[1][2] 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 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.

Beginning in 1711,[4] 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.

[7] Haabet ("The Hope") and two smaller ships[5] departed Bergen on 2 May 1721 bearing Egede, his wife and four children, and forty other colonists.

Searching for months for descendants of the old Norse colonists, he found only the local Kalaallit people and began studying their language.

A common myth states that, as the Inuit had no bread nor any idea of it, Egede adapted the Lord's Prayer as "Give us this day our daily seal".

His (now ship-borne) explorations found no Norse survivors along the western shore and future work was misled by the two mistaken beliefs – both prevalent at the time – that the Eastern Settlement would be located on Greenland's east coast (it was later established it had been among the fjords of the island's extreme southwest) and that a strait existed nearby communicating with the western half of the island.

In 1724 he baptized his first child converts, two of whom would travel to Denmark and there inspire Count Zinzendorf to begin the Moravian missions.

In 1728, a royal expedition under Major Claus Paarss arrived with four supply ships and moved the Kangeq colony to the mainland opposite, establishing a fort named Godt-Haab ("Good Hope"), the future Godthåb.

A supply ship in 1733 brought three missionaries and news that the king had granted 2,000 rixdollars a year to establish a new company for the colony under Jacob Severin.

[10] The Moravians (their leader was Christian David) were allowed to establish a station at Neu-Herrnhut (which became the nucleus of modern Nuuk, Greenland's capital) and in time a string of missions along the island's west coast.

The historical fiction novel "The Prophets of Eternal Fjord" narrates a tale of a missionary priest under Egede's instruction embarking upon Greenland to convert its indigenous peoples to Christianity.

[2] Egede's statue at Frederick's Church in Copenhagen was vandalized with the word "decolonize" spray-painted on its base on June 20, 2020, during worldwide protests against memorials of colonial figures.