49. Sketch maps drawn by hand from north-west Greenland. Hinrich Johannes Rink. 1848-51.

The collection consists of about 150 sketch maps, drawn by the versatile Hinrich Johannes Rink. Apart from his position of colony manager of South Greenland, he established a printing firm and collected Eskimo fairy-tales and legends. He was a geologist and made a great number of detailed geological maps that for the first time showed part of the very interesting geology of Greenland. As a geographer and Greenland scholar he also drew a splendid topographical map of north-west Greenland which was unique of its kind for several centuries.

The sketch maps are drawn on paper of various quality and size. There is quite ordinary white paper of excellent quality, paper of poor quality which breaks easily, there is 'greaseproof paper' and blue paper. The sizes vary from maps of regular sizes to small unsymmetrical scraps of paper and often the paper in glued together in a crisscrossed fashion.