltsdorp’ (The Missionary Register, February 1837, p. 105). In the letter, Anderson’s daughter tells of how the boy called for her father – ‘“Frederik,” said my father, “why have you sent for me?” – and later his school-fellows, sisters and parents, urging them, to lead lives without sin and to seek the Lord while you are healthy and wholesome’.
2 ‘“Frederik,” sagde min Fader, “hvorfor har du sendt Bud efter mig?”’; ‘søger Herren medens I ere friske og sunde!’ (Missionsblad for Børn, February 1847, pp. 15, 17). She then goes on to depict Frederik Roode’s final moment: ‘These were his last words, he died without great death struggle. The patience and composure, with which he bore his painful affliction, both surprised and edified those around him, and they have thus learnt something, which I hope, they will not easily forget.’
3 ‘Dette var hans sidste Ord, han døde uden stor Dødskamp. Den Taalmodighed og Fatning, hvormed han bar sin smertelige Sygdom, var for de Omkringstaaende ligesaa forunderlig som opbyggelig, og de have derved lært noget, som de, hvilket jeg haaber, ikke saa let ville glemme’ (Missionsblad for Børn, February 1847, p. 17). In The Missionary Magazine (1836, p. 420): ‘He died without a struggle. The patience and composure, with which he bore the painful affliction allotted to him, at once surprised and edified those who witnessed it; and afforded to them a lesson, which, it is to be hoped, will not be lost.’ The letters from the Greenlandic children, too, are examples of how communication between children is made manifest in the magazine. Moreover, they give a glimpse into the lives of the children and how they have been affected by the missionaries: expressing gratitude for the gifts they have been sent and for having been introduced to Christ, they also hint to the difficulties of combining traditional ways of life with new beliefs. In good weather, Josva writes, he often has to go seal hunting instead of attending school. This, he relates, is slowing down his way towards the ideals he is presented with by the missionaries:
[W]e found a lot of pleasure in writing, and wanted to do this, to learn and in following the word of the Saviour always be more like the youth in the East (Europe). We often hear how hard-working the children of the East are in this. We too wanted to be like them and always be prepared to praise the Lord and to thank him.
4 ‘: thi vi fandt megen Fornøielse i at Skrive, og hadde Lyst dertil, for at lære det, og ogsaa heri, og i at følge Frelserens Bud stedse blive Ungdommen i Østen (i Europa) mere lige. Vi høre oftere, hvor flittige Børnene i Østen heri ere: ogsaa vi ønskede at ligne dem, og stedse være beredte til at prise Frelseren og at takke Ham’ (Missionsblad for Børn, March 1847, p. 31). Christian, in his letter, is less concerned with Christ and more detailed in his descriptions of Greenlandic daily life, writing about how they are often out in their kayaks in dangerous waters when they train to use their weapons. Like Josva, though, he too notes the challenges of combining a nomadic life with schooling. The text concludes with two sentences in Greenlandic in Latin letters, so that the readers may have an ‘understanding of the Greenlandic language, whose words are as long as a prayer’ (‘et Begreb om det grønlandske Sprog, der har saa lange Ord som en Bønnestal’ (Missionsblad for Børn, March 1847, p. 33).There are also several other examples of children’s letters in
Missionsblad for Børn, such as ‘To Breve fra Hedningebørn’ (Two Letters from Heathen Children). Again, the communication is between Christian and heathen children, this time between children in England and South Africa. The first letter is written by the children at a school in Bersaba in today’s South Africa, thanking the children in England for the clothing and gifts they have sent. The letter ends with a request for more: ‘We are happy on Sundays, because then we wear the small dresses you have sent us: we are so many and therefore not all could have a dress, and those who did not get one, cried. … Would you not send us some more pieces of clothing?’
5 ‘Vi ere glade om Søndagen, thi da have vi de smaa Kjoler paa, som I have sendt os: vi ere så mange og derfor kunne ikke alle faa en Kjole, og de, som ingen faa, græde da. … Vilde I ikke sende os endnu nogle Klædningsstykker?’ (Missionsblad for Børn, March 1847, p. 11).The second letter is from Amy, ‘a small girl of about nine years; my father was a slave, but there are no more slaves now’.
6 ‘Jeg er Amy, an liden Pige paa omtrent ni Aar; min Fader var en Slave, men der gives nu ingen Slaver mere’ (Missionsblad for Børn, March 1847, p. 11). In her brief note she gives thanks for the aprons, working skirts and thimbles they have received and goes on, like the writers of the previous letter, to describe the Sundays: ‘On Sundays, the small children come to the missionary’s house; they are clean and in their nice dresses, they are quietly seated. When the horn blows, they go to church; they sing Heir kniel ik vol van droefheid; but that you cannot understand.’
7 ‘Om Søndagen komme de smaa Børn i Missionærens hus; de ere renlige, de trække fine kjoler paa, de sætte sig rolige ned. Naar der bliver blæst i Hornet, drage de til Kirken; de synge Heir kniel ik vol van droefheid*); med det forstaa I ikke’: (Missionsblad for Børn, March 1847, p. 12). In a note the editor translates the song title to ‘Here I kneel full of affliction’ (‘Her knæler jeg fuld af Bedrøvelse’). In all these letters the communication is staged as being directly from child to child. Thus, the children are cast as readers and writers, which to a certain degree promotes their agency, even though it is located within the framework of the power imbalance between adults and children that characterises children’s literature as such.
8 See M. Nikolajeva, Power, Voice and Subjectivity in Literature for Young Readers (New York, London, 2010).The letter is indeed a familiar genre in early printed children’s literature (as it is in eighteenth-century literature generally), and scholars have shown how for example eighteenth-century Dano-Norwegian children’s magazines stage children, and girls in particular, as letter writers.
9 H. Bache-Wiig, ‘Avis for Børn (1779–1782): Lesestykker om “Ungdommens Tilbøielighed til Dyden eller Lasten” – et monotont repertoar?’, in E. Tjønneland (ed.), Kritikk før 1814. 1700-tallets politiske og litterære offentlighet (Oslo, 2014); N. Christensen, ‘Lust for Reading and Thirst for Knowledge: Fictive Letters in a Danish Children’s Magazine of 1770’, The Lion and the Unicorn, 2 (2009); N. Christensen, Videbegær. Even though these letters were most probably fictional, they convey an understanding of the child as an independent and reflective individual in possession of humour and irony.
10 N. Christensen, Videbegær, p. 180. Moreover, eighteenth-century children’s magazines in Denmark–Norway and Sweden, for instance, staged children as readers and consumers, signalling their increasingly important role in print culture.
11 See J. S. Kaasa, ‘Hvordan bli en tidsskriftleser? Medieoppdragelse i 1700-tallets barnemagasiner’, Arr – Idéhistorisk tidsskrift, 31:4 (2019), 21–31; J. S. Kaasa, ‘Å gi sin daler med glede: Barn som forbrukere i Ungdommens Ven (1770)’, Barnboken, 42 (2019), 1–18. Surely, these roles are somewhat different in the missionary magazines discussed in this chapter. Yet the children are staged as active participants in the missionary endeavour as well as in the magazine through the letters ascribed to them.
There is no way to prove these letters’ authenticity and that they were actually written by the children in question, although it is not unlikely. For instance, William Anderson was indeed a missionary in Pacaltsdorp and he did indeed have daughters, and there were German and Norwegian missionary stations in Greenland at the time the letters by Josva and Christian were supposedly written.
12 For more background on these missions, see for example C. Larsen et al., Da skolen tog form. 1780–1850 (Aarhus, 2013), pp. 279–89. Regardless of their potential factuality or fictionality, we should approach these letters as
mediated letters that were shaped by the missionary contexts from and in which they were written and published. More important than the question of their authenticity is the fact that the letters are
presented as being written by children. Although the letters to different degrees have been shaped by adult actors, they seem to want to give the impression of a more or less direct relation between the child writer and the child reader. The presence of adult actors, be they missionaries or magazine editors, remains secondary here, leaving room for the children’s voices. In this way, the magazine represents the children in what appears to be their own words, staging them as letter writers and readers, albeit within the context of the missionary cause.