Skrefsrud came from
Fåberg Municipality situated north of
Lillehammer in
Oppland county,
Norway. As a young man he was imprisoned for three years, and during his incarceration started to both read the Bible and study languages. Upon his release, he studied at the missionary school of
Johannes Evangelista Goßner in
Berlin, where he was prepared for his mission. In 1863, he left for India. Together with
Hans Peter Børresen he is regarded as the founder of the
Norwegian Santal Mission (
Den norske Santalmisjon) (from 2001 a part of Normisjon). Skrefsrud learned the language of the
Hindi,
Bengali and
Sanskrit. He published a songbook in the
Santali language with Christian texts for local melodies and later a grammar for the Santal people. In 1881–83, he traveled to Denmark and Norway to gain support for the mission. In 1882, he was ordained by Bishop
Carl Peter Parelius Essendrop in Kristiania (now Oslo). Skrefsrud died during 1910 in the village of Benagaria in
Jharkhand, India. He was followed at the mission by the missionary, linguist and folklorist
Paul Olaf Bodding. The mission he established in India has grown to a church with over 150,000 members in the Indian states of
Jharkhand,
Bihar,
West Bengal and
Assam. In the 1950s it became an independent institution - The
Northern Evangelical Lutheran Church (NELC). ==References==