MATHIAS STORCH was born in Greenland in 1883. He grew up in a hunting family in a small Greenlandic village, and was educated in a Nuuk seminary. After graduation, he became the first link in a new priest training program, spending three years in Denmark. In 1910 he was ordained and came to the northern colonies in 1920, to Ilulissat, where he remained until his death. He was a strong and authoritative personality and the first Greenlander appointed as acting dean of northern Greenland. He retired in 1953 but worked occasionally as a priest until his death.

Storch was a positive symbol to ordinary Greenlanders while urging religious activity and therefore, for some decades, he was by virtue of his strong personality and fearless independence, a kind of spiritual chief to northern Greenland.

Torben Hutchings is part-Danish, and based in Edinburgh, Scotland, having given up a career in chemistry to work in freelance translating and run a small market stall.